Buc-ee’s Store No. 12: The Baby Buc-ee’s Turning Into a 7-Eleven – Port Lavaca, TX
You know the Buc-ee’s everybody talks about: the 120-pump, 70,000-square-foot brisket cathedral visible from low Earth orbit. This is not that. This is Store No. 12 in Port Lavaca, a 4,460-square-foot Buc-ee’s from the era before the beaver went mega, and it might be the most charming thing the chain ever built: an actual gas station, with the actual beaver on the sign, at one one-fifteenth scale.
Everything you’d drive an hour out of your way for is here, just miniaturized. The snack wall is a snack shelf. The merch section is a merch corner. The food counter cranks out made-to-order breakfast tacos instead of a brisket assembly line, and the restrooms uphold the sacred covenant: spotless, always, no purchase necessary. We rolled in on Christmas Day and the place was open, because of course it was. It never closed. Ever. Twenty-four hours a day for a quarter century.
Here’s why this stop matters more than a gas station should: it’s disappearing. In spring 2026, Port Lavaca city officials confirmed the store is being rebranded as a 7-Eleven with a Laredo Taco Company inside. Buc-ee’s started in Clute in 1982 as exactly this kind of store, went big in Luling in 2003, and has been quietly retiring its small-format originals ever since: Lake Jackson, El Campo, West Columbia, Gonzales, and now this one. One report cited April 17, 2026 as the final day, though Buc-ee’s itself never made an announcement. Either way, we caught its last Christmas.
If you’re running Highway 35 along the coast toward Port Lavaca‘s bay fishing or onward to Corpus Christi, this corner at 2318 W Main is where the little beaver stood for 26 years. Pour one out. Preferably a 44-ounce fountain drink.
