A Year: Day to Day Men: 9th of June

Visualizing the Source of the Sea

On June 9, 1909. twenty-two year old Alice Huyler Ramsey leaves home to drive across the United States coast to coast.

Alice Taylor Huyler was the daughter of John Huyler, a lumber dealer, and Ada Mumford Farr. She attended Vassar College from 1903-1905. In 1906 she married congressman John Ramsey of Hackensack, New Jersey and settled in that town. They had two children; John Jr. born in 1907 and Alice born in 1910.

After receiving a new Maxwell runabout as a gift from her husband in 1908, Alice Ramsey became an avid driver and entered the 1908 American Automobile Association’s endurance race, being one of only two women to participate. During that event, Carl Kelsey, who was a publicity man for the Maxwell-Briscoe company, proposed that Alice Ramsey attempt a  transcontinental journey with the company’s backing. It was to be a publicity stunt with the company providing a new 1909 Maxwell touring car for the journey and all parts and assistance as needed. This journey was part of a marketing strategy to encourage women to drive cars.

On June 9th, Alice Ramsey, twenty-two years old and now a mother of one, began the journey from Hell Gate in Manhattan, New York to San Francisco in a green Maxwell 30. She was accompanied by 16-year old Hermine Jahns and two older sisters-in-laws, none of whom could drive. They used maps from the AAA for guidance in their journey. Only 152 miles of the 3,600 mile trip were paved. The women mostly navigated by following telephone poles, using the poles with the most wires as the guide to where they hoped would be a town.

Over the course of the journey, Alice Ramsey cleaned spark plugs, repaired a broken brake pedal, changed eleven flat tires, and slept with the others in the car when stuck in the mud, a common occurrence. The journey took 59 days to drive coast to coast across the United States at that time in history. They arrived in San Francisco amid great crowds on August 7, 1909, about three weeks later than originally planned.

Alice Huyler Ramsey was named the “Woman Motorist of the Century” by the American Automobile Association in 1960. In her later years, she lived in California, where in 1961 she wrote and published her book “Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron”, the tale of her transcontinental adventure. Always an enthusiastic driver, Ramsey drove across country more than thirty times between 1909 and 1975, by which time she was 79 years old. She became, on October 17, 2000, the first woman inducted into the Automobile Hall of Fame.

“Good driving has nothing to do with sex. It’s all above the collar.”- Alice Huyler Ramsey, Ms. Magazine, February 1975