Steel King News

Steel King Recognized in Wisconsin Historical Society Book (Update) November 21st, 2008: After a chance discovery of the history page on our website, the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) contacted Steel King Construction in January of 2007 to discuss their plans of writing a new book entitled "Fill'er Up: The Glory Days of Wisconsin Gas Stations" and their interest in including information about our company in their content. Soon after, members of the WHS visited our facility to research our historical records, pictures, and resources. The book was finally released this fall and can be purchased for $29.95 on www.wisconsinhistory.org. This book includes a historical preface that tells the story of the Wisconsin gas station in the 20th century. Steel King is specifically mentioned in the text several times: once during the late 1920s as prefabrication begins to be used (page 20), again during the 1940s as steel-constructed, engineered stations emerge (pages 40-42), and finally in the self service era of the 1980s onward when the canopy becomes a self-supporting free-standing feature of convenience stores (page 49). The remainder of the book features 59 stations across Wisconsin, including a Clark station in Madison (page 111), Mobil station in Mequon (page 122), and BP Amoco in Sturgeon Bay (page 166), all currently with Steel King canopies. We also built the canopy for the replacement Sinclair convenience store in Janesville (page 100) and a canopy at the Waterford site on page 138 that has since been removed. We are honored to be among only a handful of companies that receive specific mention in this book and are happy to have contributed several of our pictures and drawings that are used as illustrations (pages 37, 46, 47, and 50). The Wisconsin Public Television produced an award-winning documentary of the same name, however it was complete prior to the WHS's discovery of Steel King. The co-authors of this book are also adding regular postings to a blog, which can be found at http://fuelishthoughts.blogspot.com/.