I am sitting here at our boarding gate at the San Francisco International Airport, awaiting our Alaska Airlines flight back to San Diego. Our car is sitting in the garage at Terminal 2 at SAN and our little Buddy is soon to be sleeping once again on our bed rather than spending the night at his dog boarding house with a gang of his small, medium and large dog buddies (we will pick him up tonight thanks to advancing our travel plans). It will be nice to get home to sleep in our own bed one night earlier than we expected and even nicer to see little Buddy tonight. Tomorrow, Kim and I have decided to use our bi-weekly cleaning crew time in the garage and front yard (with Buddy on leash) in order to get our arms around the holiday decoration take-down. That seems like a much better use of our time than sitting eating Grubhub in our room at the University Club of San Francisco.
When I mentioned to Frank that I was enjoying the Ken Burns documentary on The Rosevelt’s, he immediately added two and two and suggested that a fun integration of Ken Burns and the University Club of San Francisco might be interesting to me. He recommended Ken Burn’s 2003 Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip. It’s the story of the first successful attempt to drive cross-country in one of those new-fangled contraptions, the automobile. In this case it was about Horatio Nelson Jackson’s historic first transcontinental auto journey in a Winton touring car, specifically a 1903 Winton Model B, on his pioneering cross-country drive from San Francisco to New York City. He undertook the challenge while at the University Club of San Francisco because of a dare and a $50 bet that he could drive cross-country in his Winton in under 90 days. The car was a 20-horsepower, two-cylinder model that he nicknamed “The Vermont” after his home state. I watched the documentary with Kim as soon as we arrived home and it was quite inspiring. The documentary was made on the occasion of the 100 year anniversary of something that has since become a mainstay of American life, almost more than any other. You can talk about lots of attributes of America and Americans, but few will prove to be as distinctive and pervasive as the love of cross-country travel, first by horse and canoe and Conestoga wagon and then, in the last century by automobile. This was the story of that first successful roadtrip that made it all the way across from West to East (as Horatio said, to get the hard part out of the way first). Because their cyclometer (and just about every other piece of the machinery) broke early on, they didn’t record their exact mileage, but it was approximately 4,500 miles from San Francisco to New York City, starting on May 23, 1903 and finishing 63 days later on July 26, 1903.
It ways 60% longer than a cross-country roadtrip today because the lack of proper roads forced them to detour first northward into Oregon and Idaho to avoid the Nevada desert and then across Wyoming and Nebraska to avoid the tallest of the Rocky Mountains. Jackson made the journey with mechanic Sewall K. Crocker and his pit bull Bud (who they acquired in Idaho) and to say they faced numerous challenges is an understatement. These included: primitive roads that were often just wagon tracks, multiple breakdowns requiring creative repairs (mostly with the help of local blacksmiths, which existed in almost all towns due to the prevalence of horse travel), having to pull themselves out of mud with the help of a rope and tackle they were wise enough to bring, as well as to be pulled out of particularly deep mud by horses several times, a complete lack of gas stations (they had to buy fuel from general stores or farmers with machinery), getting lost frequently due to an almost complete lack of road signs and very few maps, and having to replace tires multiple times due to punctures. The trip cost Jackson around $8,000 (approximately $250,000 in today’s money), which was about ten times more than he budgeted. It was a pivotal moment in American automotive history, helping to prove the practical viability of the automobile for long-distance travel.
Horatio was chased all the way across the country by company-sponsored teams from Packard and Oldsmobile, but despite having an offer mid-way through the trip from Winton, he made it entirely on his own nickel. He beat the Packard and Oldsmobile contenders, which is interesting since Winton ceased production in 1924 while Packard was successful until 1958 and Oldsmobile continues as an active automotive brand (as a part of General Motors) even today. Winton Motor Carriage Company stopped producing automobiles in 1924. The company, founded by Alexander Winton in 1897, was one of America’s first successful automobile manufacturers, but they shifted their focus to diesel engines, becoming Winton Engine Corporation. They found success in this new venture, particularly in marine and railway applications. General Motors acquired Winton Engine Corporation in 1930, and it eventually became part of GM’s Electro-Motive Division (EMD), which was significant in the development of diesel locomotives.
Packard produced automobiles from 1899 to 1958, starting as the Ohio Automobile Company (renamed Packard Motor Car Company in 1902) in Warren, Ohio and later moving to Detroit, Michigan. The company was known for making luxury vehicles and built a strong reputation for quality, with their slogan “Ask the Man Who Owns One.” From 1899-1930 Packard was one of America’s premier luxury car manufacturers, competing with brands like Pierce-Arrow and Peerless. In 1954 they merged with Studebaker to become Studebaker-Packard Corporation. In 1956 the last true Packard was produced in Detroit, and in 1957-1958 they slipped into their final brand iteration with “Packardbaker”. The decline of Packard had little to do with Horatio beating them with their Winton, but was due rather to several factors including their post-WWII decision to move into the mid-priced car market, which diluted their luxury brand image while suffering strong competition from Cadillac and Lincoln (the dynamic duo of GM and Ford). Nevertheless, the Packard name has such cachet among car enthusiasts that various attempts have been made to revive it (not unlike the Indian Motocycle), though none have succeeded in bringing back meaningful production.
I’ve never really been a car guy, I’m more of a motorcycle guy. But I do like a good cross-country roadtrip and have made that 63-day journey in as little as 3.5 days (40 hours of driving…average speed 60 mph). I’m not sure why I was so smitten by Horatio’s story, but I think it was the realization that not so very long ago (twice my lifespan), this country was less a country than a gathering of spread-out towns with lots of open spaces in between. People operated within a 30-mile radius of their homes for the most part since that’s how far they could get on horseback in a day. While the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and may have linked the country from end to end, it did only a little more to connect all of the country than the telegraph did when it was completed transcontinentally in 1861. It was the roads and eventually the highways and Interstate Highway System that really connected the entire country. While we think of it an Eisenhower project begun in 1956, that was just the beginning. It wasn’t until 1974 that most major urban sections were completed, and the majority of rural sections weren’t finished until the 1980’s. Technically, the original plan wasn’t finished until 1992 (just 30 years ago) when the last section of Rt. 70 in Colorado opened. It now spans a length of 48,000 miles, cost $114 billion (versus the $25 billion budgeted), and continues to grow and expand with new routes, spurs and bypasses.
Now I’ve got another resolution for 2025, spend more time on the roads of our wonderful country. I will start next week with a motorcycle ride up to Oatman, AZ to ride what is called the “Bloody” section of Rt. 66. Route 66 is known as “The Mother Road” or “America’s Main Street,” and was officially established in 1926 to go Chicago to L.A.. The entire route was paved in 1937 and was the first such highway in the U.S. I suspect that the Oatman stretch through the Black Mountains may be the original pavement laid down a hundred years ago. Rt. 66 was officially decommissioned as a U.S. Highway in 1985, but why should that stop us from retracing the Dust Bowl route of the 30’s or the Americana holiday road of the 50’s and 60’s. We can always default to I-40 or I-10 if the going gets too slow.