Formation and early years The Standard Oil Company of Kentucky was incorporated on October 8, 1886, under Kentucky laws. It was founded as a division of the
Standard Oil Trust to handle the assets of the Chess, Carley & Company, which Standard had acquired to handle product marketing and distribution for the southeastern U.S. It maintained corporate offices in all of the states it serviced, and also owned an oil refinery in
Louisville, Kentucky, with a 500,000 barrel/year capacity. In 1892, it acquired the properties of Consolidated Tank Line Company. Kyso was spun off to market to the states of
Kentucky,
Georgia,
Florida,
Alabama, and
Mississippi. As was common at the time, though no longer controlled by a single entity, the various "Baby Standards" still continued to cooperate. For example, Kyso was supplied by fellow "Baby Standard"
Standard Oil of New Jersey, better known as Esso. The company avoided the consolidation prevalent in the industry throughout the first half of the century, and continued to sell various Esso and
Mobil products. In 1930, it acquired the assets of Reed Oil Corp. of
Atlanta, Georgia. The Riverside Refinery, built by Kyso circa 1918 in
West Louisville, Kentucky, is still the source of considerable study due to environmental concerns.
Harland Sanders, founder of
Kentucky Fried Chicken, started his first restaurant, the Sanders Court and Cafe, as part of a Standard Oil station in
Corbin, Kentucky, in 1930.
Acquisition by Standard Oil of California In 1961, Kyso was acquired by Standard Oil of California, effectively pushing Esso out of the former Kyso territory. In 1984, Standard Oil of California merged with
Gulf Oil and renamed itself to
Chevron; the newly formed company changed over all of the former Kyso stations to the Chevron logo while retaining the Standard brand name. It still maintains some Standard-branded stations in all of its former territories, including the former Kyso states, in order to protect its use of the brand in those areas. Following the acquisition by Chevron, the "Kyso" name fell out of use. In 2010, Chevron discontinued its retailing operations in Kentucky, leaving ownership of the Standard trademark in Kentucky in limbo. Ironically, in 2016
ExxonMobil (the former Standard Oil of New Jersey, which had merged with Mobil in 1999 and still has stations in Kentucky to this day) was allowed to resume using the Esso trademark nationwide and thus the Esso logo returned to minor station signage at all
Exxon and Mobil stations, effectively giving ExxonMobil
de facto rights to the Standard name in Kentucky, though they are still owned by Chevron. Neither Chevron nor
BP (which acquired
Standard Oil of Ohio and
Amoco and thus gained Standard trademarks) objected to the ruling. Though now a defunct brand, Kyso
road maps published during the company's prominence in the 1930s and 1940s, are highly sought after by map collectors. ==Bibliography==