Old Texaco Gas Station

Bob Hope was fronting Texaco’s commercials in 1975, the same year this tiny station opened along a road that had served travelers since 1742. Texaco built its reputation on a promise most gas stations have long forgotten: in 1939, it launched the Registered Rest Room program, dispatching white-gloved inspectors to ensure every facility was spotless. That commitment to roadside hospitality found an unlikely home here in Frauenkappelen, the first way station outside Bern on the road since it was built.

The rest room program didn’t survive the decade. Energy crises of the 1970s put an end to the twice-daily inspections and the fleet of cars that once policed them, quietly retiring one of the more earnest promises the oil industry ever made to its customers. This small Swiss outpost, tucked into a stretch of road three centuries older than the company that built it, still stands as a reminder that hospitality was once part of the business model, not an afterthought.