From Burma-Shave Signs to Beaver Nuggets — How America Learned to Pull Over
There’s a peculiar magic that happens somewhere around mile marker 150 on a long highway drive. The coffee has worn off, the kids are restless, and suddenly — a billboard. Then another. Then five more. “You Are Getting Sleepy… Only Pedro’s Can Wake You Up.” Before you know it, you’re pulling off the highway into a sprawling complex of neon lights, souvenir shops, and questionable hot dogs, wondering how you got there. This is not an accident. It is the culmination of nearly a century of American roadside ingenuity, marketing genius, and the deeply human need to stretch one’s legs.
The Pre-Interstate Era: Roadside America Is Born
Long before the first shovel of concrete was poured for the Interstate Highway System, Americans were hitting the open road — and businesses were scrambling to serve them.
The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of tourist camps, motor courts, and roadside diners along U.S. Routes like Route 66, U.S. 1, and the Lincoln Highway. These weren’t polished operations. They were often family-run affairs — a converted farmhouse with a hand-painted sign and a gas pump out front. But they established the foundational formula: fuel, food, and a reason to stop.
Howard Johnson’s was among the first to truly systematize the roadside stop. Founded in 1925 in Quincy, Massachusetts by Howard Deering Johnson, the chain expanded aggressively during the 1930s and ’40s, becoming the most recognized roadside brand in America by the 1950s. With its distinctive orange roof and 28 flavors of ice cream, HoJo’s gave travelers something they craved even more than hot dogs: consistency. You knew exactly what you were getting in Connecticut or in Georgia. That promise of the familiar, repeated experience along the open road became the template for everything that followed.
Burma-Shave, the shaving cream brand, pioneered highway advertising with its famous sequential roadside signsfrom 1925 to 1963. Posted a few hundred feet apart, the signs delivered rhyming jingles across multiple billboards:
“He had the ring / He had the flat / But she felt his chin / And that was that / Burma-Shave”
It was primitive, charming, and wildly effective — proof that a well-timed message could reach a captive audience at 45 miles per hour.
The Interstate Age Begins: 1956 and the Highway That Changed Everything
On June 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act, authorizing the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highway. Eisenhower, inspired by Germany’s Autobahn system he’d observed during World War II, envisioned a highway network for national defense and commercial efficiency.
What he perhaps did not fully anticipate was the roadside empire it would spawn.
The new interstates were faster, safer, and more direct than old U.S. highways — but they also bypassed thousands of small towns. Main Street diners and mom-and-pop gas stations that had thrived on Route traffic were suddenly stranded, watching the traffic whoosh past on the elevated new highway a mile away. Many closed. Others adapted. And a new breed of entrepreneur saw the interchange — those precious cloverleaf intersections where the highway met a local road — as prime commercial real estate.
Service areas began appearing along toll roads like the New Jersey Turnpike (opened 1951) and the Pennsylvania Turnpike (opened 1940), which predated the interstate system and served as proving grounds. These early service plazas, operated by companies like Howard Johnson’s and later Marriott, were architectural statements unto themselves — low-slung modernist buildings with soaring rooflines, branding visible from the highway. By the 1960s and ’70s, every major toll road had its own network of service plazas, and stopping for gas was becoming a managed, branded experience.
The Billboard Wars and the Birth of the “Destination Stop”
As interstates spread across the country, a new battle began: the billboard war. Hundreds of miles of rural highway became advertising corridors, with businesses counting down the miles to their exits in increasingly creative ways.
No one weaponized this strategy more brilliantly than South of the Border.
Pedro’s South of the Border: An American Roadside Legend
Perched on the North Carolina–South Carolina state line at Exit 1 off I-95, South of the Border is one of the most improbable — and most beloved — roadside attractions in American history.
It began simply enough. In 1949, a German-Jewish immigrant named Alan Schafer opened a beer stand near Dillon, South Carolina, just across the border from dry North Carolina counties. He named his humble operation “South of the Border” — a winking reference to the fact that it was just south of the North Carolina line — and adopted a Mexican-themed mascot named Pedro to give the place a sense of novelty and fun.
By the time I-95 was being planned through the region in the 1950s, Schafer lobbied successfully to have an interchange placed near his property. That decision transformed a roadside beer stand into an empire.
South of the Border grew to include:
- A 97-foot sombrero tower (you can ride an elevator to the top for a panoramic view of the Carolina flatlands)
- A 200-room motel
- Multiple restaurants and a reptile lagoon
- A gas station, fireworks store, and miniature golf course
- Acres of souvenir shops selling everything from airbrushed t-shirts to ceramic armadillos
But the real genius was the billboards. At its peak, South of the Border operated over 200 billboards along I-95, stretching as far north as Washington, D.C. and as far south as Florida. Each one featured Pedro — a mustachioed cartoon figure in a sombrero — delivering pun-laden messages in mock-Spanish accent:
“You Never Sausage a Place!” “Pedro’s Weather Report: Chili Today, Hot Tamale!” “Keep Yelling, Kids — They’ll Stop!”
That last one was perhaps the most honest advertisement in roadside history. South of the Border understood something fundamental: the stop was a family negotiation, and the children were the most effective lobbyists.
The billboards created anticipation, building excitement over hundreds of miles. By the time a family reached Exit 1, the kids had been primed for hours. Resistance was futile. Schafer essentially invented the concept of the destination roadside stop — a place you didn’t just stop at out of necessity, but one you planned to stop at, the way you might plan a small vacation within a vacation.
South of the Border remains open today, though somewhat faded from its mid-century glory. It is a time capsule — a living museum of roadside Americana, beloved precisely because it is so relentlessly, unapologetically itself.
The Chain Reaction: Fast Food Takes Over the Exit
Through the 1960s and 1970s, the interstate interchange became dominated by a different kind of roadside stop: the fast food chain.
McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Cracker Barrel, and Denny’s colonized the exits of America’s interstates with ruthless efficiency. They offered exactly what the modern traveler was beginning to demand: speed, predictability, and a parking lot large enough to accommodate a station wagon towing a camper.
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, founded in 1969 in Lebanon, Tennessee, deserves special mention. Its founders understood that interstate travelers wanted not just fuel and food, but a moment of cultural comfort — a taste of a simpler, more pastoral America. With its front-porch rocking chairs, country store merchandise, and Southern comfort food, Cracker Barrel offered a packaged nostalgia that proved irresistible. Today, virtually every Cracker Barrel in existence is located within sight of an interstate exit. There are no accidents in roadside America.
Stuckey’s, founded in 1937 by William Sylvester Stuckey Sr. in Eastman, Georgia, became another icon of the roadside stop era. Famous for its pecan log rolls, turquoise buildings, and extensive candy selections, Stuckey’s stores dotted the interstates of the South and Midwest. At its peak in the 1970s, the chain operated over 350 locations. Though it later declined dramatically, Stuckey’s has experienced a remarkable recent revival under the ownership of Stuckey’s great-grandson, W.C. Stuckey Jr., who purchased the company in 2019 and is working to restore it to its former roadside glory.
The Flying J and Pilot truck stops, founded in 1968 and 1958 respectively (and now merged as Pilot Flying J), reshaped the interstate stop for the trucking industry. These weren’t destinations for families — they were full-service hubs for professional drivers, with showers, lounges, weigh stations, and diesel pumps sized for 18-wheelers. They established the template for the large-format travel center that would eventually inspire Buc-ee’s.
The 1990s and 2000s: The Travel Center Evolves
By the 1990s, the roadside stop had reached a kind of comfortable stagnation. Gas station/convenience store combos like Love’s Travel Stops (founded 1964), Pilot, and Flying J served functional needs. Fast food restaurants clustered at every major exit. The experience was efficient but largely joyless.
Then came a shift in consumer expectations. Travelers who had grown up with the magic of South of the Border and the novelty of Stuckey’s were now adults, and they wanted something more than a stale hot dog and a bathroom that hadn’t been cleaned since the Reagan administration. They wanted an experience.
The convenience store industry began upgrading rapidly. Chains like Wawa (Mid-Atlantic), Sheetz (Appalachian region), QuikTrip (Midwest and South), and Casey’s General Stores (Midwest) invested heavily in fresh food programs, clean facilities, and customer experience. Wawa, in particular, developed a cult following for its made-to-order hoagies and touchscreen ordering kiosks. These regional chains proved that the convenience store didn’t have to be a grim necessity — it could be something people actually looked forward to.
But it would take a Texas company, and a very large beaver, to truly reimagine what a roadside stop could be.
The Rise of Buc-ee’s: When a Pit Stop Becomes a Pilgrimage
The story of Buc-ee’s begins in 1982 in Lake Jackson, Texas, where Arch “Beaver” Aplin III opened a small convenience store. The name came from Aplin’s childhood nickname and his Labrador retriever, Buck. The cartoon beaver mascot — cheerful, gap-toothed, wearing a red baseball cap — would eventually become one of the most recognized logos in American retail.
For its first two decades, Buc-ee’s was a respectable but regional Texas chain. Then Aplin made a decision that would change the roadside stop forever: go big or go home.
The Formula
The Buc-ee’s formula, refined and executed with almost fanatical precision, is built on several pillars:
1. Sheer Scale. The flagship Buc-ee’s locations are not gas stations. They are not convenience stores. They are travel cathedrals. The New Braunfels, Texas location — which opened in 2012 — spans 68,000 square feet and was for years certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest convenience store. It has 120 fueling positions. The parking lot is the size of a small town.
2. Cleanliness. Buc-ee’s single most powerful marketing tool may be its bathrooms. The chain has won Cintas’ “America’s Best Restroom” award multiple times, and the bathrooms are maintained with a frequency that would make a hospital envious. In a category defined by legendary filth, this is a genuine competitive advantage. People talk about Buc-ee’s bathrooms the way they talk about a great restaurant.
3. Food. Buc-ee’s food program goes far beyond the rotating hot dog. The flagship locations offer:
- Freshly made brisket sandwiches carved at the counter
- A massive fudge and candy bar with dozens of varieties made on-site
- Beaver Nuggets — caramel-coated corn puffs that have developed a near-religious following
- Fresh kolaches, a Czech pastry beloved in Texas
- An enormous beef jerky wall with dozens of varieties sold by weight
- Hot foods, sandwiches, and baked goods prepared throughout the day
4. Merchandise. Buc-ee’s sells branded merchandise — shirts, hats, coolers, home goods — with the same energy as a theme park gift shop. The beaver mascot is plastered on everything from onesies to garden flags. People buy Buc-ee’s merchandise as souvenirs, as gifts, as statements of regional identity.
5. The Experience. Walking into a Buc-ee’s is genuinely overwhelming at first. The combination of scale, sensory stimulation, cleanliness, novelty food, and cheerful branding creates something that can only be described as an event. First-time visitors often spend 30 to 45 minutes inside — far longer than any rational assessment of their needs would require. This is by design.
Expansion Beyond Texas
For years, Buc-ee’s was exclusively a Texas phenomenon, which only deepened its mystique among out-of-state travelers who’d heard the legends. Then, in 2019, Buc-ee’s opened its first location outside Texas in Baldwin County, Alabama, followed by locations in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Colorado, and beyond. Each new opening is treated like a civic event, with local news coverage and opening-day crowds that stretch around the building.
Closest to our home, the Sevierville, Tennessee location, opened in 2021 near the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and became a case study in roadside destination theory: people who had no intention of stopping were pulling off the highway simply because the legend had preceded the location.
As of 2026, Buc-ee’s continues to expand across the Eastern U.S. and beyond, with each new location bringing the full Texas-sized experience to new markets. The company is also setting records: a location in Sevierville held the title of world’s largest convenience store at 74,000 square feet, later surpassed by their Warner Robins, Georgia location.
What the Roadside Stop Tells Us About America
The history of roadside stops is, in many ways, a history of America itself — its mobility, its commerce, its regionalism, its appetite for novelty, and its deep desire for belonging.
From the hand-painted signs of early motor courts to the neon sombrero of South of the Border to the gleaming temples of Buc-ee’s, each era’s roadside stop reflects what travelers needed and valued at that moment in time. Early stops offered simple relief and comfort in an uncertain journey. Mid-century destinations like South of the Border offered spectacle and memory-making in the age of the family road trip. Today’s mega-stops offer the curated, experiential, Instagram-ready pit stop for a generation that has grown up expecting every experience to be worth talking about.
The great roadside stop has never been merely practical. At its best, it becomes part of the story of the trip itself — the place you almost didn’t stop, then couldn’t stop talking about. It’s the unexpected delight, the ridiculous souvenir, the bathroom cleaner than your one at home, the brisket sandwich that made you pull a U-turn.
Pedro would understand completely.
Planning a road trip? Whether you’re heading down I-95 past Dillon, South Carolina or rolling through Texas on I-10, the American roadside stop remains one of the great pleasures of the open road. Pull over. You won’t regret it.
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