Alice’s Drive (2005) a republishing of Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron (1961)
Alice Ramsey  139 pages
Followed by Chasing Alice by Gregory Franzwa, 2005

Here we enter uncharted Heirloom waters.  We have reviewed almost one hundred books, at least tangentially related to Donner Summit in the Heirloom and on our website.  Donner Summit is a small area, however, despite its well-deserved reputation as the most historically significant square mile in California and maybe the entire Western United States.  There could only be so many relevant books, and maybe we’ve run out.  So what do we do? Abandon our monthly column or make adjustments? Our editorial board voted for adjusting the rules.

Alice’s Drive is about a 1909 trip Alice Ramsey and three women friends took across the country in a Maxwell automobile.  Alice was only twenty-two and clearly a plucky girl. Unfortunately, she showed bad taste in allowing some friends to guide her over the Sierra by the Placerville route rather than the clearly superior Auburn-Truckee route.  Alice admired the beauty as they crossed the Sierra, saying that even a puncture

”failed to dim the pleasure of that glorious entrance to California.  

“Majestic sugar pines, Douglas firs, and redwoods lined our road on both sides. What a land! What mountains! What blue skies and clear, sparking waters! Our hearts leapt within us. None of us had ever seen the like – and we loved it. We almost chirped as we exclaimed over the grandeur that surrounded us on all sides.”

Imagine what she’d have said had she and her friends crossed Donner Summit!  They didn’t cross Donner Summit though. Alice was young and didn’t know better than to let herself be swayed by “well-meaning” friends. We should note here that Alice and friends were traveling four years before the advent of the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, and there was only one place in America where there were two routes for the finished highway. One was over the Placerville route and one over the Auburn route.  We should also note that Dwight Eisenhower, part of the army’s first transcontinental convoy crossing of the continent also went over the Placerville route and that trip convinced later President Eisenhower of the need for the Interstate. His 1919 trip over the Placerville route had been so miserable. But that’s another story for another historical society.

We should also note that after the Lincoln Highway went over the Truckee route, it was followed by the Victory Highway, Highway 40, and I-80. Readers will remember that the first transcontinental railroad, telephone line, and air route had also chose the Donner Summit crossing. So Alice was just an outlier.

Even Though Alice’s Drive did not cross Donner Summit, nor did Donner Summit even get mentioned, the book still might be of interest to some readers interested in the early days of automobiles.

When motor cars were new (in 1909 there were only about 155,000 automobiles for the eighty million people in the country and there were about 290 auto manufacturers (vii)), they were all the rage. They were freedom opening new vistas.  Where people before the automobile were primarily focused on their communities and traveling was limited to three or five miles an hour, the speed of walking or horseback riding, the coming of the automobile meant traveling to places only heard about or seen in pictures. The effortless speed increase was amazing. On the Lincoln Highway people could charge along averaging 19 mph. As is natural with a new toy, “autoists” wanted to push themselves and their machines to see how far and how fast they could go.  Newspapers continually reported speed tests, endurance tests, and broken records.  One natural outlet was the transcontinental journey and in the early Twentieth Century automobilists set and broke records continually. Some of those drives were done by women, a number of whom we’ve covered in the Heirloom (like Effie Hotchkiss and her mother, the Van Buren Sisters, Anita King, and Amanda Preuss. For an introduction see A Reliable Car and a Woman Who Knows It in the February, ’15 Heirloom or on our website). We can see the popularity of the automobiles and the endurance trips by noting the crowd that gathered to see Alice and friends off and the crowds that greeted the women at various spots across the country. We should note how progressive at least some people were some years before women took the vote.  Alice was the first woman to drive across country. She and others who followed left behind responsibilities and even children (Alice had a two-year old) and embarked on adventures without men (although Alice had a Maxwell Motors representative going on ahead to arrange logistics.

There are a couple of examples in the book of public reaction to the women’s journey. One day Alice said Western Union came to a complete halt as a messenger, surprised by four ladies driving into town came by. He just stood slack-jawed. On another day they had to drive through new fill dirt that was like driving through gumbo. The watching workers were amazed the car got through and even more amazed when they saw the occupants were all women. They also stood open-mouthed.

Alice's text and pictures give an idea of what early driving across the country before the Interstate and hermetically sealed steel cocoons with temperature controlled  interiors and multi-speaker sound systems was like. They were tough in those days. Unfortunately Alice wrote her book in 1961, long after the trip, using her diary.  That leaves less of a story that we probably would have had, had she written the story when the story was new and Alice was young.

Alice’s text is only 139 pages long and includes a lot of pictures. That’s not much for a two month transcontinental trip.  The pictures are fairly fuzzy but are interesting to early auto afficionados. The text is very general and not particularly inspiring.  Alice focuses on her reflections, her early auto experiences, how she decided to go, some of the hotels, details about clothing or the automobile (no gas gauge for example, only rear brakcs, right hand drive).  There’s nothing about the many issues that must have occurred during the trip, about how she felt about leaving a two-year old behind, her husband’s thoughts, the thoughts of her passengers, etc., things we get from other transcontinentalists’ stories (such as Winton and Shanks in the June, ’14 Heirloom).  There are a few vignettes recounting not very eventful incidents: mud, narrow bridge, running out of gas, flats, rain, a broken axle, a hit and run (only denting a hubcap on a narrow road), a buckled bridge, etc. but although they show some of the problems with driving in the early 20th Century, they are not very interesting as they could have been, but there’s not much space in 139 pages written fifty years afterwards. 

In Wyoming Alice did describe the scenery as “drained by the rains of centuries so that their present form resembled great folds like magnified pleatings in an enormous elephant’s hide.”  That’s evocative and that kind of writing would have improved the book.

There are a few general problems encountered.  The Blue Book guide told drivers to make a turn at a yellow house, but Alice found no yellow house. Eventually she stopped for directions and the woman said that yes the yellow house caused problems because the owner had painted it blue.  “He’s ‘agin’ automobiles.”  The man had said, “Now you watch! We’ll have some fun with them automobiles drivers.”  When the Blue Book was not useful Alice drove along following the telephone poles.

There’s only a little about road conditions and driving.  In Rochelle Illinois they hit clay that absorbed “huge quantities of water, gradually becoming a thick viscous mass, sticky as glue, and deep as your wheels could descend… The mud was so heavy that our skids could not reach a rapid rate of speed…” The picture here is not from the book but rather from Mr. Franzwa's collection.

In the second part of the book, Chasing Alice, by Mr. Franzwa, which is 116 pages long, there is a newspaper article reprinted from the Jefferson Bee (Iowa 6/30/09) and it lists the equipment the women carried which gives a better idea of the travails of early automobile travel than Alice’s transcribed diary entries: a complete camping and cooking set,  picks, shovels, ropes, fire arms, rope and tackle. Long strips of canvas to give traction in loose sand. The newspaper said, “on the whole it is a most interesting party and car, and one of the best equipped, probably, that has ever left New York bound for Frisco.” Alice never mentioned any of that instead talking about the one suitcase each of the four women had and the hats three of them were able to pack.

Franzwa follows each chapter with notes but not attributive notes. Rather, they are notes that enhance the telling. For example, one note talks about tire chains which were apparently used quite of lot and never for snow on this trip, “The chains wreaked havoc on the old tread-less tires. They were needed between the towns, for most of the roads were not hard surfaced in 1909. But the roads in the towns and cities were mostly macadam or other hard surfaces, which tended to wear out both chains and tires. The most popular brand was Weed Chains. There was a Weed Chains ad in the 1908 Blue Book (guidebook used by Alice).”

Franzwa’s text complements his end of chapter notes. Here, for example, are directions in case you want to follow as closely as possible Alice’s trip.  For example, “entering town on Broad Street (US9), Alice probably turned left on Hudson Street, also CR 21. At a fork, where CR 21 bends left, she would have followed that Old Post Road to the right to NY 9H, turned left on 9h, almost immediately rejoining US9 north.  You get the idea. With those directions, though, there are also a lot of “may haves”, “possible”, “might have been’s,” and “may have stayed.”

Franzwa’s pictures, ads and even Alice’s signature at a hotel in Mechanicsville, Iowa ad a lot of interest.

In all, it’s interesting but could have been much more interesting with more detail about what it was like driving across country in those days.  Take a look at the book reviews on our website for better books like A Reliable Car and a Woman Who Knows It which is about many women on the transcontinental trek. Below is what Alice's car looked like, a Maxwell DA