Council Crest Shell Gas & Service Station

Better check your gas tank level indicator after filling up here because these guys can’t be trusted to fill a tank.

I came here after class one day a few weeks back. I handed the clerk about $ 18 and told him to fill it up. He stopped the pump at $ 13 and acted as if he had done just that. I looked at the meter which clearly showed he had only put in $ 13 and I looked at him and I decided it wasn’t worth it so I left. I think he thought I was too out of it to notice and truth was, I was exhausted or I might very well have made a stink about it. Either way, that guy gave me reason never to come back to this gas station and that’s really too bad because its very close to where I live. It’s also too bad because I drive company vehicles through the area frequently. He’s lost a lot more than $ 5 in business by being dishonest, though he didn’t strike me as the type to care.

Nice clean gas station with an americana vibe going on especially at dusk in the summer. Expensive petrol.
Only gas station I know in the area that offers free air. Stations that charge $ 1 for air can suck it.

There is an old film «Back to the Future» which has something to do with an atomic car that can travel back in time. In the film, the car travels to 1955. There is a scene where a car of the time visits a gas station, which were apparently called service stations in that era. Immediately 3 attendants rush from the station office and begin to check the tires, the fluids under the hood and wash the windows. They are even neatly dressed, polite and intelligent.
The Council Crest Shell station is something like that today. The attendant always washes your windows and will check tires and fluids on request. It is a gem from the past.
It’s located just below Council Crest Park in the Southwest Hills at the intersection of Patton, Dosch, Humphrey and Talbot. That area was claimed by John Talbot in 1861. In the early days, the schoolhouse for the Mt Zion Congregational Church stood there. The schoolhouse was demolished to build the Mt Zion Strohecker’s Grocery where the current St Thomas More overflow parking lot is.
The area became popular with an amusement park, at the now Council Crest Park, between 1907 and 1929. It was accessible by the Council Crest Trolley, one of the last discontinued, in 1950, and by private automobile. Those automobiles needed fuel, and maybe repairs after climbing some of Portland’s steepest roads, so soon a service station shared the Mt Zion Grocery site at the top of the hill. As old timers relate, getting an ice cream from the store was popular while waiting for gas.
By the 1940’s, the station was operated by Standard Oil of California, one of the 34 companies John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly was fragmented into by one of the first antitrust actions.
The current structure was built in 1960. It was only 1962 that the land became part of the city and subject to zoning regulation, which would surely have prevented a gas station in a residential neighborhood, miles from any business, excepting the relocated Mt Zion Grocery.
The station has clean, though worn 1960’s bathrooms, a crowded office, and two actual service bays. Yes they actually repair cars there! The station can do most service on site. They sell and repair tires. They do mechanical, brakes, lubrication and fluids. They have a network for things they can’t do there, like alignment.
The attendants are polite and intelligent, they can even carry on a conversation. The price of gas is about 5% higher than the cheapest, but they aren’t making it up on volume selling beer, Red Bull and all the odd convenience-​gas store items popular elsewhere.
So if you would like to experience the way back of gasoline SERVICE stations in the future, this would be a good business to support today.
Winter hours are until 9PM, Summer, until 10PM