jamesinalaska
Member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2015
- Messages
- 256
I found this unusual book at an antiques store. It is very short, only 40 pages, titled:
By 1903, when cars were still new technology, there had already been several attempts to drive across the country, but none were successful. However, Dr. H. Nelson Jackson, "a man in comfortable circumstance", believed it could be done and boasted a $50 bet with peers at his San Francisco club that he could make the trip, and drive an auto-mobile from his current home (San Francisco) to his boyhood home in Vermont.
Not wanting to pony up $50 to his friends at the club, Dr. Nelson set out to equip that adventure and found his ally and co-driver in Sewell K. Crocker, "a young mechanic from Tacoma, Washington", who shared the doctor's vision and also believed the trip was possible. With Crocker's persuasion a Wilton motor car was selected and purchased as the Wilton Motor Company was then leading the field in ingenuities and was manufacturing vehicles that were winning prizes in the then new motorsports like hill-climbing and dragracing.
It is hard to imagine how these two men had to prepare themselves and their newly purchased 20 horsepower car. Although there was a cross-country steam railroad, there were no cross-country highways at this time, no AAA maps, few towns and fewer petrol stations as the world was still predominately on horseback. All their needs had to be carried.
The book reported that previous cross-country attempts were made in a more direct route from New York to California through the deserts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah where they had failed. So the pair instead decided to first travel northward up into Oregon and then turn east to drive through the sagebrush, the alkali, and the grass of Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska.
I won't give all the details but it turned out to be a rough trip for these two. Breakdowns, constant flat tires, hunger, thirst, walking a day and night to find petrol, walking to carry it all back (they even carried benzene...try to find that nowadays), rain, mud, heat, mosquitoes, countless unnamed and unmapped creeks and streams... you get the idea. Things got easier for them after they made Chicago, but getting to Chicago was a tough go.
So, what firearms did they carry? A rifle and a shotgun for food, and two automatic pistols, one for each of them, to defend themselves from outlaws. The book is about the ordeal of that cross country trip at that time, so details about firearms were not important to the writer except where those details conveyed the tribulations of these two men. Hunting was unimportant - driving and making milage were- so in the sagebrush wilderness of Wyoming when they had run out of food, were starving, hunting was not on their mind, and traded the rifle and its ammo to a shepherd for one of his flock, but the pistols they kept.
An enjoyable read and one you might find on Kindle. Or order from Amazon if you can stomach it. For THR readers, the short mention that they specifically purchased long arms for food and pistols specifically for defense might make an interesting footnote: Times change; people do not.
The Mad Doctor's Drive: being an account of the 1st AUTO TRIP across the U.S.A., SAN FRANCISCO to NEW YORK, 1903, or, sixty-three days on a WINTON MOTOR CARRIAGE
By 1903, when cars were still new technology, there had already been several attempts to drive across the country, but none were successful. However, Dr. H. Nelson Jackson, "a man in comfortable circumstance", believed it could be done and boasted a $50 bet with peers at his San Francisco club that he could make the trip, and drive an auto-mobile from his current home (San Francisco) to his boyhood home in Vermont.
Not wanting to pony up $50 to his friends at the club, Dr. Nelson set out to equip that adventure and found his ally and co-driver in Sewell K. Crocker, "a young mechanic from Tacoma, Washington", who shared the doctor's vision and also believed the trip was possible. With Crocker's persuasion a Wilton motor car was selected and purchased as the Wilton Motor Company was then leading the field in ingenuities and was manufacturing vehicles that were winning prizes in the then new motorsports like hill-climbing and dragracing.
It is hard to imagine how these two men had to prepare themselves and their newly purchased 20 horsepower car. Although there was a cross-country steam railroad, there were no cross-country highways at this time, no AAA maps, few towns and fewer petrol stations as the world was still predominately on horseback. All their needs had to be carried.
The book reported that previous cross-country attempts were made in a more direct route from New York to California through the deserts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah where they had failed. So the pair instead decided to first travel northward up into Oregon and then turn east to drive through the sagebrush, the alkali, and the grass of Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska.
I won't give all the details but it turned out to be a rough trip for these two. Breakdowns, constant flat tires, hunger, thirst, walking a day and night to find petrol, walking to carry it all back (they even carried benzene...try to find that nowadays), rain, mud, heat, mosquitoes, countless unnamed and unmapped creeks and streams... you get the idea. Things got easier for them after they made Chicago, but getting to Chicago was a tough go.
So, what firearms did they carry? A rifle and a shotgun for food, and two automatic pistols, one for each of them, to defend themselves from outlaws. The book is about the ordeal of that cross country trip at that time, so details about firearms were not important to the writer except where those details conveyed the tribulations of these two men. Hunting was unimportant - driving and making milage were- so in the sagebrush wilderness of Wyoming when they had run out of food, were starving, hunting was not on their mind, and traded the rifle and its ammo to a shepherd for one of his flock, but the pistols they kept.
An enjoyable read and one you might find on Kindle. Or order from Amazon if you can stomach it. For THR readers, the short mention that they specifically purchased long arms for food and pistols specifically for defense might make an interesting footnote: Times change; people do not.
