Welcome to the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum
Eight miles west of Chandler along Historic Route 66 in the small community of Warwick, Oklahoma, a low red-brick building with a distinctive crenulated parapet and five-sided service bays stands exactly where John and Alice Seaba built it in 1921 — five years before the highway that would make it famous even existed. The Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum is one of the most genuinely surprising stops anywhere on Route 66 through Oklahoma: a 100-year-old filling station listed on the National Register of Historic Places, now housing more than 125 vintage and classic motorcycles spanning from 1908 to the present day, including road bikes, racing bikes, off-road bikes, motocross bikes, a 1972 Jawa Golden Sport and a 1979 Triumph still in their original dealer delivery crates, and — perhaps most memorably — the Hydra Bike custom-built and featured in the 2011 Captain America film. And out back stands the original 1921 rock outhouse, equipped with cast iron toilets that, in a feat of 1920s plumbing ingenuity, flushed continuously while anyone sat on the rim. Admission is free. The owners invite every traveler to stop by and kick some tires — “don’t kick the tires,” they add, with a smile. This is Route 66 at its most authentic, most unexpected, and most rewarding.
Where Is the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum?
The Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum is located at 336992 East Highway 66, Warwick, Oklahoma 74881, on the north side of Route 66 approximately eight miles west of Chandler near the small community of Warwick. From the east, it is one mile east of Highway 77 on Commercial Street (old Route 66). From the west, approach along the Route 66 alignment from Chandler. The building is visible on the north side of the highway, its distinctive red polychrome brick facade and crenulated parapet recognizable from the road. Parking is available on the grounds.
The History of the Seaba Station: A Century on the Mother Road
John and Alice Seaba Build Their Station: 1921
In 1921, John and Alice Seaba constructed the filling station near Warwick along the Ozark Trail corridor — the network of locally maintained roads that preceded the federal highway system in Oklahoma. This established thoroughfare would simply be redesignated U.S. Highway 66 in 1926, making the Seaba Station a Route 66 landmark from the highway’s very first day, having already served travelers on the pre-highway road for five years before that.
The building John Seaba constructed is an architectural gem of early 20th-century roadside commercial design. The original structure featured an irregular-shaped red polychrome brick station with a five-sided open service bay — a distinctive configuration that set it apart from the more symmetrical service stations of the era. The gas pumps, which dispensed the brand known as “NevrNox” — with the cheerfully optimistic promise embedded in the name — were located in the central bay. Light brick rectangles decorated both the columns and the areas above the bays, and a crenulated parapet capped with white brick rimmed the flat roof — giving the station a distinctive decorative character that reads as both practical and purposeful. Directly behind the bay area, also built in 1921, stood a detached red brick workshop with a gabled roof where Seaba would diversify and expand his business operations over the following decades.
From Filling Station to Engine Rebuilding Shop
Although the Seaba Station was known as a filling station, its function from the beginning encompassed more than simply dispensing fuel. John Seaba built and operated the station during an era when the growing trend toward full-service stations was transforming American roadside commerce: travelers needed not just gasoline but mechanical assistance, and Seaba was equipped to provide it. In the workshop behind the bays, he initially purchased and reassembled Model T Fords. As Route 66 traffic increased and the 1920s and 1930s brought more vehicles and more breakdowns to the Mother Road, the station flourished. By the late 1930s, Seaba employed approximately 18 people — a remarkable workforce for a small rural business on the Oklahoma prairie, and a testament to how thoroughly Route 66 had transformed the economic landscape of the communities along it.
In 1934, Seaba opened a formal engine repair shop in the workshop building, specializing in rebuilding connecting rods. This precision mechanical work — connecting rods are among the most critical components in an internal combustion engine — established Seaba’s operation as a genuine engineering business, not merely a roadside convenience stop. He eventually secured government contracts to rebuild connecting rods, extending his operation far beyond the needs of passing highway travelers.
World War II: Government Trucks and the End of the Filling Station
The coming of World War II transformed the Seaba Station one more time. Strict wartime gasoline rationing effectively ended the filling station function — there was simply no practical way to operate a retail fuel business when gasoline was controlled and restricted. But Seaba’s engine rebuilding expertise found a new and urgent market: the military needed trucks repaired. Route 66 was a critical wartime artery carrying military convoys and equipment across the country, and Seaba was positioned to service the military vehicles using the road. He filled in the original bay areas, converting the entire building to full-time engine rebuilding. The brick and metal windows that filled in the open service bays in the 1940s are still visible today — though the original brick columns that supported the bays can also be clearly seen, a physical record of the building’s evolving story.
From Seaba to Briggs to Preston: 1951–2007
In 1951, John Seaba sold his business to Victor and June Briggs, who continued operating the engine rebuilding enterprise. The station served its industrial function continuously until 1994, when that chapter of its history finally closed after more than seven decades of mechanical work in the building John Seaba had built.
In 1995, Sonny and Sue Preston purchased the building, undertook extensive restoration work, and reopened it as the Seaba Station Antiques & Gifts — a new retail incarnation that connected the historic building to the growing Route 66 tourism revival of the 1990s. The same year, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, formally recognizing the Seaba Filling Station’s significance as a surviving example of early rural Route 66 commercial architecture and as a building whose history documented the full arc of Route 66’s impact on the communities along it.
The NPS Grant and the Restoration: 2005–2008
In 2005, the Seaba Station received a National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program Cost-Share Grant — federal recognition of the station’s historical significance and support for its physical preservation. With this grant, three of the original five service bays were restored to their 1921 appearance in 2008, reopening the distinctive open-bay configuration that had defined the station’s original facade. The restoration was done with careful attention to the original construction details: the polychrome brick columns, the light brick decorative rectangles, and the white-capped crenulated parapet were all preserved or restored as accurately as possible.
Gerald Tims and Jerry Ries Open the Motorcycle Museum: 2010
In October 2007, the building was sold to Gerald Tims and Jerry Ries — two lifelong motorcycle enthusiasts who had a vision for what the Seaba Station could become. Both men had spent decades collecting motorcycles of every type, brand, and era, and they recognized in the historic filling station a perfect home for a museum that would share their passion with the traveling public. The new owners committed to continuing the exterior restoration and building a motorcycle museum that would encompass all brands and years.
In the summer of 2010, the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum opened to the public. The museum was an immediate success, drawing Route 66 travelers, motorcycle enthusiasts, and curious visitors who discovered that a building that looked modest from the highway contained a collection of extraordinary depth and variety. As co-owner Jerry Ries describes the experience visitors have: “This place brings back a lot of memories for people. They’ll come in and see a bike they first rode. Something clicks with them.”
Inside the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum
125+ Motorcycles from 1908 to the Present
The Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum houses more than 125 vintage and classic motorcycles spanning over a century of motorcycle history — from the earliest production machines of 1908 through contemporary models. The collection encompasses the full breadth of motorcycle culture: road bikes, racing bikes, off-road machines, motocross bikes, custom builds, and factory-original machines in various states of preservation. Each motorcycle in the collection carries descriptions and interpretive labels, meaning that even visitors who arrived knowing nothing about motorcycles leave with a real understanding of what they’ve seen — the makes, the models, the eras, the stories.
The collection is deliberately comprehensive in its scope. Gerald Tims and Jerry Ries assembled their motorcycles to tell the full story of two-wheeled transportation — to show not just the highlights but the full evolutionary arc from the earliest primitive machines through the great manufacturing periods of the mid-20th century to the sophisticated engineering of contemporary bikes. Visitors who walk through the museum experience motorcycle history not as a series of isolated famous objects but as a continuous narrative of American and global mechanical culture.
Rare and Remarkable Finds
Among the collection’s most remarkable exhibits are several pieces of particular rarity or historical interest:
- The 1972 Jawa Golden Sport: Still in its original dealer delivery crate. This Czechoslovak motorcycle — a product of the communist-era Jawa brand that achieved surprising international popularity during the Cold War decades — was never assembled after delivery, making it a time capsule of early 1970s motorcycle manufacturing in a form almost never encountered anywhere.
- The 1979 Triumph: Also still in its original dealer delivery crate. British motorcycle manufacturing in 1979 was in the final stages of its storied history before Triumph’s bankruptcy in 1983, and a factory-crated example from this era is an extraordinary survival.
- The Hydra Bike from Captain America (2011): The custom-built motorcycle featured in the Marvel Studios film is one of the museum’s most popular and widely photographed exhibits. Movie prop motorcycles of this caliber rarely end up in small community museums; its presence at the Seaba Station gives the collection a genuine popular culture dimension alongside its historical depth.
- Pre-1920s machines: The museum’s oldest examples, dating to 1908, represent the earliest era of motorcycle manufacture when the distinction between a motorized bicycle and a proper motorcycle was still being defined through experimentation.
- Motocross and off-road machines: A significant portion of the collection is devoted to racing and off-road motorcycles — machines whose design priorities and engineering solutions are fundamentally different from road bikes, and whose evolution tells a parallel story of performance-oriented motorcycle culture.
- A wicker motorcycle: Among the collection’s most visually distinctive and whimsical objects — a motorcycle constructed of wicker, described memorably by one Roadside America contributor as “Satan’s Picnic Basket.”
The Gift Shop and Merchandise
The Seaba Station’s gift shop offers a curated selection of motorcycle-themed merchandise and memorabilia for visitors who want to take a piece of the experience home. The shop is consistent with the museum’s character — genuine rather than generic, with selections that reflect real motorcycle culture rather than mass-produced highway souvenir fare. Supporting the shop directly supports the museum’s ongoing operations.
The Famous Outhouse: A 1921 Plumbing Marvel
Behind the main station building, the original 1921 rock outhouse — constructed when the filling station was built — stands as one of the most talked-about and memorable structures anywhere on the Oklahoma Route 66 corridor. The NPS has described the Seaba Station as “espectively noteworthy” for this building, and visitors who discover it consistently agree. The outhouse was, by the standards of its time, a genuinely state-of-the-art roadside facility: equipped with his-and-hers cast iron toilets in separate compartments, and featuring a plumbing system designed to flush continuously for as long as anyone sat on the rim. This self-flushing mechanism — achieved through a clever continuous-flow arrangement — was considered a significant amenity in an era when most rural roadside facilities offered nothing of the kind. The restored outhouse is accessible to visitors, and it’s worth lingering long enough to appreciate the ingenuity of its 1921 engineering. Visitors can also pose in the outhouse window for photographs — one of the most reliably cheerful photo opportunities on Route 66.
Swap Meets, Poker Runs, and Community Gatherings
The Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum is not simply a static display facility — it is a living community hub for motorcycle enthusiasts across the region. In May and October each year, the museum takes advantage of its two-acre grounds to host Swap Meets that attract more than 50 vendors selling motorcycle parts, gear, and complete bikes. The events welcome more than 1,000 participants, with some traveling from across America specifically for the Warwick swap meets. Eight of the motorcycles now on permanent display in the museum found their way into the collection through these events — a reminder that the museum and its community are genuinely symbiotic.
Beyond the swap meets, the Seaba Station regularly serves as a destination for weekend rides from the Oklahoma City and Tulsa motorcycle communities, a gathering place for car clubs and automotive groups exploring the Route 66 corridor, and a poker run stop for motorcycle and automotive clubs doing organized charity or social rides along the Mother Road. The two-acre property gives the museum room for outdoor gatherings that the building itself cannot accommodate, making it one of the few Route 66 stops with genuine outdoor event space.
The Seaba Station and Route 66: A Perfect Partnership
The Seaba Station’s story is Route 66’s story in miniature. Built before the highway existed, it served the pre-highway road network and was incorporated into Route 66 in 1926 without missing a beat. It flourished with the highway’s golden era — by the late 1930s employing 18 people in a community that would otherwise have been an entirely agricultural backwater. It adapted to wartime necessity, converting from retail fuel to military engine rebuilding when the wartime economy demanded it. It survived the Route 66 decommissioning era, changing hands and functions through the 1950s through 1990s. And it was finally preserved, historically recognized, and given a new purpose that serves the Route 66 revival of the 21st century.
What makes the Seaba Station’s Route 66 connection particularly resonant is how naturally motorcycles fit into the highway’s cultural identity. Route 66 has always been, at its deepest level, about the freedom of the open road — and motorcycles are the purest expression of that freedom that the American imagination has ever produced. Riders who have traveled Route 66 through Oklahoma on two wheels find the Seaba Station a genuinely meaningful stop: a 100-year-old filling station that put them on the road, now housing 125 machines like the ones they ride, managed by people who share their passion for what motorcycles mean.
Continuing Your Route 66 Journey from the Seaba Station
The Seaba Station sits mid-corridor between Chandler and Stroud, making it a natural waypoint on the central Oklahoma stretch of the highway. Just eight miles east in Chandler, the Route 66 Interpretive Center offers an immersive, decade-by-decade walk through Route 66 history inside a beautifully restored 1937 WPA sandstone armory. Heading west from the Seaba Station, travelers reach Sapulpa and the landmark Rock Creek Bridge — the 1921 steel truss bridge with its rare red brick deck, now the centerpiece of Sapulpa’s Route 66 Park. Further west is Oklahoma City and its own rich Route 66 heritage. East of Stroud, Route 66 continues to the Round Barn in Arcadia and northeast toward Tulsa. For the complete picture of Oklahoma’s extraordinary 432-mile Route 66 corridor, see our guide to Route 66 in Oklahoma.
Climate and the Best Time to Visit
Warwick and central Oklahoma experience a humid subtropical climate. Spring (March–May) and fall (September–November) are the most comfortable times for motorcycle travel and Route 66 road trips through the Oklahoma corridor, with mild temperatures and the wide Oklahoma sky at its most photogenic. The May and October swap meets coincide perfectly with the best riding weather of the year. Spring is Oklahoma’s tornado season — travelers should monitor forecasts from late March through June. Summer is hot, with temperatures regularly exceeding 90°F, though the museum’s interior building provides relief. The museum is open most days; call ahead for the most current hours as a small community museum.
Practical Tips for Visiting the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum
- Address: 336992 East Highway 66, Warwick, Oklahoma 74881
- Phone: (405) 258-9141
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: seabastation.com
- Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Typically closed Wednesdays, though group visits can sometimes be accommodated by contacting the owners in advance. Always call ahead to confirm hours before visiting.
- Admission: FREE. Donations are warmly welcomed and directly support the museum’s operations and collection maintenance.
- Parking: Available on the museum’s two-acre grounds. The property has room for motorcycles, cars, and larger vehicles.
- Allow enough time: Budget 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Motorcycle enthusiasts who want to examine every machine carefully and read all the descriptions will want the full time or more. For general visitors, 45 minutes is typically sufficient for a satisfying tour.
- The outhouse: Do not leave without seeing the original 1921 rock outhouse behind the main building. Ask the owners about the continuous-flush plumbing system — it’s one of the most genuinely interesting bits of roadside engineering history on the Oklahoma Route 66 corridor. Pose in the window for a photo.
- The Captain America bike: The Hydra Bike from the 2011 Captain America film is one of the most sought-after exhibits. Ask the owners if you can’t locate it immediately.
- The dealer-crate bikes: The 1972 Jawa Golden Sport and 1979 Triumph, both still in their original delivery crates, are among the most historically significant objects in the museum. Look for them and take a moment to appreciate what it means for a factory-delivered motorcycle to have survived decades without being assembled.
- Swap meets: If you can time your visit for the May or October swap meets, do it. Over 1,000 attendees, 50+ vendors, and the chance to experience the Seaba Station as the community hub it has become make the swap meets a fully different experience from an ordinary museum visit.
- Oklahoma Route 66 Passport: The Seaba Station is an Oklahoma Route 66 Passport stamp location. Get your passport stamped here.
- Getting there: From Chandler on Route 66, drive eight miles west on the historic highway. The station is on the north side of the road, one mile east of Highway 77. Look for the distinctive red brick building with the crenulated parapet.
Final Thoughts: The Seaba Station as Route 66 Distilled
Route 66 is full of landmarks that were built to serve a purpose and ended up becoming something more — buildings and businesses that accumulated history through the simple act of being on the road and doing their job, decade after decade. The Seaba Station is one of the finest examples of this process anywhere on the highway’s 2,448-mile length. It started as a filling station on a dirt road that wasn’t yet Route 66. It became a full-service engine shop as the highway’s traffic demanded. It pivoted to military contracts during the war. It survived the highway’s decommissioning and the long decades of Route 66’s decline. It was preserved, recognized, restored, and given a new life as a motorcycle museum by two men who simply loved motorcycles and wanted to share that love with everyone who drove past.
The result is one of those stops that experienced Route 66 travelers describe as irreplaceable: genuinely original, genuinely unpretentious, genuinely rewarding. “Deceptively small on the outside yet so extensive and varied on the inside,” as one visitor put it. Another called it “a fascinating place even for non-motorcycle enthusiasts because of the incredible history contained within.” That is the Seaba Station: a 1921 brick building on a section of the Mother Road between Chandler and Sapulpa, hiding a century of American mechanical history inside its polychrome brick walls, and inviting every traveler who passes by to stop, look, and remember.
Nearby Route 66 Highlights
- Route 66 Interpretive Center, Chandler — Eight miles east of Seaba Station, an immersive Route 66 museum inside a 1937 WPA sandstone armory with vehicle-seat exhibits and decade-themed videos.
- Rock Cafe, Stroud — The legendary Route 66 diner that inspired Pixar’s Cars, just east of Chandler on the Will Rogers Highway.
- Sapulpa, Oklahoma — A Route 66 gem west of the Seaba Station with the Waite Phillips Filling Station, Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum, and the Sapulpa Historical Society Museum.
- Rock Creek Bridge, Sapulpa — The 1921 steel truss bridge with a rare red brick deck, centerpiece of Sapulpa’s new Route 66 Park, just west of the Seaba Station on the corridor.
- Round Barn, Arcadia — The 1898 Route 66 landmark built of Kellyville sandstone, west toward Oklahoma City on the Mother Road.
- Oklahoma City on Route 66 — The state capital and a Route 66 hub, approximately 50 miles west of the Seaba Station.
- Tulsa on Route 66 — Oklahoma’s second city, northeast on the Route 66 corridor, with art deco architecture, neon signs, and deep Mother Road heritage.
- Route 66 in Oklahoma — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to Oklahoma’s 432-mile Route 66 corridor, the Will Rogers Highway.
