Morsch Garage

The Morsch Garage was the very first of a total of six automobile garages that were established in Douglas by the year 1920. Mass production of the auto had commenced in 1903, with the founding of the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan. (The first car to appear in Douglas, however, was not a Ford, but a two-cylinder Rambler, owned by one Friday Nelson, and displayed at the first Wyoming State Fair in 1905.) That a city of less than 2,300 people could support six commercial auto garages attests to the huge demand for this new technology—still unreliable in itself, and intended for use on roadways that were either (a) poorly maintained, or (b) nonexistent. Illinois native William Morsch, born in 1863, emigrated west in 1892 and engaged in sheep ranching in Wyoming and Montana before deciding to settle in Douglas—there to tackle, as it turned out, the noted problems both internal and external to the new technology. The Morsch Garage, established in 1909, specialized in Buick sales and service but soon became a focal point for Converse County auto mavens of every allegiance. Yet Morsch was not content to focus exclusively on the car itself, apart from the medium it traveled. Thus he founded the “Good Roads Club,” a privately-financed organization devoted to developing a road system within Converse County. Funds for the construction, maintenance, and improvement of roads were collected by the Club through voluntary contributions solicited from county residents. (In 1918, Morsch’s organization diversified and then metamorphosed into the Douglas Chamber of Commerce.) The elegant, two-story, red brick Garage accommodated 50 cars and was featured in the 1916 edition of an official guidebook to the new Yellowstone Highway. In later years, after Morsch’s retirement, the structure underwent extensive remodeling for other uses, and today it bears no trace of its original character.