Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip

Man: Afoot and light-hearted,

I take to the open road,

healthy, free, the world before me,

the long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune--

I myself am good fortune;

henceforth I whimper no more,

postpone no more, need nothing,

strong and content, I travel the open road.

Walt Whitman.

Narrator: On the evening of May 19, 1903,

in the oak-paneled game room

of the exclusive University Club in San Francisco,

a group of well-to-do men

were sharing drinks and conversation.

The talk centered on

president Theodore Roosevelt's political fortunes

and the chances that the Boston pilgrims might take the pennant

in the brand-new American League.

Then the discussion turned to another topic:

The future of a new machine

that only recently had been showing up

on the streets of major American cities:

The horseless carriage.

A debate broke out,

and one man, a stranger to the club,

soon found himself completely outnumbered.

Man: The majority opinion was that,

save for short distances,

the automobile was an unreliable novelty,

a passing mechanical fancy

which thinking men could do no other than discard.

The horse, they said,

continued to demonstrate his proper place

as the dependable servant of mankind for travel.

Horatio Nelson Jackson.

Narrator: Horatio Nelson Jackson was a 31-year-old doctor

from Burlington, Vermont.

3 years earlier,

after a mild case of tuberculosis,

Jackson had given up his medical practice.

But he was still energetic, optimistic,

and brimming with new ideas.

That evening, Jackson argued that the automobile was more than a rich man's toy

suitable only for short drives on city boulevards,

and he disagreed when most of the other men declared

that one would never be driven across the continent.

Woman: And he heard some people at the next table

talking about the horseless carriage

and how it was not gonna last--

it wasn't like the horse--

and he couldn't stand it.

And he, I guess, got up from the table,

went over, and started talking to them about it,

and eventually,

within a few short minutes,

he took out his wallet,

put 50 bucks on the table and said,

"I bet I can drive across the country."

There was no turning back after that.

Narrator: Under the terms of the bet,

Jackson would win the $50

if he made it all the way to New York City--

something no one else had ever done before--

in less than 3 months.

Only 4 days later,

Horatio Nelson Jackson would set off from San Francisco

on the greatest adventure of his life--

an adventure that would Mark the beginning of a new era in America

and the end of another.

In 1803,

exactly 100 years before Horatio Nelson Jackson

would drive out of San Francisco,

Meriwether Lewis had left Washington, D.C.,

looking to become the first American

to cross the continent.

Traveling by keelboat and canoe,

horseback and on foot,

it took Lewis and his partner William Clark nearly 2 1/2 years

to make it from the Atlantic to the pacific.

Americans would spend the rest of the 19th century

trying to find better and faster ways

to conquer the nation's vast but alluring distances.

In the 1840s, hundreds of thousands of pioneers

took wagon trains to Oregon and California,

searching for gold, for land,

or a chance to start over.

At the pace of a slow walk, the trip took 6 months.

Later travelers rode the overland stagecoach,

which cut the time in half.

But the journey was so bumpy and dusty,

the writer Mark twain said,

that he needed an unabridged dictionary

to find the proper words to describe his joy

when the ordeal was finally over.

By 1869,

the first transcontinental railroad was completed,

and Americans could now cross their nation in weeks

instead of months or years,

provided they were content to confine themselves

to a railroad schedule.

But late in the 19th century,

a new means of travel appeared first in Europe

and then in the United States

which promised not just speed, but greater freedom.

Man: Springfield evening union:

A new motor carriage is being made in this city.

If the preliminary results prove successful, as expected,

it will revolutionize the mode of travel

and do away with the horse.

Narrator: In 1893,

two bicycle mechanics in Springfield, Massachusetts--

Charles and Frank Duryea--

started making gasoline-powered machines they called Motorwagons

and sold their first one in 1896.

Other entrepreneurs quickly followed suit.

In Lansing, Michigan,

ransom Olds made a motor carriage

that was better than a horse, he said,

"because it never kicks or bites,

"never tires on long runs,

"never sweats in hot weather,

and eats only while on the road."

In Detroit, a young machinist

and self-taught engineer named Henry Ford

produced a Quadracycle--

a machine that weighed only 500 pounds

and could reach the unheard-of speed of 20 miles an hour.

At first, electric-powered vehicles

were more common than the so-called petrol cars

that used gasoline,

although their range was severely limited

because their batteries always seemed to need recharging.

And in Massachusetts,

the Stanley brothers began producing steamers,

whose only drawback was that their boilers required 20 minutes

in order to heat up enough water to get things moving.

Man: The early days of the automobile was sort of this free-for-all.

People were making them in their garages.

It's sort of like--

you think of the start of the computer age, you know?

Young mechanics-- mostly bicycle mechanics--

in their garages trying to figure a way

to make all these things work mechanically.

Narrator: On some vehicles,

the steering wheel was on the left;

on others, the right.

Many had no steering wheel at all,

using a tiller or levers

to guide the horseless carriage down the street.

Some had metal Poles mounted underneath

that could be dropped like anchors,

nailing the car to the road if it started to slide sideways

or roll backwards down a hill.

Drivers of these new machines went by various names:

Motorists, chauffeurs,

and as the European term "automobile" slowly caught on,

automobilists.

Duncan: Somebody once said that the automobile is a mobile status symbol,

and a mobile status symbol is as close as you can get to defining the American dream.

It represented adventure.

It represented romance from the very beginning.

There are all these early songs that grew up,

and almost all of them have something to do with romance.

"Come away with me, Lucille, in my merry Oldsmobile."

It's all about getting the girl if you got the car.

One of my favorites is he'd have to get under--

get out and get under .

Every time he's trying to make romance to his girl as he's driving,

the car would break down,

and he'd have to get down underneath the automobile.

It's as if, two generations later,

finally guys figured out

that it was the breaking down of the automobile

that presented the--you know, the chance for romance.

Narrator: At a time when the average American earned less than $500 a year,

early automobiles were beyond most people's reach:

Ranging in price from $650 to more than $6,000

and limited to a small number of wealthy buyers--

doctors, businessmen, and millionaires.

And for many Americans,

automobiles were not only too expensive,

they were downright dangerous.

In cities all around the nation,

residents began complaining

about the noise of the new machines,

the clouds of dust they raised whirling through town,