The Old Chevron Station at Yaqui Pass: Norris Bakko’s Corner

If you’ve driven past La Casa del Zorro, you’ve seen it. A small, weathered building sits on the corner of Borrego Springs Road and Yaqui Pass Road, its windows broken and its walls marked with graffiti. It looks forgotten. It isn’t. For more than 40 years it was one of the busiest corners in Borrego Springs, and it belonged to one of the valley’s biggest boosters, Norris Bakko.

A corner with a long history

People were selling gas on this corner before Borrego Springs had a name. Eslie Wynn opened the first gas station in the valley in 1928, at his homestead at Old Borego. In 1930 Frank Osborne built a little store and trailer camp on his homestead near the northwest corner of what are now Yaqui Pass and Borrego Springs roads, and he “also sold gasoline at times.” Across the road, Noel Crickmer opened the place that became the Desert Lodge, and later La Casa del Zorro.

The Yaqui Pass Road was built in 1934 and 1935 to connect with the new state highway through the Narrows. The military paved it during World War II, and it was the first paved road in the valley. That made this corner the first stop for drivers coming down into Borrego.

Norris Bakko comes to Borrego

Norris Bakko was born in 1906. Historian Phil Brigandi wrote that Bakko came to Borrego Springs in the spring of 1948 to help build the original Hoberg’s Desert Resort. He stayed for the rest of his life.

The building on the corner had been started around 1946 but was never finished. Bakko bought the property in 1949 and finished it, adding the roof, windows and doors. Brigandi wrote that in 1949 Bakko “built a Chevron station across from the Desert Lodge.”

Henry the Truck, the Borrego Sun’s longtime history columnist, had the numbers. The building was 18 by 36 feet. Bakko leased it to Standard Oil for $50 a month, and his own payments on the property were $44 a month. Standard Oil put in the storage tanks and two pumps, one for regular and one for premium. Business was slow. Fuel sales seldom added up to even $50 a month, and that was only during the three winter months.

Brigandi wrote that Bakko leased out the station in 1955 and went into real estate. Henry the Truck, the 1950 panel truck whose “Stories from Old Borego” column ran in the Borrego Sun, as told to longtime resident Denny DuVall, remembered the Standard Oil lease running until 1959. Either way, Bakko kept the property and kept an eye on it for the rest of his life.

The men who ran it

Over the years several people ran the station for Bakko, and some of them left good stories behind.

Ben Barton leased the station from about 1956 to 1958. He had flown small reconnaissance planes in Korea, even though, as Henry the Truck put it, “he wasn’t trained to fly, he was just instructed to go do it.” While at the station he bought a used Cessna 120 and took on a newspaper route out of Brawley. He wanted to land right at the station, so he graded the section-line road just north of it and taxied up to the pumps. Taking off to the east meant clearing the power lines on one side of Yaqui Road and ducking under the higher lines on the other. Sometimes he had to go under both. Barton also saved money by skipping what he called frills, including maintenance, a pilot’s license, insurance and a two-way radio. Denny DuVall, who worked at the station around 1957, made one flight with him and never flew with Barton again.

Hugh Woods leased the station in the early 1960s. Denny DuVall worked there again, this time with his new wife, Marcia. They lived in an RV trailer behind the station, and Marcia ran a small grocery store inside. That same space later became Bakko’s real estate office.

Denny remembered helping travelers with leaking radiators by telling them to pour in black pepper. It worked.

Where the old-timers gathered

The station was more than a place to buy gas. It was where Borrego’s old-timers met to tell stories and “solve the problems of the world,” as Henry the Truck put it. Ed DuVall was one of the regulars. He died of a heart attack at the station in April 1973, on the lube rack.

The property had a shop, mechanic bays and a small living area. From the late 1960s until his death, Bakko ran the place himself. He sold real estate and insurance from the office while the DuValls helped in the shop.

The man who never charged a cent

Phil Brigandi met Bakko the hard way. On August 1, 1979, Brigandi and his friend Jim Wright were stranded when their Jeep broke down in the Borrego Badlands. They walked out in the summer heat, and AAA sent the local tow driver, who was Bakko. By then he had long since stopped running the gas station, but he still drove a tow truck for AAA.

Bakko picked them up in Salton City in an old Jeep pickup with a towing package, drove out Tule Wash and towed their Jeep home. Brigandi wrote that he went about five miles before he even put his truck in four-wheel drive. “Norrie had driven 114 miles getting us out, and we were never charged a cent!”

A Borrego booster

Brigandi called Bakko “one of the valley’s most active boosters until his death,” and the archive backs that up:

• The Masons. In 1949 he was one of 12 Master Masons in Borrego’s first Masonic group.
• Brief owner of the first gas station. He seems to have owned the valley’s first service station, the Union station on Christmas Circle, for a while around 1953 to 1954.
• Golf. In 1959 he played in the de Anza pro-am with the Ryder Cup players.
• Lions Club. He was a member.
• Wedding. He married Alma Newbury, a popular teacher, at the Desert Club.
• Honorary Mayor. He was Honorary Mayor of Borrego Springs in 1987 and 1988.
• Founders Day. He organized the annual Founders Day celebrations.
• Pegleg Smith. In 1989 a friend wrote him a long letter on Thomas “Pegleg” Smith and the history of the Liars Contest. That letter is now part of the Borrego Sun’s files.

Norris Bakko died in 1994. Henry the Truck wrote that the building “slowly disintegrated” after he was gone.

The station today

The old station looks abandoned, but someone still cares about it. Mike Goodwin, who owns the property today, did repair work at the station in the late 1960s. Years later, when the fuel tanks were pulled, he and his wife bought the nearly five-acre property and cleaned up the contamination left in the soil and water. They got clearance from the county and the state.

“The County would like to see the building demolished but I just can’t,” Goodwin said. “I also have a history with the property.”

So the little building stays, at the corner where Borrego’s travelers have been stopping for gas, supplies and a good story for almost a hundred years.

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Sources: “Borrego Beginnings” by Phil Brigandi (Borrego Sun, August 3, 2023); “Desert Drama, 1979” by Phil Brigandi (Borrego Sun, c. 1999); Henry the Truck, “Borrego Chevron Station” (Borrego Sun, March 5, 2020) and his March 19, 2020 column; “The Abandoned Chevron Gas Station” (BorregoSun.com, February 2, 2023); “Desert Club” by Minnie Surles; Borrego’s 1949 firsts (Borrego Sun, February 27, 2025); The San Diego Union, October 11, 1959; Desert Festival honorary mayors list, 1966 to 1990; a letter to Norris Bakko, August 29, 1989; an Old Borego history of the post office and early stores; and an account shared by property owner Mike Goodwin, November 2026.

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