Incline’s Old Orbit Gasoline Station
March 25, 2026 | Member Submitted
Written by Richard Miner in IVCBA – LIVE.WORK.PLAY. Magazine Holiday Edition
Few buildings in communities around the North Shore of Lake Tahoe have attracted more attention for longer than the Orbit gas station on SR 28 at the entry to Incline Village from the Crystal Bay side of town. But the deeper this author got into the history of this landmark, the more complicated telling its story became. With the relocation of SR31 (now 431, the Mount Rose Highway) completed in 1959, in time for the 1960 Winter Olympics to be held at Squaw Valley that year, the need for a gas station between Reno and the California border at Kings Beach became a necessity. Enter Jack A. Ferguson, Senior, who purchased property at the then junction of Nevada State Highway 28 (now Lake Shore Blvd.) with the newly completed Mount Rose Highway. Jack purchased the land from the Crystal Bay Development Company in a deed signed on the 25th day of April, 1961. The property is to this day still owned by Jack Ferguson’s heirs under the business name of Village Springs LLC.
The new Mount Rose Highway followed a significantly different path than today. In 1961, the new roadway curved towards Crystal Bay on the uphill side of the current roundabout and proceeded west, making a sharp turn down to Lakeshore Blvd. (then SR 28) to form a T-intersection. In so doing, it literally wrapped around the Orbit station property between what is now a small Washoe County public park and the gas station site. SR 28 then continued straight towards Crystal Bay, slightly below the current alignment of that highway. Thus, the Orbit gas station was in a perfect location for travel between the California border and Reno or the east shore of Lake Tahoe.
A feature of “our” Orbit station that has always attracted attention is its design, which is usually classified as “Mid-Century Modern” by architectural standards but is more commonly known as “Space Age” or “Googie” architecture. Our station is popularly associated with a series of gas stations built in California in the late 1950s and 60’s, which featured reinforced concrete “flying wing” designs, some of which are still extant in the Sacramento area. At least some of these “Googie” style gas stations built around Sacramento are attributed to an architect named Ed Ward, but Ward had nothing to do with the Incline Orbit station. Local architect Phil Gilanfarr, whose father also practiced architecture here, is currently involved with the design and planning of the future use of what I will simply call the Orbit property for Village Springs LLC. Phil was very helpful in my research and supplied a copy of the original correspondence between Washoe County and the actual architect retained by Jack Ferguson to design his Orbit station, one Sherrill Jay Broudy. Broudy later achieved success in Southern California as a designer and manufacturer of wall panels and mid-century modern furniture via a Los Angeles-based company named Forms and Surfaces, a successor of which is still in business in Carpinteria, CA.
It is probably lost to history as to how Ferguson and Broudy came together to create our Orbit’s station striking design, but the evidence is clear: Sherrill Broudy was the architect for the Incline Village project. A search of the AIA (American Institute of Architects) database at the time lists Sherrill Jay Broudy of Los Angeles, CA, but not a single major building for which he was responsible, not even Incline’s Orbit gas station. However, according to architect Gilanfarr, Broudy was also the designer of a pounded brass door, which, to this day, still decorates the front door of a house on Fairview Drive in Incline Village. How Ferguson and Broudy got together to design the Orbit station still remains a mystery, but Ferguson had business dealings in the Los Angeles area that may have led to a client/patron relationship. And Broudy’s involvement in the Orbit project then might have led to the door covering commission. mentioned above—but this is just speculation.
In any case, the Broudy design was quickly finalized, and construction began in the summer of 1961. According to Gilanfarr, the structure is steel-framed, anchored in stone-faced concrete piers on opposite sides of the building where the structure meets the ground. Timber beams were bolted to the steel, and a shake roof of plywood paneling covers the soaring wings, which are the major visual feature of the design. The resulting structure was surprisingly rigid despite its lateral overhangs and has remained amazingly intact after 65 years of Sierra Nevada weather, which has wreaked havoc with lesser structures. The contractor for the project has still not been identified, but progress was rapid, and Washoe County records indicate that a Certificate of Occupancy for the new gas station was issued on June 14, 1962.
A lot of misinformation surrounds the names of gas stations associated with the Orbit “brand,” which cropped up across California and elsewhere in the early 1960s. But over the years, many independent stations, and for that matter, even large resellers like Costco, purchased their gasoline from private distributors who were not directly affiliated with the large refiners like Chevron or Shell. However the the last affiliation for Incline’s Orbit station was, at least from the decals still visible on its doors, none other than one of the largest domestic oil refiners, Texaco. That said, all the research I’ve done indicates there was never a gasoline refiner or distributor named Orbit. Here’s a quote from a Google search on the subject:
“Orbit was not a gasoline distributor in the 1960s; it was a brand of gas-station-branded gum sold in the 1960s. The name Orbit was associated with gas stations for a period of time, but the brand is most famously known as a brand of chewing gum sold by the Wrigley Company.”
So there is still a lot missing from establishing the provenance of Incline Village’s Orbit gas station. Jack A. Ferguson, Sr. and his wife, Mary Ann, divorced, and the record shows the ownership of the station property was transferred to one “Mary Ann Ferguson” on April 26, 1996. On May 3, 2004, Washoe County records show that “M.A. Ferguson” transferred ownership of the property to Village Springs LLC, which remains the owner of record to this day. Jack Senior remarried and passed away over a decade ago, but Mary Ann—as of a year or so ago—was still alive, and their daughter, Catherine, now heads the Village Springs LLC. Village Springs retained the services of Incline architect Phil Gilanfarr to develop a variety of plans for how best to use the property going forward. These plans are still a work in progress today.
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Photo Credit: The photos used in this article were taken by Incline resident Roland Schumann in September 2025. Mr. Schumann has generously given the author one-time permission for their use. These images are copyrighted by Mr.Schumann.
