Teapot Dome Service Station

Zillah, Washington, United States

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A teapot-shaped service station built in 1922 near Zillah, Washington, as a response to the Teapot Dome oil scandal. Moved into town in 2012, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and houses the city's seasonal visitor centre.

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Teapot Dome Service Station

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Approximate location · 46.404° N, 120.270° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A service station shaped like a teapot has stood in Washington's Yakima Valley since 1922, and its shape is a comment on a presidential bribery scandal. According to the Yakima Herald-Republic, Jack Ainsworth built it after President Warren G. Harding transferred control of three Navy oil reserves, including Teapot Dome in Wyoming, to the Interior Department in 1921. Interior Secretary Albert Fall was later convicted of corruption, the first Cabinet official to be.

The station first stood on State Route 410 between Zillah and Granger. When Interstate 82 was built in 1978 it was moved to the Yakima Valley Highway west of Zillah; the Herald reported in 2023 that a car hit it five days before the move and the handmade structure had to be rebuilt. Ainsworth sold it in 1928, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

It stopped selling fuel when prices rose. The Herald gives 2006 as the year it closed; a 2012 Herald report reposted by the Washington Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation says March 2004. The city of Zillah bought the site for $125,000 and, with a federal grant, moved the station in 2012 to 117 First Avenue, next to Stewart Park. The restoration added replica gas pumps and a neon “Gas” sign. Today the building is Zillah's visitor centre, where volunteers sell local souvenirs, and the city marked the station's 100th anniversary with an event in September 2022.

What Ainsworth himself thought of the scandal is unknown: in a column first published in 2017, the city's planning director said the city had not been able to learn it from people who were there at the time.

In 2025 the Zillah Chamber of Commerce listed the Teapot as open from April to September, on Wednesday to Saturday mornings, so a visit outside that season may find it closed.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

The teapot-shaped building is Zillah's visitor centre, with local tourist information and souvenirs; its fuel pumps are replicas. The Zillah Chamber of Commerce (2025) lists a volunteer-run schedule from April to September, a few mornings a week, and arranges tours by phone outside it.

ACCESS

At 117 First Avenue in Zillah, beside Stewart Park and the veterans memorial. In 2025 the chamber listed an April-to-September volunteer schedule for inside access and said tours outside it can be arranged by phone.

COMMUNITY