Union Oil's Animated Crew Covers Seattle

The Union Oil Company of California, founded in 1890 in Santa Paula, distributed free folded maps at its service stations from at least the 1930s onward — a marketing practice shared by every major oil company of the era. Drivers who stopped for a fill-up could pick up a city or road map of wherever they were headed, gratis. This is the cover of the Seattle edition.

The "76" brand name dates to 1932, when the company chose it as a nod to the patriotic phrase "Spirit of '76" — and, conveniently, the octane rating of their premium-grade fuel happened to match. The logo visible here, an orange-and-blue diamond shield, is the pre-1962 version; the iconic rotating orange ball on a tall pole, now synonymous with the brand, wouldn't appear until that year.

The orange automobile is the most useful dating clue on the cover. That swept, integrated-fender silhouette — where the fenders fold flush into the body rather than standing proud as separate elements — was the dominant look for American cars from roughly 1946 through 1952, the immediate postwar years before tailfins arrived. The flat-shaded, chipper cartoon style is consistent with commercial illustration of the same period, putting the likely date range in the late 1940s to very early 1950s.

The white-uniformed attendants on the cover were a real occupational category. Full-service was the industry standard at American gas stations through the 1960s: an attendant would pump your gas, check the oil, clean the windshield, and hand you a free map. Self-service spread through the 1970s and was common enough by the early 1980s that the attendant-service transaction had become a regional oddity.