Sharber Service Station - Meteor City, Arizona, USA.
N 35° 05.660 W 110° 56.128
12S E 505881 N 3883506
First opened as a Texaco Service Station in 1938 by Joe Sharber. Re-branded in 1941 as Meteor City Trading Post, where you could purchase gas, groceries, & curios. Located along old Route 66. near the Barringer Meteor Crater, Arizona.
Waymark Code: WMT86J
Location: Arizona, United States
Date Posted: 10/13/2016
Views: 4
The Texaco Gas Station served Route 66 travellers from 1938 & closed in 1979. The Gift & Curio store stayed open until 2010. Alas the Meteor City Trading Post is now vacant, apparently ransacked. & what was said to be the Worlds longest Route 66 map has collapsed to the desert floor. If your dreaming of getting your kicks on 66, the dream catcher may still work, even with a large hole in it. & at least the landmark, Mohawked Geodesic Dome still stands.
"The business began as a service station opened in 1938 by Joseph Sharber. In 1941 Jack Newsum took over, gave it the name Meteor City, and turned it into an attraction where one could purchase gas, groceries, and curios. A roadside sign advertised it as a city with a population of 1. After Newsum married in 1946, he updated the population to 2.
The trading post's Geodesic dome was added in 1979. It appeared in the 1984 movie Starman, directed by John Carpenter and starring Jeff Bridges.
In 1990 the dome burned down and was replaced by the structure that remains today." Text Source: (
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The Name: Meteor City:
"The name "meteor" comes from the nearby meteorite impact crater, Barringer Crater, named after Daniel Barringer who suggested its meteoric origin when most believed it to be an extinct volcano.
City, is a rather pompous title because a "city" is an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village, and this city never had more than 2 inhabitants.
Route 66 was aligned through the area in 1926 following the National Old Trails highway. The road was realigned later and in 1938, the Trading post was built. The freeway (I-40) bypassed it in the late 1970s but an exit was built just east of it, giving easy access to the trading post." Text Source: (
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