From today's
The Record:
http://www.northjersey.com/news/Trailblazing_ride_made_history_.htmlTrailblazing ride made historySunday, March 22, 2009
One hundred years ago, a spirited Hackensack homemaker named Alice Ramsey did something remarkable: She drove an automobile from Manhattan to San Francisco.
Alice and three female passengers made the 41-day, 3,800-mile journey in a four-cylinder, 30 horsepower Maxwell touring car. They traveled mostly on dirt trails, a half-century before construction of the Interstate Highway System. The trip, which began on June 9, 1909, was a publicity stunt sponsored by the motorcar's manufacturer, the Maxwell-Briscoe Co.
History records Alice as the first woman to drive across the United States.
Acclaim, however, was decades away. At the 1960 National Automobile Show in Detroit, she was honored as the First Lady of American Automotive Travel. Forty years later, she was inducted posthumously into the Automotive Hall of Fame.
With the centennial of "Alice's drive" around the corner, Alice will be getting her due once again. A Seattle woman plans to commemorate the feat this summer by retracing the 1909 route in a rebuilt Maxwell.
The more attention, the better, says Alice's daughter, Alice Ramsey Bruns.
"She was not recognized at the time," said Bruns, who is 98 years old and lives in Clearwater, Fla. "The car should have gone into the Smithsonian, but instead, Mother said it burned up in a garage in Passaic.
"Nobody thought too much at the time about what Mother did. There wasn't television and all this stuff."
Alice Huyler Ramsey lived at 325 Union St. in Hackensack and learned to drive in 1908, when she was 21. Her husband — Bergen County lawyer and politician John Rathbone Ramsey, known as Bone — bought her an automobile after the horse she was riding, in a scary moment, bolted away.
A horseless carriage has got to be safer than a horse, he figured.
Alice, a mechanically inclined Vassar graduate, took to driving right away, and even competed in endurance races. Maxwell-Briscoe couldn't have picked a better woman to guide one of its spanking-new, open-air motorcars across America.
Alice left her baby son in the care of her supportive husband.
"He let Mother do anything that Mother wanted," Bruns said.
Accompanying Alice were Bone's two sisters, Nettie Powell and Margaret Atwood, and a friend, Hermine Jahns. None of the other women knew how to drive. Alice told of their cross-country odyssey in her 1961 book, "Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron," but here's the thumbnail version: Shadowed from coast to coast by Maxwell-Briscoe representatives, the women followed a route through upstate New York, along Lake Erie and through the nation's midsection and the foothills of the Rockies. They drove into many ditches and through much mud. They broke an axle. They broke wheels. They met up with Indians. They never tested the Maxwell's maximum speed of 40 mph. And they made their destination, none the worse for wear.
Back in Hackensack, The Evening Record devoted eight paragraphs to Alice's great adventure.
"Mrs. Ramsey and Party at Chicago," the newspaper reported on June 21, 1909. The four-paragraph article said the only trouble the women encountered was in Auburn, N.Y., "when the carburetor acted off."
"Mrs. Ramsey Has Returned," proclaimed the headline atop another four-paragraph article on Aug. 16, 1909, two days after Alice returned home by train.
"On the whole, our trip was very successful," she said. "We had some trying experiences in heavy storms and bad roads, but on a trip covering four thousand miles one must expect some unpleasantness. … Our tires troubled us some, due to the rocky roads, but that was also expected.
"All of the party enjoyed excellent health on the trip. Miss Jahns and I gained a little in weight. All of us are pretty well tanned by the constant exposure."
Alice was widowed in 1933. She moved to Ridgewood and then to Covina, Calif. She died at age 96 in 1983, a year after she quit driving her Mercedes-Benz.
Bruns said her mother made 30 cross-country trips, never had an accident and got just one ticket — for a U-turn — in 75 years behind the wheel.
Alice was a pioneer, her daughter said. The Automobile Manufacturers Association said much the same when it honored Alice at the 1960 auto show:
"Your feat, and the fact that you were with three feminine companions, helped unleash those forces which have put America and the rest of the civilized world on rubber-shod wheels. That trip through all but trackless land helped mightily convince the skeptics that automobiles were here to stay — rugged and dependable enough to command any man's respect, gentle enough for the daintiest lady."
The courageous Alice Ramsey did not have the right to vote in 1909 — the 19th Amendment would be ratified 11 years later — but she broke a barrier nonetheless.
You won't find a plaque or marker in Hackensack honoring that city's most famous long-distance driver. That's a shame, said Barbara Gooding, who has written two books on Hackensack's history.
"It's amazing, just amazing, what she did," Gooding said. "Alice was definitely ahead of her time."
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