Santa Eulalia de Carranzo
One hundred years (and a few days) ago, twenty-two year old Alice Ramsey and three of her friends set out on a road trip. On the surface that may not sound very remarkable, so let me just repeat the important part: one hundred years ago. June of 1909. In 1909 many doctors (male, of course) still warned that it was dangerous for women to even ride in an automobile. Their tender constitutions, it was thought, would likely be overstimulated at speeds approaching 20 miles per hour.
Maybe that was the idea. Because Alice Ramsey and her friends (who didn’t know how to drive) weren’t just going to go for a rousing little local jaunt. They were driving from Manhattan to San Francisco—a journey of nearly four thousand miles. Four thousand miles in a 30 horsepower Maxwell motorcar with a four-cylinder engine capable of a wonderfully over-stimulating 40 miles per hour. Four thousand miles across a country that had no interstate highways—no highways of any sort, in fact, and damned few roads built for automobiles; only 154 miles of their trip was on paved roads. Four thousand miles across a country for which there were no road maps; Ramsey had only a handbook with some written directions (“At 11.6 miles, yellow house and barn rt. Turn left.”). Entries for the handbook ended at the Mississippi River.
It took them nearly two months. They suffered eleven flat tires, most of which they repaired themselves. The rear axle broke twice and had to be repaired by local blacksmiths. In Nebraska they were stopped by a County Sheriff—not for traffic violations because there were no traffic laws, but because a murder had been committed in the county and surely something as bizarre and suspicious as four women driving alone in an automobile in Nebraska couldn’t be a coincidence. Somewhere near Utah or Nevada their vehicle was surrounded by Native Americans on horseback, with bows and drawn arrows (they’d been hunting jackrabbits). Two months and nearly four thousand miles, from coast to coast, and when they arrived, the San Francisco Chronicle reported their arrival: Pretty Women Motorists Arrive After Trip Across Continient.
Over-stimulating? I should hope so.
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