The owner indicates this station was active into the 1930s as a crossroads store with gas pumps along the canopy edge.

Before paved roads, stores like these were as close to "civilization" as many farm families got for months at a time. Their mail, their fuel, and the food they could not supply on their own, were all available here.

But pavement (and increasing ownership of Model-Ts) changed that. Suddenly a 10-mile run into town became not only possible but easy.

The little crossroads stores could not compete with the chain-buying power and merchandise offered by Woolworth, Piggly Wiggly, and Texaco downtown.

There are losers from technological change--even when it's simply dropping a refinery-waste product (asphalt) on top of dirt, and rolling it flat. While paved roads were certainly a tremendous advance for America overall, they doomed countless little crossroads stores...like this one in rural Oklahoma.

I also offer a colorized/solarized variant of this image.