History of the Great American Road Trip

Historic Route 66 - Snow Covered Peaks; public domain image

History of The Great American Road Trip

Not so long ago in America, taking a vacation meant packing up luggage, an ice chest, possibly the dog, and of course the family and setting off on a road trip. The rise of air travel changed this scenario for some, but definitely not for everyone. Pulbished in 2021, the 2019–2020 Portrait of American Travelers® survey by MMGY Global revealed a resurgence in road travel. Since 2015, the survey recorded a 64% yearly increase in road trips. The trend is far from over, with 50% of Americans planning to travel more in 2024. Of those, 63% will hit the road.

I am writing this in a remote cabin on a river in California, one of many stops on my own road trip adventure. The April 8th total eclipse of the sun sent my husband and me across six states in our SUV to Texas. We were not alone. Millions traveled to the path of totality, which included parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. On the way home, I keep running into eclipse travelers. While waiting for tables at restaurants or for admittance to tourist attractions, we swap impressions of totality. Restaurant and service staff confirm that the recent crush of new business is due to eclipse travelers.

The great American road trip seems here to stay. After driving paved-over stretches of the Old Oregon Trail and Route 66, it makes me smile that essential slice of American history lives on. Most people take the interstate nowadays, but for those who seek roads less traveled, the rewards are substantial.

The opportunities for safe road travel abound today, but this wasn’t always the case. At the turn of the 20th century, wretched roads and the limited capabilities of horses, wagons and coaches hampered travel. Most covered long distances by steam locomotive. However, a few hardy souls set off on horseless carriage excursions. These intrepid individuals began the tradition of adventuring by private motorized vehicle that we enjoy today.

1899 Quinby Electric Carriage; public domain image

When recalling his 1903 trip from Colorado Springs to Santa Fe, attorney Phillip Delany declared: “and so the machine is conquering the old frontier, carrying the thudding of modern mechanics into the land of romance. . . .” Much taken with the idea, he went on to note: “The trails of Kit Carson and Boone and Crockett, and the rest of the early frontiersmen stretch out before the adventurous automobilist.”

While exploration appealed to adventurers like Delany, others wanted to escape the rigors of city life into a romanticized dream of nomadic travel. These tourists belonged to the upper-middle class. The cost of an automobile (between $650 and $1,300) placed owning one beyond the reach of most households. Besides this constraint, gas stations and garages were not largely available outside city limits. While a wealthy person might overcome such limitations, the average American could not.

Bad roads increased the likelihood of breakdowns and misadventures. One motorist in the Wyoming of 1909 described the roads he traveled as “deep ruts, high centers, rocks, loose and solid; steep grades, washouts, or gullies…” He also described “unbridged streams, sand, alkali dust, gumbo, and plain mud” as “common abominations.” Venturing off the beaten path for long distances demanded a great deal of self reliance. Mishaps could and did happen.

The first successful transcontinental journey was undertaken on a whim and a $50 bet in the spring of 1903. Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson, his friend, Sewall K. Crocker, and a bulldog named Bud set off from San Francisco in a 20-horsepower Winton touring car. This feat inspired others. 

Horatio Nelson Jackson, public domain image

Between 1901 and 1908, transcontinental drivers loaded their vehicles with numerous tools, sleeping bags, water carriers, camp stoves, navigational instruments, first aid supplies, rain-proof ponchos, pith helmets, tire chains, spare parts, firearms, and more. Mary C. Bedell published her gear list in Modern Gypsies, her 1924 account of auto touring: “tent, duffle bags, gasoline stove, Adirondack grate and a kit of aluminum kettles, with coffee pot and enamel cups and saucers inside.” This equipment increased the weight of her fully loaded automobile by “four or five hundred pounds” and gave the automobile a striking resemblance “to a hermit crab staggering across the ocean floor burdened with its house on its back.”

In time, wages rose and prices for used cars fell. Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, improving the availability and affordability of automobiles. The increasing number of automobile travelers sparked the interest of merchants across America. Gas stations, garages, roadside diners, and hotels sprang up along more traveled routes. 

Eventually, interconnected roads became highways like Route 66. The great American road trip was born.

About Janalyn Voigt

Janalyn Voigt fell in love with literature at an early age when her father read chapters from classics as bedtime stories. When Janalyn grew older, she put herself to sleep with tales "written" in her head. Today Janalyn is a storyteller who writes western historical romance and medieval epic fantasy. Romance, mystery, adventure, history, and whimsy appear in all her novels in proportions dictated by their genre.

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THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL AUTOMOBILE ROAD TRIP

In 1903, a man named Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson became the first person to drive across the country, from coast to coast. Jackson was seated in a gentleman’s club when he overheard a discussion at another table about the impracticability of automobiles. He made a fifty dollar wager that he could make it across the country in an automobile in ninety days or less.

This may seem silly to us now, because people drive across the country all the time. But Jackson had three huge obstacles against him.

ONE: In 1903, there exited only 150 miles of paved roads in the entire United States, most of those in large cities. What roads there were in between cities were extremely primitive if they existed at all. There were no road signs, no road numbers, no road maps, and no gas stations. In the first decade of the 20th century, a driver had the option of bad roads or no roads at all.

TWO: In 1903, automobiles were still a novelty and most people didn’t trust them. With good reason. Automobiles were highly prone to breaking down. Out in the middle of nowhere with no roads, it wasn’t easy to order parts or find someone who could repair a broken part. People didn’t think automobiles would last, that they were a passing fad.

THREE: No one had ever driven an automobile that far, so people didn’t believe it could be done. Other endeavors to drive across the country in an automobile had been attempted in years prior to Jackson’s trip without success. Proof it couldn’t be done.

So four days after his encounter at the gentleman’s club, having bought an automobile and supplies, Dr. Jackson set out on his historic expedition. He, along with his chauffeur/mechanic, Sewall Crocker, traveled from San Francisco to New York City in a twenty-horsepower Winton automobile he named the Vermont. Along the way, Horatio bought a dog named Bud who enjoyed the trip immensely.

Dr. Jackson and Mr. Crocker left San Francisco on Saturday, May 23. Two other two-man teams left California in the following weeks of the same year. The trio spent more time waiting for parts and to repair the Winton than they did driving. Worn out tires, broken springs, stuck in deep, thick mud. They were even sent miles and miles the wrong way because someone wanted another person to see an automobile. It’s amazing they made any progress at all.

At one point, the Vermont had to be towed by a horse!

Even with all the calamity that befell them, Dr. Jackson’s team was the first to make it, arriving in New York on Sunday, July 26, at 4:30 in the morning, completing the first American cross-country road trip. The approximately 4,500-mile journey took sixty-three days, twelve hours, and thirty minutes.

Between purchasing an automobile, hiring a mechanic, numerous repairs and parts, along with other expenses, Dr. Jackson spent around $8,000 of his own money to make this trip. Though he won the bet, he never collected the $50.

Dr. Jackson’s trek had shown the possibility of the automobile and that it could do far more than people realized and that it was here to stay. He also began a tradition that people for generations to come would follow—The Road Trip.

Within a few years of Dr. Jackson’s trip, an organized movement began in the United States to improve the roads across the nation to accommodate this new fangled device—the automobile. Higher quality driving surfaces were needed as well as a structured system of roadways, updated maps, in general, better ways for people in cars to travel wherever they wished to go.
By 1913, the nation’s first transcontinental motor route, the Lincoln Highway, had been created coast to coast through the center of the country. And by 1915, an automobile had raced across it’s entire length in just fives days time. This never would have happened without adventurous people like Dr. Jackson to forge the open country side before roads existed.

In 1944, Jackson donated his his 1903 Winton, The Vermont, to the Smithsonian Institution.

If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Jackson’s trip, you can watch Ken Burns’s PBS documentary titled Horatio’s Drive.

Dr. Jackson’s story so inspired me that I had to write a story of women making this same sort of trip. You can read their adventures in my novella “ZOLA’S CROSS-COUNTRY ADVENTURE” in The MISSAdventure Brides Collection.

Happy Adventuring!


The MISSADVENTURE BRIDES Collection
Love Is One of Life’s Greatest Adventures
Seven daring damsels don’t let the norms of their eras hold them back. Along the way these women attract the attention of men who admire their bravery and determination, but will they let love grow out of the adventures?

Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure, a 1904 road-trip. Zola Calkin sets out on an adventure to be the first woman to drive across the country. Will the journalist tasked to report her presumed failure sabotage her efforts? Or will he steal her heart?

#ChristianRomance #HistoricalRomance #Romance

MARY DAVIS is a bestselling, award-winning novelist of over two dozen titles in both historical and contemporary themes. She has five titles releasing in 2018; "Holly & Ivy" in A Bouquet of Brides Collection in January, Courting Her Amish Heart in March, The Widow’s Plight in July, Courting Her Secret Heart September, & “Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure” in MISSAdventure Brides Collection in December. Coming in January 2019, Courting Her Prodigal Heart (Book 3 in the Prodigal Daughter's series). She is a member of ACFW and active in critique groups.

Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of over thirty-four years and two cats. She has three adult children and one incredibly adorable grandchild. Find her online at:
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