As gasoline powered vehicles came into common use, fuel could initially be purchased at almost any general hardware store, blacksmith shops and even at pharmacies.

The early 20th century saw an evolution of gasoline service stations that corresponded to consistent increases in the number of automobiles and disposable income, as well as generally cheap oil prices.

It wasn’t until 1923 that Michigan required exact measure in gasoline sales. Previously there were tolerances in the measurement of gasoline sales due to inexact pumps, but service stations took advantage of that. While each customer only lost a few cents per transaction it was estimated that the total loss to all motorists in the state was at least $500,000 annually.

A Mining Journal article in August 1923 shortly before the law took effect on September 1 noted, “The galling part of the thing is the fact that there is strong evidence that many service stations have been taking systematic advantage of the [allowable] tolerance to make this petty grab.”

A Mining Journal advertisement for the opening of DesJardins’ Filling Station, on May 29, 1924. (Photo courtesy of the Marquette Regional History Center)

Three years later, T.M. Wells, the Marquette County Sealer of Weights and Measures inspected more than 100 gasoline pumps in the county. He found a number of pumps where gasoline remained in the feed hoses which should have been drained to the car tanks. Most of the dealers made excuses that “the customer’s car tank was full,” or “the customer was in a hurry and did not wait.” Wells expressed the belief that such might be the case occasionally but not nearly as often as the excuses were given.

Even as gasoline powered cars and gas stations became commonplace across the United States, there were attempts towards other power sources and fuels. Do you know when Marquette’s first electric car charger was installed? If you guess sometime in the 2010s, you’re off by more than a century.

In 1906, the city’s Light and Power Commission purchased a second-hand, two-seater Pope-Waverly electric car. Intended to take care of business around town, some taxpayers thought it a needless expense, but it meant the city could give up one team of horses for the summer. The city first thought of installing a battery charger at the Collinsville Power Plant, but the road was so bad that the car couldn’t reach the facility, so instead a charger was installed at [old] city hall.

The car was impractical for country touring but could reportedly go to Ishpeming and back on a single battery charge. With a 6-horsepower engine, on a good road it could achieve 15 miles an hour. There was also a suggestion, given that the car wasn’t used all the time, to rent it out for $1 an hour for tours of the city, with a chauffeur to drive it. It is unknown how long this vehicle remained in service.

The number of gas stations in the United States peaked in the early 1980s and has been consistently declining since that time. Today there are more than 270 million vehicles traveling on the nation’s 3.94 million miles of paved roadways. Approximately 38 million vehicles fuel up at 145,000 gas stations using 376 million gallons of gasoline every day. There are also a little over 65,000 public charging stations for EVs, 10,000 of which are fast-charging locations.

In 2019 a station in Maryland (suburban Washington, DC) became the first in the country to fully convert from gasoline to electric car chargers. Bloomberg recently reported that according to data from the Department of Energy, the number of fast-charging stations for electric vehicles in the United States is expected to surpass the number of gas stations in just eight years. Perhaps in another hundred years, the phrase, “Step on the gas” will be obsolete.