Williams Service Co. Then and Now

301 N Second Avenue

At some point, I’ll write in detail about Dodge City’s beautiful City Hall building south of the tracks, but this story focuses on what came later. The ornate brick building was situated in the middle of a block bordered by South Front (yes, there were two) and West Santa Fe Trail Streets as well as Second and Third Avenues.

In April of 1928, Lindas Lumber Company was in the process of purchasing the old City Hall lot but the City couldn’t find the deed, which had never been recorded. The plan was for City Hall to be demolished and replaced with a lumber shed on the west three-fifths of the property. The company had begun soliciting bids for demolition. Lindas then backed out of the deal after the City failed to produce the deed. The Santa Fe Railroad did a quit-claim deed and then J. M. Kirkpatrick ended up finding the original in June of 1928.

In April of 1929, James P McCollom purchased the east 75 feet of the block with an option for the next 50 feet. The lots were cleared immediately followed by construction of brick buildings with frontage along Second Avenue.

One of those buildings was a long, narrow service station at the northwest corner of Second and Trail with a large awning which extended out to the east. Merton Williams and his longtime friend, Charles B “Chick” Collison, opened the Williams & Collison station at 301 Second Avenue that Summer.

Chick Collison was murdered at his home on Sixth Avenue during a robbery on September 30, 1930. A few months later, Williams and Raymond Fredelake changed the name of the business to the Williams Service Company.

Sam Zygner photographed the station in preparation for the grand opening.

By the mid-1930s, B. L. Sullivan assumed operation of the business and renamed it Sullie’s Service Station. It then became a Socony-Vacuum Oil Service Station around 1938 or 1939. By 1941, the station was owned by Claud M Cave and Company, which was located in the building to the north at 307 Second Avenue.

The Cave business next door morphed into the Ross Cave Motor Company in the mid-1940s and the station became known as a Mobilgas One Stop Service. By 1950, the business was called Cave Tire and Service Company and it operated until April of 1952.

Earl and Lucy Steele owned Steele’s Service at Second and Trail for a year or two in the early 1950s.

Earl’s nephew, Ed Courbot, and his wife, Orma, later acquired the business and held a two-day grand opening of Courbot Service October 15-16, 1954.

The building appears to have been modernized sometime during the mid-1950s. By the time Hoover Cott took these accident photos in 1959, the mansard awnings had been removed and the brick exterior streamlined.

The station became vacant around 1969 and sat for a few years before being demolished around 1975. Since that time, the corner has been used by Sellers Motors and Lopp Motors mostly for parking and displaying automobiles.

This is how the site of Williams Service Co. looks today:

I love that the old foundation and building joints are still visible. Looking at this intersection now, it seems impossible that three of the four corners once had gas stations operating simultaneously. I even had to convince my mother it was true.

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