Former CEFCO #47 (Bruceville-Eddy, Texas)

Google Maps Street View c. 2016, cropped
Another gas station today, but this time it's one removed from Carbon-izer (the "Carbon-izer"/"original" posting system is no longer in effect). This entry originally appeared on the "Interstate 35 in Waco" page, though since adding it there were some updates. From what I can tell this opened as CEFCO #47 in 1996 featuring a Texaco gas station (evidence to suggest this was that many Shells in this area were Texaco stations prior to 2003, and an older gas canopy that remained was similar to Texaco's) and had a Subway inside, with the station converting to Shell in 2003 (it was a Shell in 2007). However, the station closed September 2012 (source: a since-dead Foursquare link) and although the convenience store and one of the gas canopies survived, they were demolished between 2019 and 2021. There wasn't any parking in front of the actual building anymore, and the conversion of the frontage roads to one way westbound made access very difficult for local traffic or eastbound travelers.

Obviously this location did not and will not convert to a Casey's. I'll be in the Midwest this summer, though, so hopefully there's some born-and-raised Casey's I can visit and report back on.

Old Woodlawn High School (St. George, Louisiana)

The original photos posted on Carbon-izer weren't very good so I enhanced this one a bit. (Picture by author, June 2004).
As Numbered Exits is essentially a spin-off of Carbon-izer, it features a number of stuff that was originally there. One of the pages that never got to be published was on Baton Rouge. I'm still working on bringing a few things from over there to here (of what I wrote, only this is sourced from that page. Unlike Hi Nabor, which wasn't on the way to the house (but ads of which were scattered in the kitchen), Woodlawn High School (the original one) was. (Good thing I didn't publish it due to the whole St. George thing).

Originally located at the corner of Jones Bridge Road and Tiger Bend Road, this high school was a landmark when visiting my uncle's house east of it and a notable landmark on Tiger Bend Road for many years, even after its c. 2001-2002 widening (which ended at around the point of Woodlawn High School). The original school dated back to 1910 as Jones Creek School, renamed Seventh Ward School in 1911, and renamed again as Woodlawn High School around 1949 (presumably becoming high school only by this time).

The physical state of the school at 14939 Tiger Bend Road was deteriorating by the late 1990s (even if that article was sensationalized, it's not a good picture) and in 2003, the new Woodlawn High School opened at 15755 Jefferson Highway, and the old school was torn down in summer 2004. I know because I took pictures and published them on Carbon-izer. Woodlawn Middle School was later built on the site.

Tiger Bend Road itself was also not in the best shape, either, until around 2002-2003, this was Tiger Bend Road between Jefferson Highway and Jones Bridge Road (this is a cut-off portion where you can still see the original road, though the center stripe was removed).

This section is pretty close to my memory since the rest of it looks pretty different...and I don't have access to Baton Rouge newspaper archives.

Lakehills Cinema 4 (Austin, Texas)

Opening ad from 1978, this is different from the CinemaTreasures copy (higher resolution and higher contrast).
I'm dismantling "Other Roads in South Austin" to focus on South Lamar and US-290 West, so among those that are getting sliced include 2428 West Ben White Boulevard, the late Lakehills Cinema 4. It operated from 1978 to 1999 under a variety of owners and in 2005 became the new location of Strait Music Company in 2005, but in May 2023, Strait Music Company "South" relocated to 3201 Bee Caves Road Ste. 140. After this, the building was heavily tagged and demolished soon after.

High Point Church (Arlington, Texas)

High Point in better days (c. 2011). This is virtually unchanged from what Johnson & Johnson had.
This was once planned for a full page on Carbon-izer and was stalled for some time due to various issues. Eventually I was able to fix it up for a post here on Numbered Exits. There was a time when Johnson & Johnson (the pharmaceutical giant), in the before times, was not just a successful but admired company, with their front-facing consumer healthcare and OTC medicine brands. As FundingUniverse mentions, this included "the Johnson's baby care line, the Neutrogena skin and hair care line, Tylenol and Motrin pain relievers, o.b. and Stayfree feminine hygiene products, the Reach oral care line, Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages, Imodium A-D diarrhea treatment, Mylanta gastrointestinal products, and Pepcid AC acid controller". Now things have deteriorated to the point where all those consumer product lines got spun off as a new company altogether and didn't keep the name. From what I can tell Surgikos, a longtime division of Johnson & Johnson that produced medical supplies (gloves, medical bandages, etc.), was the original owner of the now-demolished facility at 2500 East Arbrook Boulevard.

They had a number of facilities in Texas with the Arlington facility built sometime between 1970 and 1978, despite this article (and its second page, found here) mentioning it opened in the 1960s. This is because aerial photos show the plant not existing prior to the 1970s (though it may have relocated).

In December 1989, Surgikos became Johnson & Johnson Medical when the parent company reorganized Johnson & Johnson Patient Care Inc. into the company. This added some 20 jobs, though they had laid off over 100 a few months before...but in 2000 just a decade later the entire facility was closed as Johnson & Johnson did more consolidations.

In 2002, it was purchased and reopened as High Point Church under pastor Gary Simons. This is important because news article tell of another church (Highpoint Church) with a campus closed in Arlington, Tennessee over the improprieties of their pastor Andy Savage. In the case of this High Point Church, no scandal, but they did get foreclosed on by their lenders and closed in 2014. It was wrecked a few years later for warehouses, the only remnants being a large pond and drainage area.

Billy Blues and Trail Dust (Houston, Texas)

This is spinning off from Carbon-izer.com and focuses on Richmond Avenue, the section west of Loop 610 which in the 1980s and 1990s was one of the city's hotspots with trendy bars and restaurants. Some of the sites I've previously covered on other sites, including the former Chick-fil-A/Marie Callender's (formerly an apartment complex), 6213 Richmond (formerly home to Ruth's Chris Steak House), and the Rusty Scupper (6367 Richmond). Today we're looking at two restaurants built in the 1990s (the ads are from the Houston Chronicle).

Opening in 1993! The first one we'll cover is 6025 Richmond Avenue, which goes back to 1993 with the opening of "Billy Blue's Barbecue, Bar & Grill", with an unusual feature, the SmokeSax, a 70-foot tall saxophone made of old car parts. Billy Blue's closed in January 2001 and became Cabo's Mix-Mex Grill until 2004. Cabo's still had the distinct sculpture outside, and in 2009, The Horn Bar & Grill opened, taking advantage of the horn, which restored and repainted the saxophone blue (it was originally red). In the last few months of 2012 it became "Club 40", and in early 2013, it was replaced with Diablo Loco. Diablo Loco, a sports bar, had the saxophone moved to the Orange Show at 2401 Munger Street. Diablo Loco closed around 2022, with the current tenant, RockHouse Southern Kitchen, opening in March 2023.

He's holding a tie. Next up is 6101 Richmond Avenue. The sign for the last tenant here, Wild West, is still up but the parking lot is fenced off with the main building demolished. This opened as Trail Dust Steakhouse in late 1994 (a few other Trail Dust restaurants opened around this time under the same ownership, one in the Dallas area at 2300 East Lamar Blvd. opened around the same time). Him cutting off the tie was one of the restaurant's gimmicks, according to Purpledevil of the HAIF (who has sadly been MIA since 2017), "they'd cut off your tie and nail it to the wall if you wore one inside"...but hopefully with permission!

It closed just over three years later and in the fall of 1998 became Wild West, a country-western club, which moved to that location. It shuttered permanently in July 2020 and was demolished soon after. You can see Street View of the area here.

Grand Rios Indoor Water Park Hotel (Brooklyn Park, Minnesota)

The hotel with the waterpark addition in 2012 (Google Earth)
Seeing as you can't add comments to the original post anymore, I wanted to expand on a post I saw many years ago on a now-defunct site called Dumpy Strip Malls—the Wordpress version of the site still remains but many of the posts were lost. Not lost totally, however, some of them are on Archive.org like the one on Grand Rios Water Park in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota at 6900 Lakeland Avenue North. The blog covers the sorry state of the hotel as it was in 2012, and within a few years it was indeed torn down for a CarMax.

From what I can find the 224 room hotel opened back in the mid-1970s (first phase open in November 1974) as Sheraton Inn Northwest and featured a number of amenities, with a 24-hour coffee shop, meeting and banquet rooms, and a large indoor swimming pool and other features (no doubt cloned from Holiday Inn's "Holidome"). The original room count at least when it first opened was 140 rooms.

The hotel changed hands a few times, becoming Best Western Northwest Inn in 1990, then "Northwest Inn" in 1999 before becoming a Ramada in 2001. In 2003 a local businessman bought the hotel to transform into a waterpark-based hotel, which seemed to work for a slumping tourist economy and would have the largest indoor waterpark in Minnesota. It was announced that the hotel would be Four Points by Sheraton (the new name of Sheraton Inn adopted in the 1990s, bringing back the hotel full circle). When the hotel reopened, however, there were differences, the first being it had no seemingly hotel chain affiliation (now known as Grand Rios Indoor Water Park Hotel, though Ramada remained on the road sign) and while it had three restaurants, Beach House Bar & Grill, Soggy Dollar Cafe, and Coconut Charley's, Coconut Charley's served "All American items" rather than the Caribbean restaurant originally promised.

Now you know the rest of the story—it doesn't do well, gets poor reviews, and it's gone within a decade...

UPDATE 06-29-2026: Minor grammar fix

Carpet, Texas (Jersey Village, Texas)

"The Super Floor Store" as of c. 2011 With the page on the fast food restaurants restored on Carbon-izer, they weren't the only victims of 290 near Beltway 8. Another building, visible from the freeway easily, was a large green-roofed warehouse known as "Carpet, Texas" when opened in February 2001 at 15815 Northwest Freeway (though the advertisement has its old location at 14900 Hempstead). It closed in 2010 but was soon picked up and reopened by Jack's Carpet with the same bunch of logos below it. Unfortunately, this only lasted a few years before it was closed in 2012 (along with most of the other Jack's Carpet stores, though the Webster store still operates). There's some more pictures on Google Maps Street View (if you can fiddle around to get to the pre-2014 configuration) and on Carbon-izer servers, an older shot when they still did 3D views. (This was adapted from this page on Carbon-izer.com).

Sussan Fine Furniture (Dickinson, Texas)

Sussan following closure. (Street View, c. 2013). With all the news of Walmart's new food establishments--Charleys Cheesesteaks, Mr. Gatti's, Wendy's, sushi bars, and a bunch more I've never heard of I think I've proof of Wal-Mart's oldest branded in-store eatery.

Before we get to that, it started back in 2012 when I came across what I referred to as "brown Wal-Marts" in my youth; the older, original Wal-Mart stores built in the 1970s and 1980s, which slowly disappeared as they were closed or renovated, when I saw Sussan, and was instantly reminded of what Wal-Mart stores, like my own, used to look like (probably with "Discount City" signage on the building).

For a while I believed it had been replaced with another Supercenter in the nearby area but that wasn't the case. The store (Wal-Mart #570) in fact only operated from July 1984 to September 1991. (No wonder. The store appeared to have major access issues.)

In 1992 it became Bud's Discount City, a discount/overstock store owned by Wal-Mart that was killed as a concept a few years later because it was cutting into Wal-Mart's own stores. Sussan Fine Furniture moved in around 1997 (moving from Texas City) with almost no updates to the store's exterior.

Sussan ended up lasting longer than Wal-Mart's ventures did, closing in 2010, and even after death, signage remained up for a few years afterward. By 2016 it was fully vacant and demolition began in late 2017.

So what was unique about the eatery? In those days, Wal-Mart operated unbranded, in-house eateries but a tax entry shows that for the first year of this Wal-Mart's existence the once-ubiquitous Corn Dog 7 operated in the spot, something that would also show up in Hypermart USA a few years later.

Moseley Fuel Stop (Marshall, Texas)

I didn't take a picture myself so Google Maps Street View will have to do.
There's nothing left of "Moseley Fuel Stop" in Marshall, Texas except for the sign as seen above. It opened in the 1960s or 1970s (no further detail can be found) at the southeast corner of I-20 and Texas State Highway 43.

The truck stop closed in 1985 (seems there were deed issues that prevented reopening or redeveloping and it deteriorated for years afterwards. In 2009, a fire destroyed much of the gas station but even after the fire there were still parts of the gas station left over. Around 2014 the rest of the gas station was torn down, except for the sign.

I'm not sure what the future of the site, or the sign, is. It doesn't light up anymore and it's not protected by any historical decree.

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.

Cactus Jack's (Temple, Texas)

Cactus Jack's in better times, October 2017 Street View Gather 'round for the tale of strange, sad tale of Cactus Jack's (300 SW H.K. Dodgen Loop in Temple, Texas): built in 1976 as "Market Street Cafe", which it was until the around 2000s, Cactus Jack's Steak House opened in 2003 (from numerous records including BBB and state taxpayer records) by a woman named Donna Passentino, but other references say 2005. Considering a reference to Market Street Cafe can be found in 2003, it's likely that Passentino bought Market Street Cafe in 2003 but closed it and renovated it into Cactus Jack's in 2005, as this article indicates.

Initially, the restaurant had a dinner menu with steaks and other entrees (it was "Cactus Jack's Steak House" after all); however, the death of Ms. Passentino in 2011 was the beginning of the end for Cactus Jack's. By 2012, the restaurant dropped the food options and was simply a bar with no mention of food. (The "Steak House" remained on the signage). Signage outside mentioned looking for a new food partner to convert it to a Mexican restaurant, and it did get a food partner—in 2013, it became Cactus Jack's Sushi Bar & Japanese Restaurant (that was short lived), and became Cactus Jack's Sports Cantina in 2014. A few years after that, Brody's Steakhouse moved in (from a different location) as a restaurant-within-a-bar moved in. Despite the food being an ongoing issue, it really wasn't about the food, it was a bar that locals seemed to like, the type of honky-tonk that serves up cold beer and has karaoke nights.

Served up, anyway. In November 2019, the restaurant burned to the ground from an improperly disposed cigarette, and there's video evidence to show for it. The general manager vowed to rebuild, though that never happened—Cactus Jack's is now just a memory.

(Adapted and expanded from Carbon-izer.)

Ryan's (Waco, Texas)

Ryan's as a chain is no more. Sure, it could be blamed on the pandemic, but let's look at a few numbers. Ryan's Family Steakhouse opened in 1992 at 301 S. Valley Mills Drive, accessed off Franklin Drive and off of Precision Drive. In 2006 the chain was acquired by Buffets Inc., owners of Old Country Buffet, with the chain having about 260 restaurants stretching throughout much of the eastern United States, from Ohio to Florida to Texas (though it was clearly shrinking with 350 restaurants in 2003). By November 2019 (before the pandemic took hold), the entire chain was down to 67 restaurants, with Ryan's composing about 16 locations.

The demise of Ryan's came after the Waco location closed. Within a few years the Ryan's would become A-1 Buffet & Grill (a Chinese buffet) and later renamed/reopened as Ace Buffet & Grill, but it closed in fall 2016 and never reopened. This wasn't helped by construction of Franklin around 2005 that made it much more difficult to access Ryan's from the roadway (you had to go back around from Cheddar's Drive). After sitting vacant for several years, the building was torn down in early 2021. Part of the parking lot has since redeveloped as Dutch Bros Coffee, which was operating by May 2024 (with the address of 300 Precision Drive).

This is based after the Valley Mills page at Carbon-izer.com. Pictures generously provided by McLennan Central Appraisal District.