IN THE EARLY 1980s, on Stark Street in Southeast Portland, there was an aging Hudson Oil Co. gas station that never seemed to get much business.

It had an appearance reminiscent of a Kmart store three years ago, like a neglected outpost of a once-huge nationwide business that was slowly fading away — which was in fact the case.

Hudson Oil Co., at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, had about 300 gas stations in 36 states, plus an oil refinery. It was owned and managed by an oil tycoon named Mary Hudson, a remarkable woman who founded the business in 1933 when she was just 21 years old. She launched it by borrowing $200 from her father and using it to open a gas station in Kansas City. At her peak, Hudson was one of only three women on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in the U.S. At her downfall in 1982, she was convicted of felony theft for tweaking her company’s gas pumps to short-change customers, a desperate move made to try to stave off bankruptcy after her company got caught unprepared for a sudden glut on the crude-oil market.

But probably the most interesting thing about the Stark Street Hudson station was the giant wall mural on its side. The left side of the mural showed two big Arabian camels with packsaddles on them towering over a miner-49er-type guy pitching a little pup-tent camp; the right side was taken up with a large colorful map of the U.S. with the words “36 States” printed over the top of it.

“First it was camels in the west,” reads the type over the picture. “Now HUDSON serves you best!”

As advertising, this mural was a bit of a mixed bag. It did attract attention, but mostly it was the wrong kind. Most people who looked at it probably wondered how a company could have gotten big enough to be in 36 states without learning what kind of animals cowboys and miner-49ers used. Mules, yes; horses, sure; but — camels?

Well, as it turns out, camels did have a role to play in the American West. They started out strong, and hopes were high that they would be a great addition to the frontier transportation infrastructure; but then their number-one booster disgraced himself by doing something super illegal, and the camels kind of fell out of favor in the West and faded away.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s not such a bad analogy for Hudson Oil Co. after all.... (Oregon outback; 1850s, 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2411c_camels-in-old-oregon-676.508.html)