The old Pure Oil gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where the body of country music's biggest superstar was discovered on New Year's morning, 1953, has been torn down by an antagonistic local gentry.

Hiram "Hank" Williams Sr. was discovered in the back seat of his baby blue Cadillac, dead of an apparently accidental overdose of morphine and whiskey. He had been en route from Alabama to Ohio, and wasn't discovered dead until his driver stopped in Oak Hill for food and gas.

For years, fans had lobbied Oak Hill to turn the Pure Oil station, which resembled an English cottage with a clay tile roof, into a Hank Williams museum. But local sentiment was fiercely against it, even after 50+ years. According to the Beckley Register-Herald, Oak Hill is "an area where ultra-conservative values conflicted with [Hank's] rambling lifestyle and reputation as a boozer." The state reportedly needed a decade just to get Oak Hill to erect "Hank Williams Memorial Highway" signs at the two entrances to town off of US 19.

The station was leveled by a backhoe and bulldozer on December 13, 2006.

Hank Williams landmarks carry on elsewhere in the US. The Hank Williams Sr. Boyhood Home and Museum is in Georgiana, Alabama. Another museum, along with his grave (covered in astroturf), is in Montgomery, Alabama. His death car was last reported on exhibit at Hank Jr's museum in Nashville, Tennessee. [12/31/2006]

February 10, 2012