7-Eleven at 8124 Forest Lane (Dallas, Texas)

From Google Maps (Alan Calderón), with minor color touch-ups and cropping done.
One of my plans for Carbon-izer circa 2023 was a Dallas page to complement the pages on Bryan-College Station, Houston, Austin, and Waco-Temple-Killeen, and one of the things I was to write about was this particular 7-Eleven, which I had previously made notes about. This gas station started out as a RaceTrac in 1994 (though may not have officially opened until early 1995). However, by the 2010s, nuisance and crime issues led RaceTrac to shut down the store (this happened between April 2015 and August 2015) with the store boarded up a fence erected around the property. So according to this RetailWatchers comment after the nuisance issues shut down the store, neighborhood pressure eventually had RaceTrac do a full renovation and reopening of the location in 2017. Around late 2020/early 2021 the property was sold to 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven never did add permanent signs as the photo above was taken in March 2023. Bad sign—between February and July of 2024 7-Eleven vacated the property, leaving it empty once more, with the gas canopy demolished by February 2026.

South First Square (Austin, Texas)

From this PDF
I don't have a lot of information on this one today. The grocery store at 611 West Ben White Boulevard was A&P when it first opened in 1966. The grocery store later changed hands to locally-based Foodland, which sold in 1996 to Cutrer's City Market, which by 2007 was simply City Market. From what I can find City Market sold to Arlan's Market, which closed this location shortly after, reopening in 2013 as Mi Rancho Meat Market. In late 2015 or early 2016 it was rebadged as the current name. Sharing the address and building is a restaurant called Bamboo Garden, this was Godfather's Pizza in the 1980s, and I'm not sure of the building out front. It looks like it was originally a restaurant.

While it's not connected to the shopping center anymore (poles were inserted into the concrete), the 7-Eleven (601 W. Ben White) has been here since the 1986 (though it likely originally had Citgo as a gas brand).

Rattlers' Navasota (Navasota, Texas)

I only have Google Maps Street View (this one is c. 2013), so it's a bit distorted. There's a self-serve car wash off to the left that's part of the property.

Rattlers' has previously been a discussion topic of mine, a local convenience store that was later absorbed into 7-Eleven (with the stores still bearing its name cut out of the chain, however), and in 1990 an Exxon was built there (Jim's Express Mart, but listing for "Hit & Run" stores also comes up). By 2004 the store's owner, Kolkhorst Petroleum, unified the convenience stores it owned at the time by giving them a common brand, Rattlers' Country Stores. Despite having the oldest ownership in the chain, outliving a few other stores that Kolkhorst had previously owned including some stores in the Waco-Temple-Killeen area, and of course, being right near Kolkhorst's offices, this location, 1701 E. Washington Avenue, only became Rattlers' #2. Store #1 was sold within a few years. On the Highway 6 side of the store there was a sign for "Rattlers' Deli" but state tax records indicate from 1999 to 2003 there was a Taco Bell Express inside the store (I believe by the time of the Rattlers' rebrand this was gone). In 2016, Kolkhorst Petroleum sold its stores to Sunoco (owner of Stripes) but Rattlers' stores never got rebranded to Stripes because the Stripes chain was sold to 7-Eleven a few years later, and within a few years was branded as 7-Eleven (as did the Stripes an exit down). This was also the first place I saw the new lower-case Exxon logo in late 2017, a sign of things to come. (At least the blue stripe-less version didn't last long before they added back the blue stripe).

This post was split off from this post as part of ongoing upgrades to the site.

UPDATE 12-19-2025: Minor grammar fixes.

Abandoned 7-Eleven at a Former Kettle Site (Conroe, Texas)

Courtesy Loopnet. The nearby CVS has been an "y Mas" store since 2019.
As part of revamping this site, I'm splitting 904 West Davis Street off from this page. This used to be a Kettle restaurant (#22, 1974 to around 2010), which started to disappear around this time (it was once a rather popular chain in Texas and the South). It quickly reopened as Conroe Café but within a few years became El Charrito Restaurant and by late 2019 was gone entirely. The lot was redeveloped as 7-Eleven in 2020, but it was one of the earlier casualties of 7-Eleven underperforming in the Houston area, and it closed in 2024. As of this writing it is still vacant.

Sunoco Franklin (Waco, Texas)

Rough-looking buildings. (Google Street View). This is a 7-Eleven which I've been to a few times, gotten a plate of Tex-Mex for lunch (surprisingly decent) and located at 2500 Franklin Avenue. As of March 2013, the block had contained some rough-looking buildings, including Edwards Machine & Tool Company (2504 Franklin), Diamond M Automotive Group (2512 Franklin), and Inmon Motorcycle Sales & Service (2500 Franklin Avenue), before they all came down for a Stripes.

According to a Tweet Stripes had put out, the store opened in January 2014 as a self-branded Stripes. With the purchase of Stripes' parent Susser Stores by Sunoco, the gas brand was changed to Sunoco less than a year after the store's opening. Between 2021 and 2022 Stripes was rebranded as 7-Eleven after Sunoco divested their convenience stores.

Since the store's opening it has had a Laredo Taco Company inside. (This post was originally from Carbon-izer).

Chevron on the Circle (Waco, Texas)

Chevron as Chevron. Courtesy McLennan Appraisal District. The "Circle Chevron" (food mart/garage/auto shop) has been here since at least 1980 (Circle Gulf in those days, converted in the late 1980s) and shut down sometime in the late 2000s or very early 2010s (the Chevron signage was gone by December 2007—likely not wanting to upgrade to the current signage).

There's a photo taken by someone else in July 2012, shortly before demolition. It was replaced with a 7-Eleven (re-entering town with several new locations) but it took down Chevron's tall sign, as well and opened in late 2012/early 2013 and shut down around January 2019, likely because of the Stripes merger. (7-Eleven now has a store a block away where Stripes was)...or because the Circle got a repaint in 2018 to meet modern traffic patterns. Either way, the gas canopy was removed and it has sat vacant since.

The old address as Chevron was 2600 La Salle Avenue but 7-Eleven changed it to 2524 La Salle Avenue.

Navasota Exit SPUR-515 / TX-105 East (Navasota, Texas)

Street View, 2016. I thought I had photos for this sort of thing but I didn't. I previously covered one of Navasota's main exits previously on this blog and mentions that it was usually the "start of something fun". Unless we were going to Houston, the main star of the show was State Texas Highway 105 East. For years, it would be something like a road trip to Baton Rouge or Florida, or even in later years something a bit closer to home, like the Renaissance Festival. (We'll get to those stories—Conroe, Baton Rouge, Florida, Renaissance Festival, etc. another day.)

Once again we'll be deriving a lot of this information from the Carbon-izer page on Navasota as it currently stands and cover, roughly, from Dove Crossing Lane to Durden Street. Starting from the north and going down south there's La Casita Mexican Food Restaurant (9416 N. Hwy. 6 Loop), Navasota Inn (9460 Highway 6 Loop, sometime between late 2016 and early 2017, this former Super 8 changed names to its current incarnation. I can't find much information on it.), a demolished site that appears to be another motel, The Western Steakhouse & Dancehall (9524 N. Hwy. 6 Loop South; in the early 2020s they added an RV park behind it), Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses (9812 N. Hwy. 6 Loop), a CenturyLink facility (9852 N. Hwy. 6 Loop), T & S RV and Sport (9920 N Hwy 6 Loop, built in the late 2010s), First Hispanic Baptist Church (9970 Hwy 6, this is about where the exit lane is), WCTractor Navasota (10044 Hwy. 6), and finally, Circle T at 10200 Highway 6. Circle T replaced the 1996-built Circle H (no relation), which the gas station chronology I remember being Texaco originally, then a Diamond Shamrock in the early 2000s, then Valero by the mid-2000s, then back to Texaco again, before being demolished in 2019 for "Circle T", a new self-branded truck stop, which opened September 2020.

On the east side (going southbound), there's First National Bank Of Anderson (9501 N. Hwy 6 Loop, built in the late 2000s), MidSouth Electric Co-op (9409 N. Hwy. 6 Loop, built around 2011 with an expansion done in the early 2020s), Christ Our Light Catholic Church (9677 N. Hwy. 6 Loop, one of the few buildings here that was here back in the 1990s), United Ag & Turf (9819 Hwy. 6), Loop Self-Storage (9905 Hwy. 6), 9965 Highway 6 (former Elliott Team Ford, now just a service area), Elliott Team Ford (10059 N. Hwy. 6 Loop, their new location built circa 2023), and finally Hi-Ho. Hi-Ho is a Shell station that originally had the address of 1831 South Loop 6 but changed to 1921 Texas 105. Hi-Ho was there since 1994 but repaved and rebuilt its Shell gas canopy around 2008-2009, and then did a big expansion around 2017 (truck fueling and a store expansion) to compete with the new Stripes across the street.

Now we get to 105 itself. For years, Hi-Ho was it, that was the main sign of civilization as you went through the woods towards Plantersville (which didn't even have a stoplight until 2006). The Sunoco across the street (1930 TX-105) was built as Stripes #2492 and opened here in April 2016 with Laredo Taco Company inside. By June 2021 it had been rebranded as 7-Eleven. That wasn't all. I was somewhat shocked and saddened to see development creep along SH-105 East, noting both a Jack in the Box (2010 Highway 105 E.) opened in December 2022 and Chicken Express (1954 Highway 105 East) which had opened one month earlier (these were connected to 7-Eleven's parking lot). A Jack in the Box? In Navasota?! That was surprising, given the relatively recent arrival of Burger King and the flakiness of those two chains anyway...

UPDATE 09-09-2025: Moved Hi-Ho to this post.

The Defunct Gas Stations of West (West, Texas)

Focusing on the north side of West Oak Street and I-35 (or rather, Exit 353), the first "numbered exit" on the Numbered Exits blog is merely coincidental and focuses on some of the defunct gas stations of West, Texas. The northwest corner of the intersection is our main focus. Currently (as of July 2024) this features a Starbucks and McDonald's, both sharing the address of 22119 N. Interstate 35. The McDonald's opened September 2021 and in March 2022, the Starbucks opened right next to it. Prior to this, there were two gas stations that got wrecked in the expansion of I-35. The first was Texaco / CEFCO (22185 N IH 35), a part of a bigger complex that included a large auto center and even incorporating a much older gas station into the property.

Additionally, an Exxon existed closer to West Oak Road. This was Gerik's Exxon at 22087 N IH-35, though it upgraded its canopy before its demise.

700 West Oaks Street at the northeast side still resembles a former 7-Eleven when it opened back in 1977. The Waco-area stores were sold to Circle K in 1988. Sometime around 1999 (it seems it was still Circle K in the late 1990s) was sold to Skinny's and by 2007 had been operating as a Skinny's/Fina for a number of years. It shut down in the early 2010s after I-35 ate the gas canopy area (and roadside sign), so it never became Alon (and if it did, it was extremely brief). It was abandoned in 2013 and became JoAnn's Bridal in 2014, though it relocated within a decade.

There's obviously the south side of West Oak Street that I did not cover, but that's a future update...or just check out the whole page where this post was derived and expanded from.

The photos here were generously provided by McLennan Central Appraisal District.