Curbside pumps on Broadway in
Monticello circa 1930

RETROSPECT
by John Conway
July 9. 2010

SULLIVAN COUNTY ENTERS THE AUTOMOBILE AGE
 
America’s love affair with the automobile dates back to before the turn of the 20^th century, and in this regard Sullivan County was just slightly behind the times.
 
Despite the fact that cars were being manufactured in nearby Goshen, Kingston, Newburgh, and even Walden as early as 1908, the automobile was not yet a common site on Sullivan County roads in 1910. The ensuing decade was another story, however, as improved roads, more affordable cars, and a booming economy made the automobile much more accessible, though certainly still a luxury.
 
By 1917, automobiles were numerous enough in the county to prompt McLaughlin Brothers Insurance to use newspaper ads to begin touting the necessity for liability and property damage coverage for drivers. By 1919, Sullivan County had surpassed the New York state average, as an Albany report indicated that one in 14 county residents owned a motor vehicle.
 
"The ratio of cars to population in this State is now 1 to 20, " the Republican Watchman newspaper reported in its March 14, 1919 editions, quoting the report. "Official figures made public by Secretary of State Francis M. Hugo show 462,758 motor vehicles registered in New York State last year, a gain of 52,191 or 12 per cent. Sullivan County registered 1,714 pleasure cars, an increase of 70 (and) 289 commercials, a gain of 102. The total registration for the county was 2,732."
 
Of course, by that time, Sullivan County had become inexorably linked to the automobile age by R.H. Johnston of the White Motor Car Company and his nationwide 1918 publicity campaign for the Liberty Highway, which connected Cleveland and New York City, running right through the village of Liberty.
 
Early automobiles required lots of grease and oil and plenty of gasoline to operate, and there was no shortage of places in the county to obtain these products. In fact, in 1917, Socony, or Standard Oil of New York, one of several gas and oil mega-companies formed after the "break-up" of the Standard Oil trust in 1911, and a very aggressive early advertiser, listed more than twenty dealers in the Liberty area alone. Ben Gerow, E.H. Nichols, F.H Jewell, A.L. Fields, Pierson & Weber, Fish & Smith, A.E. Frey, and Stewart R Kinne all dispensed "the world’s best gasoline" in Liberty, for example, while Fred Manion sold Socony in Ferndale, and A. Sherwood and N.F. Schact were both dealers based in Stevensville. J. Bonnell sold Socony in Bradley and N. Rodgers in Harris. Socony became known as Mobil when it merged with Vacuum Oil Company in 1931.
 
The ability of Socony and the other Standard Oil companies to advertise so prolifically at that early date was an advantage not shared by most other gasoline companies. In fact, most gasoline prior to the 1920s was quite generic, and so were the stations that dispensed it. That’s why it is so difficult to pinpoint the first true "gas station" in the county - or in the country, for that matter.
 
"Just where and when the first gas station appeared is a matter of considerable conjecture," writes John Margolies in his photographic delight, Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station. "Much like trying to determine who came up with the first ice-cream cone or the first hamburger, the answer is shrouded in tall tales and folklore. There is certainly no definitive answer to this ‘first’ question."
 
And so it is in Sullivan County. The first gasoline dealers were not dispensing the product from what we might today think of as a gas station, but from hardware stores, drugstores, grocery stores, even horse-drawn wagons. Even after the invention of the first generation of gas pumps in 1910, gasoline was typically dispensed from a curbside pump - such as those operated by Ben Gerow on Main Street in Liberty, or R.T. Branch, and Goble & Sergeant on Broadway in Monticello - and not from a drive-in station, which came along sometime later.
 
Most gasoline historians trace the advent of the drive-in gas or filling station to about 1913, but the concept didn’t catch on until the 1920s. In 1920, for example, there were 18,000 garages nationwide selling gasoline from curbside (or even inside) pumps, and probably not more than a few thousand drive-in stations.
 
The tide turned during the 1920s, however, and many towns began outlawing curbside pumps. About this same time, gasoline companies discovered the power of a different form of advertising, the roadside sign.
 
"By the1920s, petroleum refiners, (like the manufacturers of so many other consumer goods) began supplying vendors with all kinds of signs," writes Michael Karl Witzel in his book, Gas Stations Coast to Coast. "Emblazoned with a brand name or slogan, these small and easy-to-mount signs could be easily attached to the side of a station or wall, near the pumps, or at a strategic point along the roads and by-ways."
 
Standard Oil Company of Indiana acquired Pan-American Oil in 1925 and with the purchase gained access to Amoco white gas - a premium gas blended with benzene instead of tetra-ethyl lead to boost its octane - and to Lord Baltimore Filling Stations, Inc., a line of small, distinctive, pre-fabricated buildings best typified in Sullivan County by Comstock’s, which started selling Amoco in Barryville in 1927.