Oilfield Store: Gushing with Good Times, Great Food

Those looking to celebrate National Hamburger Day (May 28) or enjoy great food any other time of year should consider a stop at a unique café known as the Oilfield Store in Clark County.

Situated 4.5 miles north of Casey and Interstate 70 along Route 49 near the unincorporated community of Oilfield, the Oilfield Store is known for great burgers, homemade pies and more – all served up in a historic one-room schoolhouse constructed in 1866.

Martha Menser, one of seven siblings raised on the property, currently owns and operates the café. It feels like a local museum, as the walls are adorned with memorabilia from Oilfield’s heyday during the area’s oil boom in the early 1900s.

“My father, Elbert Ennis, obtained [the old schoolhouse] in 1963 and continued it as a general store, along with his nearby Oilfield Garage for 20-some years and then just used it as storage,” Menser says. “My sister, Ruth Beasley, and her husband, Gene, purchased it off the family and decided to fix it up and sell hamburgers in 2007. I took over in 2009 and added homemade pies, soups and a few other dishes.”

Menser doesn’t really have a lot of secrets that make her culinary creations stand out, other than she uses fresh ingredients and everything is homemade.

“They’re fresh, hand-patted, 5.5 ounce patties,” Menser says of her popular hamburgers and cheeseburgers. “We just put them on the grill and toast the buns. People say they’re really great.”

The Oilfield Store opens seasonally, April through mid-December, on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Fridays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It features live entertainment every Friday night.

“I like it to be a good, family fun place,” says Menser, whose sign out front promotes the Oilfield Store as “gushing with good times and great food.”

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Menser, a local historian, also speaks to groups and provides presentations about the rich history of Oilfield, mostly gone from the landscape now, but not forgotten. The first attempt to drill oil wells in the state occurred near Champaign in 1853, but they produced “swamp gas” from glacial till, but no oil, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The first productive oil wells were drilled in Clark and Montgomery counties in the early 1860s and the town of Oilfield practically sprang up overnight. It featured numerous general stores, a rail line and a once prosperous Oil City Hotel that recorded prominent guests including Ulysses S. Grant, Charles Dickens, Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell on its registry.

The area continues to produce its share of oil. According to Menser, about 500 new oil wells were drilled in the area in 2011 and continue to pump black gold.