They were once as visible along highways as wooden grain elevators. Road travellers could see them at just about every city or town block.
When drivers came upon them the cylindrical or bubble glass tops captured the imaginations of children, who would marvel at how the light reddish liquid inside the glass would rise and fall.
That liquid, of course, was gasoline. It was fed into vehicles by gravity. These once iconic 10- to 12-foot high reminders of the good ole days when gas station attendants actually ran to your car to clean the windshields were known as gravity gas pumps.
They came into service at North American gas stations at around 1910, and remained on both rural and urban landscapes until metering pumps arrived in the 1920s. Yes, these glorious relics of the past have hit the century mark but while they once numbered in the hundreds of thousands across the continent they have all but disappeared for today's more efficient digital gas dispensers.
Most of today's surviving pioneer gravity gas pumps are either in the hands of museums or collectors.
Locally, lovers of pioneer relics can savour the fact the Innisfail Historical Village has not only acquired four ancient gravity gas pumps but is now midway through an ambitious restoration project, thanks to the dedicated work of volunteers and a half dozen Bowden Institution inmates who logged hundreds of hours through work programs over the past 18 months.
"They have worked on three of them," said Village curator Dean Jorden of the inmates' work, which is continuing this year. "They have taken them apart, sandblasted the rust off them and undercoated and repainted them. They did an amazing job on them. They took a lot of pride in their work."
The Village's first gravity gas pump 帽 a White Rose model - was acquired from local farmer Bob Kemp in 1976. In later years the Village acquired a 1916-18 vintage gravity gas pump originally from the Thompson family's gravel and cement business west of town. A local farmer donated another non-restored gravity gas relic in 2010, and most valuable of all 帽 a prized rare double-tank topped Wayne style pump for two fuels that was built between 1912 and 1916 and used at the Innisfail Airport.
"The fuel was hand pumped from an underground tank up to the gravity tank on top of the pump where the fuel is measured and flows by gravity from there to the vehicle," said Lawrence Gould, treasurer and board member of the Innisfail and District Historical Society. "The globes measured in gallons and have markers in them that were government set so that volumes can be checked and sealed.
"They were not very accurate as operators could pump nine gallons and say it was 10 unless you looked at it," said Gould of the pump's drawbacks. "The seals under the glass would leak. If you didn't have a good check valve the gas could leak back into the underground tank."
The Wayne pump will likely be valued at $14,000 once fully restored, said Jorden.
"We are not selling it," he declared. For now it is in a Village shop awaiting more restoration work, including another cylindrical glass chamber for the top. In the meantime, the museum has applied for a $3,000 grant with Shell Canada to complete the restoration, which will include a Shell decal for the globe.
Until 2011 the Village's prized gravity gas pumps were featured outside. Today all are in the workshops being fully restored. Jorden said when the project is finished the relics will remain inside, safe from the elements and vandals.
"They are items that are recognizable by anybody, earlier versions of what we recognize today," said Jorden of their historical and contemporary importance. "For some it is nostalgia. I think it is definitely of interest to everybody, to compare to what we have today."
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