Citizens "77" Photos

Citizens "77" in Kissimmee, FL, 1961. From Walt Wimer.

Walt writes:

Citizens Oil Co. was formed back in 1936 and was a franchise of Moore's Inc. GREYHOUND brand.
They later modified the "greyhound" to their own CITIZENS logo and in 1951 merged with Speed Oil Co.
of Atlanta. For a number of years the company owned chain of rather second rate discount stations
that went under the SUPER SPEED brand while the dealer stations were branded CITIZENS "77".
In 1957 Bay Petroleum, already owned by Tennessee Gas Transmission Co. (Tenneco), bought the
Citizens-Speed combo. The next few years saw several changes. Some of the better sites were rebuilt
into BAY stations with that brand entering the Florida market in 1958. Some others used a new
"Bay type" shield logo that just said "SPEED" while many of the small dealer stations just kept
the CITIZENS "77" brand. Bay Petroleum was also building brand new BAY stations, as the first one
I saw was in June of 1958 in Ocala on US 27 on the first day of my trip to California. The station had
just opened and was a big surprise to an 18 year old!!! Going up US 27 to Tallahassee there were
tons of small "mom & pop" stations and it seemed every other one was a CITIZENS "77"!! The BAY
station that I worked at later in DeLand was once the site of a ramshackle SUPER SPEED truckstop.
That site was still going as a FINA as late as 1995!!

The photo here was taken in 1961 at Kissimmee BDW (That's "before Disney World"!!) when
Kissimmee was just a sleepy little central Florida town that had the combined US routes of 17/92/441
going through town. This station was pretty typical of CITIZENS 77 stations, and better than most!!
Needless to say, it couldn't compete with the upscale competition that moved in after Disney World
opened, and was long gone when we took the kids there in the early 70s.