I know gas is cheaper than it was a year ago, and even six months ago. With the price falling through $2 per gallon, I’m feeling pretty good when I fill up my car. Since I currently support five drivers, each with their own vehicle, cheap gas is one of my best friends.

But I want it to go lower. I want gas to be as cheap as it was when I first started paying for it myself.

As it turns out, it already is.

At just under two bucks a gallon, gas is cheaper than milk, shampoo, soda, and in some instances bottled water. Gas is so cheap that SUVs and big trucks are popular again.

But that still doesn’t register in my mind as cheap compared with historical levels. So I pulled up average annual prices going back to the late 1920s, then used the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index calculator to adjust the prices for inflation. The current level of $1.96 per gallon isn’t an all-time low, but we’re getting close!

In 1929 autos had reached 90% market penetration in urban settings, but obviously the industry was still new and there were a lot more cars to be sold. Almost half the country still lived on the farm. In today’s dollars, gasoline was $2.91.

Then the Great Depression hit.

Everything dropped and the U.S. suffered its worst bout of deflation in history. Gasoline fell 20%, bringing it down to $2.65. So today, we are paying less for gasoline than Americans did during the Great Depression!

Gasoline prices remained low – but so did inflation – throughout the 1930s. The onset of WWII brought modestly higher fuel prices and rationing. When things settled down in the 1950s, gas was about $2.50 per gallon.

This had more to do with the strong U.S. dollar than anything else. As other countries struggled with deflation after the war and finally broke their fixed exchange rate with the dollar, their currencies would fall. This pushed up the value of the buck and we were able to buy foreign goods, including petroleum, at lower prices.