Book Notes

(from the California HISTORIAN)

Alice's Drive

By Alice Ramsey
Patrice Press, Tucson, AZ, 2005, ISBN 1-880397-56-0
268 pages, 200 photos, softcover, $19.95 (800) 367-9242; books@patricepress.com

Reviewed by Mary Lou Lyon
Retired History Teacher

On June 9, 1909, Alice Huyler Ramsey, 22, cranked her new dark-green Maxwell DA to life and headed north from 1930 Broadway, Manhattan, for a 59-day journey across the United States. On August 7, she completed her adventure, to become the first woman to drive an automobile from coast to coast.

She had left her year-old son in the care of her husband, the city clerk of Hackensack, New Jersey. Riding with her in the open car were her teenage friend, Hermine Jahns, and her husband’s two middle-aged sisters. They were somewhat protected from a maddening three-day drizzle by a plasticized folding top and a flapping, isinglass windshield.

Alice Ramsey wrote a book about her journey 54 years after it happened, entitled Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron. That book had been out of print for 40 years, but a publisher in Tucson has just retitled and republished the book, now called Alice’s Drive, as a deluxe paperback, with substantial updating. The book has 200 photos, many taken by Ramsey in 1909.

Gregory M. Franzwa, director of The Patrice Press, said that he had been a fan of the book and of its author for many years. “Let me tell you about this girl,” he said. “Nobody touched that wheel but Alice, during that entire journey. A guy wanted to crank the Maxwell for her, the gentlemanly thing to do, when they left New York. She shushed him off and cranked it herself.”

The Maxwell people hired the automotive editor of the Boston Globe newspaper to travel ahead of the women to make hotel arrangements, alert local newspaper editors of her journey and arrange for local guides to escort them where there were no maps and nothing ahead but wagon trails.
Rather than climb the Alleghenies with the little 30-horsepower car, Ramsey drove north to Albany before heading west. She hit the route of the famous Lincoln Highway (still four years in the future) near Ligonier, Indiana.    

“On Friday afternoon, June 25, the women were cruising west of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They were stopped cold there by a flooding Weasel Creek,” Franzwa said. “They had no choice. They stopped the car and sprawled out in it until dawn, when the waters receded enough to let them pass.
“After a few more miles, the four-cylinder engine developed a miss. Using a hammer head, she grounded each spark plug against the block until she found the fouled plug. Presuming the other three would be fouled soon, she removed them all. In those days, plugs were in three pieces. She disassembled each one, scraped off the carbon, regapped them, and screwed each plug back into the head. The car then ran perfectly.”

It took Ramsey 13 days to cross Iowa, fighting clinging mud almost all the way. Tires in those days were smooth, and of course there was no power steering. The mud was a daunting challenge but Ramsey gripped the wheel relentlessly. She gave up on the route (which later became U.S. 30) on Friday, July 2, and left the mud of the Boyer River bottoms to drive north to cross the Missouri River at Sioux City, Iowa.

“She came back to the future Lincoln Highway at Columbus, Nebraska, and stayed on or near it all the way through the trackless deserts to the Sierra Nevada and San Francisco.”
Franzwa, who founded the current Lincoln Highway Association in 1992 and has since authored five books on the history and geography of the 1913 road, annotated Ramsey’s book with 108 end notes. “I wanted to do still more,” he said, “so I added an additional 100-plus pages, entitled ‘Chasing Alice,’ to define her route in terms of today’s roadways.  This took an enormous amount of research, and help from some 50 individuals along the way, from New York City to San Francisco. Ramsey was not on U.S. 9 most of the way to Albany. She was on the old Albany Post Road, a pre-revolutionary highway, for nearly 100 miles.”

One example of Franzwa’s in-depth research was in the little town of Mechanicsville, Iowa, just west of Cedar Rapids. “As the Maxwell neared town from the east, a major thunderstorm was seen rapidly approaching from the west. Alice drove the car through an open doorway, which turned out to be a livery stable housing a number of very agitated horses, still hitched to their buggies. Two hours later, after the storm had passed, she checked into the Page Hotel. That done, they walked to the City Restaurant for dinner. Some questions: Is the Page Hotel still there? What about the City Restaurant?

Certainly the livery stable would be gone, but where was it? I asked these questions of my friends, Van and Bev Becker of Cedar Rapids. They drove immediately to Mechanicsville and through some amazing sleuthing they found all three places, and even photographed them for the book. Then they tracked down the guest register from the long-closed hotel, and photographed Alice’s signature as well; she stayed in Room 6!”

Alice and her friends spent a night in an unnamed hotel in Opal, Wyoming. They were awakened at 2 a.m. by a gathering of bedbugs, and spent the rest of the night on tables in the unattended hotel lobby. Franzwa contacted Karen Buck Rennells, from nearby La Barge, Wyoming, who identified the hotel and even supplied an ancient photo.

“For information on the Maxwell, Franzwa said, “we were able to track down Dr. Rich Anderson of Monroe, Washington. He is painstakingly restoring a 1909 Maxwell DA, and his daughter, Emily, will replicate Alice’s trip in 2009.” Here are some quotes from folks who have seen the proofs:
“By being the first woman to drive a car across the United States in 1909, Alice Ramsey proved without doubt that America’s burgeoning love affair with the newfangled horseless carriage and the open road applied equally to both sexes. Alice’s Drive puts us in the front seat of her brand new Maxwell DA, to join in her grand and historic adventure.”

Dayton Duncan, author of several books about American history, including Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip and Out West: A Journey through Lewis and Clark’s America, said: “Thanks to The Patrice Press, we now have Alice Ramsey’s hard-to-find book in beautiful form, with extras spilling out of the rumble seat. With maps, then-and-now photos and postcards, and marvelous contemporary newspaper articles, it makes me want to follow her tire tracks all over again, from sea to shining sea!”

David Haward Bain, author of Empire Express and The Old Iron Road, said: “Like millions of American women before her and since, Alice Ramsey did something brave, adventurous, and now largely forgotten. This fine book brings her back to life, gives us context for her journey, and reminds us that women have taken to the road with every bit as much gusto as men.”

“Ten years before women were given the right to vote, Alice Ramsey drove her motorcar across America, following much of the route that would become the Lincoln Highway four years later. This Patrice Press edition not only reprints Ramsey’s book, but also includes more than 100 additional pages of annotations and explanatory material. A must-have for your motoring library.”