In 1909, a woman's place was, indeed, in the home. Women would not have the right to vote for another decade. Few women drove cars, and some doctors had suggested it was dangerous for women to even ride in them, pronouncing that women became too excited at speeds of fifteen to twenty miles an hour and would be unable to sleep at night. There was also the danger of "automobile face" - a perpetually open mouth that resulted in sinus trouble.
But the fervor surrounding the automobile would not be embraced solely by the male gender and motivated by the spirit of adventure, Alice Huyler Ramsey sought to do what had never been done before - she became the first woman to drive across the country in an automobile.
In New Jersey, a sales manager for the Maxwell-Briscoe Company, an automobile manufacturer in the United States between 1904 and 1925, challenged Ramsey to the cross-country trip. Ramsey was a 22-year-old housewife and mother from Hackensack.
The trek began in New York City on June 9th in a downpour of rain and ended 59 days later in San Francisco amid great fanfare. The journey- covered 3,800 miles and the vehicle was a forest green four-cylinder, 30-horsepower Maxwell.
While Ramsey's adventure occurred six years after the first coast-to-coast motoring by a man, Dr. H. Nelson Jackson, the number of challenges had not decreased much. Cars were still quite tenuous machines and subject to regular mechanical and equipment failures. For the most part, roads were in poor condition, unpaved and unmarked. Roadmaps, as we know them today, did not exist. Service stations were few and far between.
Ramsey's traveling companions, two sisters-in-law and female friend, could not drive, so Ramsey was the sole driver. Ramsey, a Vassar graduate and president of the Women's Motoring Club of New Jersey, had excellent skills as a mechanic and a driver, which she utilized as she cajoled the car across washed out roads, through thick mud and giant potholes, and over mountains.
The Maxwell-Briscoe Company sponsored and publicized the trip to persuade the American public that cars were here to stay. J.D. Murphy, automotive editor of the Boston Globe, was hired by Maxwell-Briscoe to be the advance man for the trip. He traveled ahead of the women, usually by train, and arranged publicity, located gasoline and service stations, plotted the route, and found food and lodging for the women.
The smoothest part of the journey was from New York City to Chicago. The roads were decent, although most were still designed for horse and wagons, not cars. Travel went so smoothly on the Cleveland Parkway between Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio that Ramsey reached her top speed of forty-two miles per hour. Travel east of the Mississippi River was guided by the Blue Book which provided directions and mileage from point to point, although it was not always accurate - at one point, the Blue Book advised to turn left after 11 miles at the yellow house and barn, but the owner, who disliked cars, had changed the color of both buildings to green, hoping to confuse drivers. Regardless, Ramsey reached Chicago, one-third of her journey, in two weeks.
From Chicago westward, there was no Blue Book, and the conditions were much worse.
In Iowa, it rained for 13 days straight and Ramsey declared that the roads were terrible. "The accumulated rains of the past several days had already soaked deep enough below the surface of the roads to render them bottomless," noted Ramsey. "We plowed our way along, forced to keep the transmission in low gear most of the time."
The women eventually made it through Iowa, but their troubles were not over. Near Ogallala, Nebraska, the trip was halted by a sheriff's posse on horseback. "They were looking for two murderers and at first didn't believe us when we explained that we were only trying to drive from New York to San Francisco," noted Ramsey. When the posse realized no guns or fugitives were stashed in the Maxwell, the women were allowed to proceed.
Further along in Wyoming, they encountered a dead-end road where a bridge over the swollen North Platte River had been washed out. Ramsey sent her friends ahead on foot across a Union Pacific railroad trestle that ran parallel to the river and then "bumped the Maxwell for three-quarters of a mile on the ties to the opposite side."
Across Wyoming, the roads threaded through privately owned cattle ranches. "My companions were obliged to take turns opening and closing the gates of the fences which surrounded them as we drove through. If we got lost we'd take to the high ground and search the horizon for the nearest telephone poles with the most wires. It was a sure way of locating the transcontinental railroad which we new would lead us back to civilization," wrote Ramsey.
In Utah, the Maxwell smashed into a prairie dog hole so hard that a tie bolt came out of the tie rod connecting the front wheels. "Down went the front end, wheels spread-eagled, breaking the spring seat over the front axle, Ramsey wrote. She continued, "we had a pilot car with us and driver Frank Irving went back to Orr's ranch where they had a forge and we were able to make temporary repairs." In spite of everything, the group crossed the border into Reno, Nevada, later that night.
From there, Ramsey drove to Carson City, Nevada across the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and on to Sacramento. Between Stockton, California and the Pacific coast, the battered Maxwell and its exhausted, but triumphant, driver were flanked by a honking escort of Maxwell cars.
Between 1909 and 1975, Ramsey made the transcontintental drive more than 30 times. In 1961, she published the story of her inaugural journey as Veil, Duster, and the Tire Iron and a version of the book was later reprinted, annotated and expanded upon in Alice's Drive. Ramsey died in 1983 without ever having a traffic accident and with just one traffic ticket for making an illegal U-turn
"Good driving has nothing to do with sex. It's all above the collar," Ramsey was quoted in Ms. Magazine.
In October of 2000, Alice Huyler Ramsey was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, the first woman inductee and her courage and determination have inspired countless women to pursue automotive-related goals and dreams.
See www.automotivehalloffame.org for more information. For more information on other automotive pioneers, visit the MotorCities National Heritage Area website at www.motorcities.org.