The biggest gas station in California is a bizarre fever dream

As an Englishman, my relationship with jerky is like my relationship with a Bloody Mary — it’s not a thing where I’m from, but it looks cool. I want nothing more than to be able to confidently swill a half pint of tomato juice and chomp on a vodka-soaked pickle to ease my hangover, or chow through a bag of torn cow flesh like a real cowboy man. But then I’m reminded that it tastes bad. I’ve never gotten to the bottom of a Bloody Mary glass, or bag of dried beef. But this isn’t your average jerky.

Habanero buffalo, teriyaki ahi tuna, black pepper ostrich. Dozens of jerkies in front of me. I ask the server what the most popular offering is — “Spicy Memphis BBQ … soft,” she says, confidently. She bags up a handful for me and I shuffle across the tiles to the next attraction in this 26,000-square-foot room that claims to be the biggest gas station in California — EddieWorld. 

On my way to the edge of the Mojave Desert, somewhere near Barstow, a shiny BART train passes me on the freeway, causing me to do an actual double take. I pull my car over and hastily Google what I just saw, to learn that BART trains are built on the East Coast and do indeed regularly move across the country on Interstate 40. It wasn’t a mirage. 

The old railroad outpost of Yermo feels desolate. Its name means “wilderness” in Spanish, it’s home to fewer than 2,000 residents and most structures are sadly battered, boarded up and broken down. 

Yermo, California

Before I-15 opened in 1968, Yermo was a bustling desert town with a half dozen bars, grocery stores and restaurants, and a lot of life. The interstate, which speeds through the old town’s northern reaches on the halfway point between LA and Vegas, led to thousands more people seeing the Yermo sign, but thousands fewer steering into the actual town. Yermo was bypassed and most of the businesses there closed. 

In 1971, Hunter S. Thompson opened his magnum opus with the line, “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” I’m pretty sure he was in Yermo. 

Before making my way to the colossal gas station, I drift through the old town. I stop at the “historic” site of the first ever Del Taco, now a paint-peeled burger shack on a dusty lot. Nearby, the 2-mile iron corpse of a freight train rusts in the low fall sun. I don’t see another soul until a Harley-Davidson roars past, spewing dust and soot into the desert air. I think I see someone standing on a fenced off plot of land by the freeway, but on closer inspection it’s revealed to be a life-size sculpture of the famous Tank Man at Tiananmen Square. While bumper stickers and bachelorette penis hats may tell you the weirdest place in America is in Portland or Reno, it’s not. It’s here. 

The construction of the new freeway demanded bigger, brighter, stranger roadside structures to convince travelers to steer off the asphalt. That birthed an infamous, now abandoned, water park that once shot kids off a checkmark-shaped water slide 15 feet into the air like human cannonballs. That place closed after a employee overshot the Doo Wop Super Drop slide and hit a concrete wall in 1999, paralyzing him. More recently, a bizarre 36-acre sculpture park was built featuring a 10-foot-tall bust of Crazy Horse and the aforementioned Tank Man likeness, among other oddities. 

And in 2018, EddieWorld was born. 

Maybe it’s the lonely desert air, or lack of life in Yermo that got me excited about something I’d normally hate. A beaming blue and pink shrine to fossil-fuel guzzling, Twizzler-twizzling consumerism. Twenty-six gas pumps, three restaurants, 500 varieties of candy, foot-long hot dogs, a three-story-tall water tank dressed up like an ice-cream sundae, and reportedly the best jerky in America. It’s like if Berkeley Bowl was managed by Kevin McCallister. 

The Spicy Memphis BBQ, made by Jed’s Jerky, is delicious — salty and soft and flecked with red chili flakes. As I walk past 1,000 different Ty stuffies and an LA Lakers display, the beef melts in my mouth in a way I didn’t know dehydrated strips of cow flank could. 

U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” blasts over the air conditioning hum as the company’s four grinning mascots, that I can only describe as maniacal cherubs, look down on me a little unnervingly. 

Across the room, at restaurant No. 2, like at the jerky station, I ask the happy server what the most popular item is. It’s chicken tenders, breaded on site, accompanied with crispy fries, a fluffy biscuit and Cajun tartar sauce, and it’s the tastiest chicken I have eaten in a long time. Am I enjoying, maybe even giddy, eating in a gas station? 

EddieWorld

I stop short of trying the California rolls, despite the glowing reviews; even an Englishman knows not to eff with gas station sushi.

I skim across the floor to the ginormous candy section. I need to put my phone camera in panorama mode to capture the endless selection. I eventually opt for a half pound bag of fried egg gummies to take back for my kids. 

But who is Eddie? And why is it “EddieWorld,” not “Eddie’s World?” 

“Well, it’s not called Disney’s World, is it?” owner Alex Ringle tells me over the phone. 

Ringle opened this place in 2018 after spending a long time staring at a map.

“Whether you live in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, LA or San Diego, you have to drive through Yermo to get to Vegas, and vice versa,” he says. “We picked the exact middle spot, purely based on geography, and that’s Yermo, whether you’re coming or going.”

The Yermo location is the second iteration of EddieWorld; the first, in Beatty just outside Death Valley, is owned by his dad, the eponymous Eddie. Ringle worked there for two years before building this bigger, brasher version in San Bernardino County. 

I ask him why the food doesn’t taste like gas station food. 

“We do it differently than everybody else. We make our own ice cream on site, we make our popcorn on site, we make our own pizza dough, we make our own bread, we package all of our candies on site.”

The juxtaposition of the decrepitude of Yermo and the modern commercialism of EddieWorld may be exemplified best in the giant pink ice cream landmark by the highway. And it turns out it was an accident.

“The water system is so dilapidated in Yermo, there wouldn’t be enough water here if we had a fire, so we were required to build our own water tank,” Ringle says. “That tank is strictly for the event of a fire. It has no other purpose. We were going to try and hide it out back. Then we figured we could just disguise it as a 65-foot ice cream cone in the middle of the desert.”

Ringle is proud of his creation, but maybe most proud of how clean the bathrooms are. “It’s something we take a lot of pride in, they’re cleaned every hour.”

He also tells me he thinks the 5-acre site will be an essential hub for electric vehicles as gas goes away. It currently boasts 18 Tesla chargers, and several ChargePoints. 

The mysterious, and slightly psychotic, EddieWorld website, among photos of influencers filling up with gas and sampling the ice cream, boasts, “We’re not your average gas station, nor is the quality of our food. Allow us to redefine your perception of gas station food!”

That you did, EddieWorld, and then some. 

“When anyone walks in there, they have this ‘oh my God’ reaction,” Ringle says. “‘What the hell did I just walk into?’” 

On my way out of the store, a kid drops his 12-inch hot dog on the tiles between the automatic doors. I don’t hang around long enough to see if the 5-second rule holds true in this part of the world. 

Outside, the California megadrought cripples the soil, I walk under the shadow of the ice cream water tower as bright flames catch my eye across the street. A big rig’s brakes are on fire on the shoulder of I-40. I hop in my car, grab a fingerful of jerky, and merge back onto the freeway. 

As an Englishman, my relationship with jerky is like my relationship with a Bloody Mary — it’s not a thing where I’m from, but it looks cool. I want nothing more than to be able to confidently swill a half pint of tomato juice and chomp on a vodka-soaked pickle to ease my hangover, or chow through a bag of torn cow flesh like a real cowboy man. But then I’m reminded that it tastes bad. I’ve never gotten to the bottom of a Bloody Mary glass, or bag of dried beef. But this isn’t your average jerky.

Habanero buffalo, teriyaki ahi tuna, black pepper ostrich. Dozens of jerkies in front of me. I ask the server what the most popular offering is — “Spicy Memphis BBQ … soft,” she says, confidently. She bags up a handful for me and I shuffle across the tiles to the next attraction in this 26,000-square-foot room that claims to be the biggest gas station in California — EddieWorld. 

On my way to the edge of the Mojave Desert, somewhere near Barstow, a shiny BART train passes me on the freeway, causing me to do an actual double take. I pull my car over and hastily Google what I just saw, to learn that BART trains are built on the East Coast and do indeed regularly move across the country on Interstate 40. It wasn’t a mirage. 

The old railroad outpost of Yermo feels desolate. Its name means “wilderness” in Spanish, it’s home to fewer than 2,000 residents and most structures are sadly battered, boarded up and broken down. 

Yermo, California

Before I-15 opened in 1968, Yermo was a bustling desert town with a half dozen bars, grocery stores and restaurants, and a lot of life. The interstate, which speeds through the old town’s northern reaches on the halfway point between LA and Vegas, led to thousands more people seeing the Yermo sign, but thousands fewer steering into the actual town. Yermo was bypassed and most of the businesses there closed. 

In 1971, Hunter S. Thompson opened his magnum opus with the line, “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” I’m pretty sure he was in Yermo. 

Before making my way to the colossal gas station, I drift through the old town. I stop at the “historic” site of the first ever Del Taco, now a paint-peeled burger shack on a dusty lot. Nearby, the 2-mile iron corpse of a freight train rusts in the low fall sun. I don’t see another soul until a Harley-Davidson roars past, spewing dust and soot into the desert air. I think I see someone standing on a fenced off plot of land by the freeway, but on closer inspection it’s revealed to be a life-size sculpture of the famous Tank Man at Tiananmen Square. While bumper stickers and bachelorette penis hats may tell you the weirdest place in America is in Portland or Reno, it’s not. It’s here. 

The construction of the new freeway demanded bigger, brighter, stranger roadside structures to convince travelers to steer off the asphalt. That birthed an infamous, now abandoned, water park that once shot kids off a checkmark-shaped water slide 15 feet into the air like human cannonballs. That place closed after a employee overshot the Doo Wop Super Drop slide and hit a concrete wall in 1999, paralyzing him. More recently, a bizarre 36-acre sculpture park was built featuring a 10-foot-tall bust of Crazy Horse and the aforementioned Tank Man likeness, among other oddities. 

And in 2018, EddieWorld was born. 

Maybe it’s the lonely desert air, or lack of life in Yermo that got me excited about something I’d normally hate. A beaming blue and pink shrine to fossil-fuel guzzling, Twizzler-twizzling consumerism. Twenty-six gas pumps, three restaurants, 500 varieties of candy, foot-long hot dogs, a three-story-tall water tank dressed up like an ice-cream sundae, and reportedly the best jerky in America. It’s like if Berkeley Bowl was managed by Kevin McCallister. 

The Spicy Memphis BBQ, made by Jed’s Jerky, is delicious — salty and soft and flecked with red chili flakes. As I walk past 1,000 different Ty stuffies and an LA Lakers display, the beef melts in my mouth in a way I didn’t know dehydrated strips of cow flank could. 

U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” blasts over the air conditioning hum as the company’s four grinning mascots, that I can only describe as maniacal cherubs, look down on me a little unnervingly. 

Across the room, at restaurant No. 2, like at the jerky station, I ask the happy server what the most popular item is. It’s chicken tenders, breaded on site, accompanied with crispy fries, a fluffy biscuit and Cajun tartar sauce, and it’s the tastiest chicken I have eaten in a long time. Am I enjoying, maybe even giddy, eating in a gas station? 

EddieWorld

I stop short of trying the California rolls, despite the glowing reviews; even an Englishman knows not to eff with gas station sushi.

I skim across the floor to the ginormous candy section. I need to put my phone camera in panorama mode to capture the endless selection. I eventually opt for a half pound bag of fried egg gummies to take back for my kids. 

But who is Eddie? And why is it “EddieWorld,” not “Eddie’s World?” 

“Well, it’s not called Disney’s World, is it?” owner Alex Ringle tells me over the phone. 

Ringle opened this place in 2018 after spending a long time staring at a map.

“Whether you live in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, LA or San Diego, you have to drive through Yermo to get to Vegas, and vice versa,” he says. “We picked the exact middle spot, purely based on geography, and that’s Yermo, whether you’re coming or going.”

The Yermo location is the second iteration of EddieWorld; the first, in Beatty just outside Death Valley, is owned by his dad, the eponymous Eddie. Ringle worked there for two years before building this bigger, brasher version in San Bernardino County. 

I ask him why the food doesn’t taste like gas station food. 

“We do it differently than everybody else. We make our own ice cream on site, we make our popcorn on site, we make our own pizza dough, we make our own bread, we package all of our candies on site.”

The juxtaposition of the decrepitude of Yermo and the modern commercialism of EddieWorld may be exemplified best in the giant pink ice cream landmark by the highway. And it turns out it was an accident.

“The water system is so dilapidated in Yermo, there wouldn’t be enough water here if we had a fire, so we were required to build our own water tank,” Ringle says. “That tank is strictly for the event of a fire. It has no other purpose. We were going to try and hide it out back. Then we figured we could just disguise it as a 65-foot ice cream cone in the middle of the desert.”

Ringle is proud of his creation, but maybe most proud of how clean the bathrooms are. “It’s something we take a lot of pride in, they’re cleaned every hour.”

He also tells me he thinks the 5-acre site will be an essential hub for electric vehicles as gas goes away. It currently boasts 18 Tesla chargers, and several ChargePoints. 

The mysterious, and slightly psychotic, EddieWorld website, among photos of influencers filling up with gas and sampling the ice cream, boasts, “We’re not your average gas station, nor is the quality of our food. Allow us to redefine your perception of gas station food!”

That you did, EddieWorld, and then some. 

“When anyone walks in there, they have this ‘oh my God’ reaction,” Ringle says. “‘What the hell did I just walk into?’” 

On my way out of the store, a kid drops his 12-inch hot dog on the tiles between the automatic doors. I don’t hang around long enough to see if the 5-second rule holds true in this part of the world. 

Outside, the California megadrought cripples the soil, I walk under the shadow of the ice cream water tower as bright flames catch my eye across the street. A big rig’s brakes are on fire on the shoulder of I-40. I hop in my car, grab a fingerful of jerky, and merge back onto the freeway.