West Peorian Remembers
Jim Eaton, a West Peoria resident for all of his 86 years, indeed does remember that John Heitzman installed one or two gas pumps by his grocery store on Rohmann Avenue in the late 1920s or early 1930s—long before an actual gas station was built on the site in the 1960s. In fact, Jim remembers pulling up to the pump and filling his car with gas. These pumps were no longer on the site at the time of the 1957 explosion.