SPRINGFIELD, MA (WGGB/WSHM) -- When many think of the American automotive industry, Detroit comes to mind, but the actual birthplace of the American automobile is Springfield, Massachusetts.

An exhibit at the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History tells the story of how the city became the birthplace of American automotive innovation. “All of the cars that we might use every day, all of the highways that we use, all of that can kind of be directly tied here to Springfield Massachusetts because it’s on our streets, in our city that the first successfully gasoline powered automobile drove down,” said Elizabeth Kapp, curator of history at Springfield Museums.

That achievement belongs to the Duryea Brothers - 31-year-old Charles and 23-year-old Frank. In 1893, the brothers had been working on the idea of a horseless carriage. Charles was the visionary and engine designer, while Frank was a natural mechanic. “They were working on this crazy idea of trying to attach a motor to a set of wheels and they were not the only ones. There were a lot of people around the nation trying to make this idea work, but they were the first to actually make it work,” Kapp explained.

They did it with a used horse-drawn buggy purchased for $70, outfitted with a single-cylinder, four-horsepower gas engine the brothers designed and built. Their workshop was a building downtown on Taylor Street, now on the U.S. Registry of Historic Places.

On September 21, Frank took their creation out for a drive in Springfield. The drive was short - about 600 yards - before it broke down. Still, it would go down in history as the first American manufactured, gasoline-powered car on the road. “It was possible, but someone had to figure out how to make it work. Kind of like Edison and the light bulb, right? We knew that it should work but they had to find the correct combination to make it work,” Kapp added.

Within a few decades, the Duryea Brothers weren’t the only ones making cars in Springfield. Several other companies emerged, including the Knox Automobile Company which, in 1905, produced the first gasoline-powered motorized fire truck. The Atlas Motor Car Company became known for innovating two-stroke gas engines, marketed as having “only five moving parts.”

At the turn of the 20th century, Rolls-Royce turned to Western Massachusetts. “That meant all throughout the ’20s, Springfield, Mass. was actually the first and at the time only place outside of the UK that was entrusted with to produce these luxury vehicles and that’s testament to the incredible skills and the labor that was in this region at the time,” Kapp noted.

The Rolls-Royce plant, located in the East Springfield neighborhood, produced nearly 3,000 vehicles between 1921 and 1931, including famous models like the Silver Ghost and the Phantom. During that time, the city established itself as a premier automotive hub, even rivaling early Detroit.

The automotive industry in Springfield began to unwind with the Great Depression. “Going into the Great Depression and what came out of it as an industry – we, as a producing region of Springfield, we changed a lot between 1929 and 1945,” Kapp said.

The automotive companies either closed or left Western Massachusetts, their assembly lines eventually moving to the Midwest. With the start of World War II, Springfield’s industrial might pivoted towards another sector: the production of firearms at the Springfield Armory.

Still, for several decades, the city lived up to its nickname as the “City of Firsts” - the birthplace of America’s first successful gasoline-powered automobile as well as America’s first automotive company.

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