Warwick, Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Warwick, Oklahoma was platted in nineteen oh three on land homesteaded by David and Norah High. A post office had already been running since eighteen ninety-two. Early Warwick had the businesses of a small prairie town, and the Fort Smith and Western Railway ran through it.
The most durable landmark came in nineteen twenty-one, when John Seaba built a filling station and machine shop along the old Ozark Trail highway just outside town. That road became Route Sixty-Six in nineteen twenty-six. Seaba started out buying and reassembling Model T Fords, and the original station was red brick with a five sided open service bay, selling a gasoline called NevrNox.
In nineteen thirty four he opened an engine repair shop that specialized in rebuilding connecting rods, and by the late nineteen thirties it employed about eighteen people. Wartime gas rationing ended fuel sales, so he enclosed the bays and rebuilt engines full time, including repairs on military trucks. That workshop kept running until nineteen ninety four.
Out back, a restored nineteen twenties rock outhouse has his and hers cast iron toilets. Seaba's station outlasted the oil boom and the highway's heyday alike, and today the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum keeps its brick walls alive as one of the better-preserved early auto-age service stops on the Oklahoma stretch of the Mother Road.
