☞Drive, He Said…
☞Today in History -- On today’s date 113 years ago, Wednesday, June 9, 1909, pioneering American female motorist Alice Huyler Ramsey (1886-1983) departed from Hell’s Gate in Manhattan on her quest to become the first woman to drive a horseless carriage across the United States from coast to coast. Only six years had passed since Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson (1872-1955) had famously made the very first successful cross-country automobile journey in 1903.
☞Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife & mother from Hackensack, New Jersey drove a green Maxwell 30 automobile on her 3,800-mile journey. On her 59-day trek, she was accompanied by two older sisters-in-law & another female friend -- none of whom could drive a car. They arrived at San Francisco, California amidst great fanfare on August 7, 1909.
☞Alice Ramsey’s drive was intended as a publicity stunt for the Maxwell-Briscoe Company of Tarrytown, New York -- the manufacturer of the Maxwell 30. The women used maps from the American Automobile Association, which had been founded on March 4, 1901, to make the journey. Only 152 of the 3,600 miles they traveled were paved. Over the course of the drive, Ramsey changed eleven tires, cleaned the spark plugs, repaired a broken brake pedal, & had to sleep in the car when it was stuck in mud.
☞Along the way, the intrepid motorists crossed the trail of a manhunt for a fugitive killer in Nebraska. They were pestered by bedbugs in a Wyoming hotel, & whilst travelling through Nevada they were surrounded by a Native American hunting party with bows & arrows drawn.
☞During the remainder of her lifetime, Alice Ramsey made at least 30 more trips across the North American continent -- never sharing the driving responsibility with her husband John, who never learned to drive a car.
☞In 1960, Alice Ramsey was named “Woman Motorist of the Century” by the American Automobile Association, & the Automobile Manufacturers Association named her the “First Lady of Automotive Travel.”
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