The seeds of the collection at Sparks Museum and Event Center were sown in the summer of 1957 as Sparky (the creator) went with his friend Todd Roberts on a trip through old ghost towns in Nevada and found a very nice original 1929 Model A Ford pickup that he bought for $25. They tied it to the back bumper of his ’49 Oldsmobile and towed it all the way over the mountains back to Bel Air where he lived and began restoration on it while still in high school. He sold it before he finished and has always been sorry. Always a dreamer and creator even in the ’50s he had the eye to collect and to restore. He loved old things then and loves them even more now. Read more about Sparky’s childhood in Growing up in Los Angeles.
In 1979 he bought an Erskine in Helper, Utah and that sprouted those seeds again. That car he restored when I was a child about 10 years old. I remember him spending hours upon hours on it. He was in need of the parts to get it all back together and would drive all over, becoming what nowadays is called a “picker” as that was the only way to find parts. There was no internet, only your car and lots of farmland with what to many would deem as junk piles. However, he would see that so-called junk and find the treasure part he had been in search of. Picking was the very best source.
He was a super picker and hauled huge loads of awesome stuff home from every trip he took. Back then the signs and gas pumps he saw he thought of as “junk.” The exception was the old visible gas pumps. He did haul a few of those home and restored one as a Texaco and put it in front of our home when I was young. We now have that pump in our collection at Sparks Museum and Event Center. This pump is located outside across the street in front of Lakeside Storage along with two signs he picked up. The Gargoyle Mobil Oil sign and the Willys-Knight sign. The next part of the story is in What spurred the Petroliana collection?
You can see the collection in person on a museum tour. Tours run Monday to Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM, and admission is $10 per person.
Planning an event? Hold it right next to the collection. Check open dates on our booking page.