It’s summertime in Indiana; the kids are out of school, the days are getting longer, the weather is heating up and Hoosier thoughts turn to . . . ROAD TRIP! Let me introduce you to the woman for whom the term road trip just may have been invented for. Alice Huyler Ramsey (November 11, 1886 – September 10, 1983) was the first woman to drive across the United States from coast-to-coast. On June 9, 1909, the 22-year-old housewife and mother from New Jersey began a 3,800-mile journey from Hell’s Gate in Manhattan to San Francisco in a green Maxwell 30 automobile. On her 59-day trek she was accompanied by her two older sisters-in-law and another female friend, none of whom could drive a car, meaning that Alice was the sole driver for the entire journey. Ramsey’s route roughly paralleled the route that, four years later, Indy 500 co-founder Carl Fisher would turn into the Lincoln Highway or modern day Route 30.
A century ago, it was thought that driving a car, like voting, required manly virtues, including “sound judgment” and “thoughtful decision-making.” More than a decade before women got the right to vote, Alice Ramsey proved to the world that a woman possessed the necessary virtues.
Alice Ramsey’s first love was horseback riding, and after showing a keen interest in the “new” automobiles she witnessed traversing the streets of Hackensack, her husband presented her with a shiny new 1908 Maxwell. After taking driving lessons at the local Maxwell dealership, Alice hit the roads of New Jersey, driving thousands of miles within the Garden State that summer. When the dealership heard about Ramsey’s driving, she was asked to enter an automotive endurance test in September 1908, a grueling 200-mile drive on unpaved roads. She handled the vehicle masterfully, received a perfect score, and drew great media attention as one of only two women drivers in the event.
After this, Maxwell sales manager Cadwallader Washburn Kelsey asked Mrs. Ramsey to undertake what became the biggest publicity stunt of the year, a cross-country drive from New York City to San Francisco, in a new Maxwell. Kelsey called the 21-year-old Vassar graduate (class of 1907) “the greatest natural woman driver I’ve ever seen.” He asked Ramsey if she would like to drive the company’s new 30-horsepower, four-cylinder Maxwell cross-country to prove that the car could make it and that a female motorist could do it. This open-air touring car seated four with a top speed of 40 mph.
In a time before interstate freeways, when many of the busiest back-country roads were not yet paved or even graveled, transcontinental drives were rare and respected accomplishments. The transcontinental speed record had recently been reduced from 63 days to a mere 15 days, but no female driver had yet accomplished the feat. The Maxwell company paid all expenses, and informed its dealerships of her itinerary, instructing them to have parts and mechanics on call in case of mechanical breakdowns. She was accompanied by a Maxwell press team in a separate car trailing behind.
In the late spring of 1909, Alice left her new baby with a nursemaid and set out on a rainy day in June from New York City, north to Poughkeepsie, and then made her way west through Buffalo, Cleveland, Gary and Chicago. Alice and her passengers/navigators used maps from AAA to chart their journey — no small feat considering that only 152 of the 3,600 miles the group traveled were paved. Over the course of the drive, Ramsey changed 11 tires, routinely cleaned the spark plugs, repaired a broken brake pedal and once had to sleep in the car after it got stuck in mud.
In 1909, only 155,000 of 80 million Americans owned cars. Most of the vehicles were in the East and Midwest; the land of good roads, comfortable lodgings, conveniently located service stations and plentiful eating places. Consequently, the expedition’s first half was relatively easy, with the only impediments to the journey’s progress being the incessant promotional meet-and-greets staged by Maxwell that seemingly stopped in every little town and burg to give locals the chance to gawk at and talk to the pioneering women. Her drive was more of a spectacle than a speed competition. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Alice was easy on the eyes.
The adventurous Ramsey seemed disinterested in this part of the excursion and mostly fidgeted her way through the circus-like stopovers and interviews as she itched to get back out on the open road. On Day 2, for instance, she noted, “We drove north past the handsome estates at Hyde Park and of John Jacob Astor near Rhinebeck, N.Y. . . . and continued with little in the way of diversion.” In fact, she bypassed the press corps waiting for her at the historic 1766 Rhinebeck Hotel, a place where George Washington actually did sleep.
All was peaches and cream over the flat lands and reasonably passable roads of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois until the group crossed over the Mighty Mississippi.
Things changed dramatically once the group arrived in Iowa. Heavy rains and floods washed out roads and bridges in Iowa as Ramsey resisted suggestions to ship her Maxwell to Omaha by train. Alice recalled, “We were doing quite well until we entered Mechanicsville. . . . A sudden torrent descended upon us. We made quickly for the first shelter we could find . . . a livery stable. There were several buggies standing around, horses still hitched to them. To say the animals were astonished to be joined by a horseless carriage from which came the noise of a pulsating engine is putting it mildly!”
After two stagnant hours, the soggy party decided to brave the storm and ran to a nearby restaurant where Ramsey sat down at a vintage piano to entertain some “country lads” as she “tossed off a couple light numbers.” (This, by the way, in one of the few buildings Ramsey visited that is still standing: It’s now Bubba’s Sports Bar & Grill, 211 1st St. in Mechanicsville, in eastern Iowa.)
That wet spring of 1909 turned Iowa and Nebraska into a muddy morass, and the usually hard packed dirt cart paths turned to sticky, rutted muck. Tires went flat and the Maxwell became mired so often that the engine regularly overheated. It didn’t faze the indomitable Alice Ramsey though — she loved it. “This was the route which later became the Lincoln Highway — I almost feel as if I was the ‘Mother’ of it!” she wrote. “And believe me, the labor pangs prior to its birth were terrific!”
Wyoming, Utah and Nevada were more forgiving; the roads were rough to nonexistent, but the weather was better and the land was mostly flat. Fording rivers was an imposing challenge that led to broken axles in the 4-foot-deep gullies and creek beds. Calling upon her skills as a mechanic as well as a driver (she was founder and president of the Women’s Motoring Club of New Jersey at age 21), Ramsey coaxed her battered vehicle across desert and over mountains. Still, the crew had time to enjoy the scenery. Seeing the Devil’s Slide natural rock monument southeast of Ogden, Utah, Ramsey turned tourist: “Quite a sight! So all-by-itself, and so stupendous.”
On August 10, 1909 Alice and her weary group of intrepid travelers arrived in San Francisco, nearly two months after they started. The quartet arrived in the City by the Bay to much fanfare and hoopla, but most importantly, they were all safe and sound. Most notably for her sponsors, sales of Maxwell autos more than doubled overnight. In case you’re wondering, the Maxwell company let Ramsey keep the car.
Alice was named the “Woman Motorist of the Century” by AAA in 1960. In later years, she lived quietly in Covina, California, where in 1961 she wrote and published the story of her journey, Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron. (In 2005, the story was updated and retitled as Alice’s Drive, which can be ordered through Amazon.) Between 1909 and 1975, Ramsey drove across the country more than 30 times. She was married to New Jersey Congressman John Rathbone Ramsey, Sr. and the couple had two children. Her husband never shared his wife’s passion for automobiles. He never learned how to drive and was uncomfortable riding in cars throughout his lifetime. Alice Ramsey continued driving until a year before her death in 1983. On October 17, 2000, she became the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan.
Alice’s closest moment to perfection came not in San Francisco where she was hailed as a hero and showered with roses, but as she entered California south of Lake Tahoe, heading down the Sierra slopes to Placerville. “Majestic sugar pines, Douglas firs and redwoods lined our road on both sides. What a land! What mountains! What blue skies and clear, sparkling water! Our hearts leapt within us. None of us had ever seen the like — and we loved it.” With that introduction to the state and her lifelong passion for the road, it feels appropriate that she settled in that region in the 1950s just as California was becoming the car culture capital of the world.
Perhaps Alice Huyler Ramsey voiced her own epitaph during an interview 17 years before her death when asked about her life: “I’m probably happiest,” she said, “when I’m holding a wheel.”
Al Hunter is the author of “Haunted Indianapolis” and “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide.” and the co-author of the “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Osborn H. Oldroyd: Keeper of the Lincoln Flame”, “Thursdays with Doc. Recollections on Springfield & Lincoln” and “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
