Horatio's Drive

NARRATOR: Original production funding for "Horatio's Drive" was provided by General Motors Corporation, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Park Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and public television viewers.

Funding for the digital restoration of the film was provided by The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, a member of The Better Angels Society supporting excellence in American history documentaries.

(car engine sputtering) WHITMAN: 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 19th, 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.

JACKSON: 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.

Three 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.

BLANCHARD: And he heard some people in the next table talking about the horseless carriage.

And how it was not going to 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. WALL: And 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 three months.

Only four 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.

(horse whinnying) NARRATOR: 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 two and a half 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 six 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.

BOSCO: 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 "motor wagons," 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 "Quadricycle", 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.

DUNCAN: The early days of the automobile were 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've got the car.

One of my favorites is, "He Had to Get Under, Get Out and Get Under, to Fix up His Automobile."

SINGER: He'd have to get under, get out and get under to fix his little machine.

DUNCAN: 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.

SINGER: Then he'd get back at the wheel.

DUNCAN: 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.

SINGER: Get out and get under, and fix his automobile.

Johnny O'Connor bought an automobile, he took his sweetheart for a ride one Sunday, Johnny was hawked up in his best Sunday clothes, she nestled close to his side.

Things were just dandy, 'til he got down the road then something happened to the old machinery, that engine got his goat, off with his hat and coat, everything needed repairs.

He'd have to get under, get out and get under, to fix up his little machine.

He was just dying, to cuddle his queen but every minute, when he'd begin it, he'd have to get under, get out and get under, then he'd get back at the wheel.

A dozen times they'd start to hug and kiss, and then the darned old engine it would miss, and then he'd have to get under, get out and get under, and fix up his automobile.

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, as well as the threat they seemed to pose to pedestrians, bicyclists, and horse-drawn carriages.

DUNCAN: Vermont passed a law, based on an English law, called the Red Flag Law, that required an adult to walk in front of the car waving a red flag, kind of defeats the purpose of going out in the car if somebody's got to walk in front of it.

NARRATOR: Tennessee required motorists to post a week's notice before starting out on any trip.

In Glencoe, Illinois, someone stretched a steel cable across the road to stop what they called the "devil wagons."

Some cities banned automobiles altogether.

By the end of the 19th century, there were only 8,000 automobiles in the United States, compared to 14 million horses.

Blacksmiths outnumbered doctors.

And most Americans rarely traveled farther than 12 miles from their home, the distance a horse and wagon might take them in a day.

DUNCAN: The roads were terrible.

No road signs.

Because you're sort of confined to these small areas, you traveled in the area that you already knew.

So there was no need for highway numbers, there was no need to have a lot of signage because people traveled the roads that they traveled.

Sort of like Boston today: if you're from out of town, you know, good luck.

There'd be these thick books that would say, for instance, "Start at Main Street where the Civil War Statue is, go down West Street, follow the trolley tracks as far as they go, and once you've gone zero-point-three miles past the end of the trolley tracks take a right under the granite railroad bridge; go to the stone watering trough, take a right there."

Going say 20 miles might be 2 pages of this book.

Some of them even took photographs to show these junctures so you could flip through the pages to see where you were.

But those were just for the East.

Once you got past the Mississippi River then you were on your own.

Nobody knew what the roads were like out there.

NARRATOR: Only a small number of Americans believed that the automobile represented the future, destined someday to make both the horse and the railroad obsolete.

And to prove it, a few automobile fanatics decided to try to drive all the way across the country.

In the summer of 1899, with the backing of two newspapers and a car manufacturer, Louise, and John Davis motored their 7-horsepower Duryea out of New York City, headed for San Francisco, the first known attempt to drive a car from coast to coast.

But almost immediately, everything went wrong.

The Davises' progress was so slow that a one-armed bicyclist, who had left New York ten days after their departure, passed them before they reached Syracuse.

Two years after the Davises' failure, Alexander Winton, one of the nation's leading car manufacturers, decided to drive from west to east in order to tackle the hardest part of the journey first.

Winton left San Francisco on May 20th, 1901, accompanied by his full-time publicist, Charles B. Shanks.

They made good time surmounting the Sierras and were soon crossing the deserts of Nevada.

But on the tenth day of the trip, a mere 530 miles from their starting point in San Francisco, the car became hopelessly stuck in a sand drift, and Winton called an abrupt end to his journey.

The next person to try was nearly wholly unqualified to make the trip, lacked any corporate backing or publicity, knew next to nothing about automobile mechanics, and had done little or no planning.

It was Horatio Nelson Jackson.

DUNCAN: Horatio Nelson Jackson to me seems like sort of a Teddy Roosevelt-type figure.

Optimistic, full of enthusiasms and passions, sort of an indomitable spirit, always looking for the new, always wanting to try something different.

As a guy who had had fast-running horses in Burlington, Vermont, once the automobile showed up you could sort of see his eyes sort of spin saying, "I gotta have one of these."

He just became a fanatic for automobiles.

NARRATOR: Born in 1872, Jackson was a minister's son, known more for his gung-ho eagerness than for his introspection.

He had recently married Bertha Wells, the daughter of one of the richest men in Vermont, founder of Paine's Celery Compound, a popular cure-all that was 20% grain alcohol.

After giving up his medical practice, Jackson had traveled to Mexico and Alaska to invest in gold and silver mines.

He was on his way home when he stopped in San Francisco and made his impulsive wager.

DUNCAN: This is a story about a whim, about an individual who just decides, "I want to do it."

Four days after making a $50 bet, he left to try to do something that nobody had ever done before.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition that was the result of years and years of planning.

It was advancing science, it was diplomacy it was expanding the boundaries of the United States, a very serious undertaking.

This is not a very serious undertaking.

This is all about a guy just deciding, "I want to get in a car and get on the road."

NARRATOR: But first, he had to find a car.

After a quick search, Jackson settled on a cherry red, 1903 touring car made by Alexander Winton's company.

Even though it was more than a month old, with nearly 1,000 miles on it, he paid $3,000 for the car, $500 more than the list price, because it was the only one of its kind he could find for sale.

The Winton had a two-cylinder, 20-horsepower engine underneath the driver's seat, with a chain drive, capable of speeds up to 30 miles per hour; no top and no windshield; steering wheel on the right.

Jackson removed the back seat to make room for the piles of equipment he quickly purchased for the journey: sleeping bags and cooking gear; a set of tools, including a spade and a fireman's axe; a block and tackle with 150 feet of hemp rope; a shotgun, rifle, pistols and ammunition, and a small Kodak camera to record his trip.

There were no gas stations at the time, but stores in most towns carried fuel for farm machinery, stoves, and water pumps.

He christened his car the Vermont, in honor of the state where he lived with his wife, Bertha.

For reasons forever lost to history, he affectionately called her "Swipes."

She supported his decision to make the trip but chose to return home by passenger train instead of coming along.

BLANCHARD: Well, in the first place, I don't think there was any room for her.

Now who was the most important person to take with you?

Not your wife.

The important thing here is that she said to him, Nelson, it's okay for you to go."

WALL: Oh, I think she gave him his independence.

NARRATOR: In Bertha's place, Jackson hired the man who had recommended the Winton as the best car for the trip: a 22-year-old former professional bicycle racer named Sewall K. Crocker, who was working in California as a mechanic in a gasoline-engine factory.

On the afternoon of May 23rd, 1903, they were ready to go.

The two men started down San Francisco's Market Street to cross The Bay on the Oakland ferry for their long journey east.

It was the beginning of America's first road trip, a trip that would collect 1,000 impressions of a country, and a people, on the cusp of extraordinary change.

(bell ringing) JACKSON: My darling Swipes.

The hardest work I ever did was to say goodbye to you.

I came pretty nearly having cold feet.

There isn't one woman in a thousand that would let a fellow do what I have done, and I can tell you old girl I appreciate it.

Please give my best love to your mother and tell my father and mother that I love them as much as ever.

I shall write you when I can and shall depend on you to keep them posted.

Yours till New York, Nelson.

P.S, Take good care of yourself and don't worry.

HEAT-MOON: There is no thing that we can do that is more American than getting in a car and striking out across country.

I think as a nation we can think of few things that draw us more strongly than a piece of roadway heading to we know not where.

This is the way that we grow up, this is the way that we enter our history: Get in a car and find the country.

NARRATOR: 15 miles from Oakland, the Vermont blew a tire.

They replaced it with the only spare they had and then motored on another 60 miles before stopping in the town of Tracy for the night.

The next day, on their way to Sacramento, they stopped at a general store to buy gasoline from an ancient clerk who seemed bemused to see tourists in a horseless carriage.

JACKSON: The old man said when he got rich he was going to buy one of these GD machines so that he could spend his money fast.

He would break down his neighbor's fences with it, he said; then he wouldn't have any money left for his children to fight over.

NARRATOR: After covering 118 miles, they stopped in Sacramento to make minor repairs to the Vermont, fixing a spark igniter, buying some second-hand tire tubes since no new ones were available, and attaching an acetylene headlamp to the front of the car for night driving.

Here they also looked over some rudimentary maps to plan the route ahead.

A forbidding prospect lay before them.

At the time, of the 2.3 million miles of road in the United States, fewer than 150 miles were paved, and all of those were within city limits.

The rest were mostly dirt paths, suitable at best for horses, cows, and slow-moving wagons.

To cross the continent, Jackson decided it would be best to follow the routes of railroads as much as possible, to use their rights-of-way as a road if necessary, even their trestles in places were no other bridge could be found.

And to avoid the sandy wastes of Nevada, which had defeated Alexander Winton two years earlier, he determined to detour north, through Oregon, even though it would add more than 1,000 miles to his journey and for a time take him through places where even railroads did not exist.

JACKSON: My darling Swipes.

We leave in the morning for Oroville... the last railway point we will have until we strike Ontario, Oregon.

When we get there the worst will be over.

I can run the car as well as Crocker and have rather surprised him.

We take 2 hours on and 2 off at the wheel.

He's a mighty good man.

I am fine and the only trouble is I miss you so.

– Nelson NARRATOR: On May 25th, they started for Oroville, traveling through miles and miles of orchards on dusty roads Jackson described as, "a compound of ruts, bumps, and thank-you ma'ams" "We never noticed," he added, "as our cooking utensils jolted off one by one, and when we discovered our loss, we could not afford to turn back to seek them."

Then they discovered something else: they were lost.

JACKSON: We met a red-haired young woman riding along on a white horse.

"Which way to Marysville?"

I asked her.

"Right down that road," she said and pointed.

We took that road for miles and then it came to a dead end at an isolated farmhouse.

The family all turned out to stare at us and told us we'd have to go back.

We went back and met the red-haired young woman again.

"Why did you send us way down there?"

I asked her.

"I wanted Paw and Maw and my husband to see you," she said.

"They've never seen an automobile."

NARRATOR: Long after nightfall, Jackson and Crocker finally pulled into Oroville by the light of their new search lamp.

"Everything is all OK" a tired Jackson wrote his wife.

"I shall take my car through to New York," he promised, underlining the words for emphasis before signing the letter, "yours till death."

NARRATOR: Early on the morning of May 27th, their fifth day out, the ascent into the Cascade Mountains began.

They climbed steep, rocky trails no automobile had ever traveled, "mostly low-gear work," Jackson wrote, that required frequent stops for Crocker to fix the clutch.

JACKSON: Often the trail narrowed to ten feet, one-way thoroughfares established by nature.

Sometimes it was necessary to remove boulder blockades by hand.

Slipping on shale and loose rocks, weaving around mountain ledges, we staked our careers against none-too-reliable brakes on steep descents around hairpin turns where, jolting and skidding, we suddenly looked down... sheer precipices.

NARRATOR: Sharp stones pierced the car's tires, forcing them to patch the inner tubes and then re-inflate them by hand pump.

The winding trail was crisscrossed by mountain streams, usually with no bridges over them.

Jackson and Crocker had no choice but to put the Vermont into high gear and try to get across at top speed.

"We welcomed" some of the creeks, Jackson said, "to let the car's hot tires cool."

But one creek was too deep, and the Vermont got stuck.

The men took off their clothes, waded to the other shore with the block and tackle, attached it to a tree, pulled the car out with rope, and then continued on the bumpy road.

JACKSON: We were lucky not to have lost our block and tackle, for bit by bit our equipment was disappearing, including my own spectacles and fountain pen.

NARRATOR: The next day, they took a wrong road and lost 20 miles.

The clutch needed fixing again, and then the line feeding oil to the cylinders got clogged.

When Crocker crawled underneath the car to re-open it, two gallons of oil spilled onto him before he could stop it.

"He is now wearing my clothes," Jackson wrote to Bertha, "and the others are on the side of the road."

During it all, Jackson somehow lost yet another pair of spectacles while the Vermont bounced along.

But he couldn't help admiring the scenery.

JACKSON: Passed through Winter's Canyon.

Very narrow road; stream with beautiful falls 1,000 feet below and high granite walls on each side.

A grand sight.

I never went through such country in my life.

HOKANSON: I think an early automobile trip would be about the most fun a person could have.

It was a visceral experience, the landscape coming at you as it did, especially when you had no windshield or top to block your view.

It's all around you.

It's no wonder it appealed so much to Jackson, 'cause he, like everyone else, had ridden trains most of his life.

In closed, cramped, stuffy railroad cars.

What a difference that would have been.

NARRATOR: Mount Shasta, which for days had been in view off and on "like a guidepost," Jackson wrote, now faded completely from sight behind them as they came down out of the mountains and headed for the town of Alturas, in the northeastern corner of California.

JACKSON: My darling girl... We have crossed the mountains and don't expect to come to any more until we get into Idaho.

We have proven that my machine can do or go anywhere.

I feel confident we can make it.

How I wish you were with me and that it was possible for you to take the trip... With a barrel full of love, I am, as always, yours.

-Nelson (engine sputtering) (engine sputtering) (horse whinnying) READER: "The Alturas Plaindealer."

Quite a flurry of excitement was erected Saturday evening by the arrival of an automobile.

Very few of our citizens had ever seen this, one of the wonders of the century, and large crowds gazed with curious interest at the horseless wagon.

The Indians especially never tired of gazing at the machine.

Indeed had a flying machine lit down in their midst it would not have created greater astonishment.

NARRATOR: In Alturas, Jackson decided to wait for a day.

He had telegraphed back to San Francisco for a new set of badly needed tires, some new batteries, and a new cyclometer to help him measure distances, and he had been promised by Wells Fargo that the stagecoach with his shipment would soon catch up with him.

DUNCAN: I love the irony of the image of Jackson when he was in Alturas, California.

He needs some spare tires and he needs some other parts, and the only way he's going to get them is for them to arrive by what?

By stagecoach.

You can't go anywhere until "the old stage" arrives.

It's not quite a passing of the era, because you're still relying on the old era to get the new era in motion.

NARRATOR: One day passed.

Then a second and a third.

Still no tires.

JACKSON: Monday, June 1st.

Well, Old Girl, I am rather provoked over our delay... I have lost 5 and a half days.

This is a bad start, but just as soon as I can get decent tires we will make a record run.

Crocker is more interested than ever and is keeping the machine up in good shape.

I feel more confident that I can make New York.

We are causing a great sensation... It is the first machine that has ever gone over these mountains.

Yesterday the farmers drove in for miles to see my machine and there has been 100 people around the livery stable since our arrival.

I have been offered all prices to take them for a ride.

I have promised some of the cowpunchers a ride if they will get me up a good round-up.

They are planning it for this afternoon, and I expect to see a regular Wild West show.

COWBOY: Yee-hoo!

(horse whinnying) NARRATOR: By Tuesday, June 2nd, the shipment still had not arrived.

Jackson left Alturas anyway, "in no very good humor," according to the local paper.

But after only a few miles, a front spring broke, and the Vermont limped toward Lakeview, Oregon, at under 10 miles per hour.

REPORTER: "The Lakeview Herald."

A telegram was received here Tuesday morning that the "wonder" had left Alturas and would reach this place in about two hours.

This was enough to put every man, woman, and child in Lakeview on the keen edge of expectancy.

CONWAY: The way the streets of Lakeview were lined with people Tuesday afternoon, one would think a circus was coming to town, or a 4th of July procession was about to pass.

While it was neither, the people's curiosity had been aroused from a report that an automobile was coming this way and that if they wished to see it pass it was necessary to have a seat in the front row, otherwise it might go through at the rate of 90 miles an hour, and would be out of sight before they could run a block.

It hove in sight at just 4: 00 and the crowds surged forward to get a first look at a real live auto, a machine that nine-tenths of the people of Lake County had never seen.

The machine drove up in front of the Hotel Lakeview and stopped.

The Chauffeur enquired for a blacksmith shop, having had a mishap coming over the rough roads.

-Lakeview County Examiner.

NARRATOR: A local blacksmith was put to work repairing the front spring, never sensing, Jackson said, "that our strange vehicle was a symbol of doom to his profession."

They left the blacksmith's shop the next day and set off once again.

The front spring was working well now, but almost immediately an inner tube burst.

They had no choice now but to return to Lakeview and wait for the stage to reach them with the supplies they had ordered from San Francisco.

HOKANSON: In 1903, traveling cross-country by automobile I don't think today we can conceive of just how much difficulty that presented.

These were very unreliable automobiles at this time.

Even if you went 20 miles you could figure on something breaking.

I think a $50 bet at that time saying that no one would make it across the states by automobile in the foreseeable future was probably a pretty safe bet.

JACKSON: Thursday.

Loafed all day and kept the telegraph wire busy to keep in touch with the tires.

We spent most of the day in Mr.

Lake's bicycle shop and Crocker made $3.00 repairing a Columbian bicycle.

Some of the people here have never seen a railroad or been away from the place for more than 50 miles.

A little boy asked his teacher if he could have a holiday to see the auto.

NARRATOR: Late on the night of June 5th, the tires, batteries, and cyclometer finally arrived, and by early the next morning, Jackson and Crocker had everything ready.

Ahead of them lay nearly 300 miles of desert, an area that had the added distinction of being farther from a railroad than any other place in the United States.

Jackson hoped to cross it in two days and reach Ontario, Oregon where he had telegraphed ahead for more tires and supplies to be waiting for him at the train station.

DUNCAN: Southeastern Oregon in 1903's not a place you'd want to have a mechanical breakdown.

It still isn't.

Fewer than two people per square mile live in southeastern Oregon today.

That used to be the Census Bureau's definition of the frontier.

In 1990 census takers had a mechanical problem in southeast Oregon and they were missing for four days... In 1990!

NARRATOR: At 6:00 a.m., they set off from Lakeview for their dash across the desert, but immediately got confused and went 19 miles down the wrong road before realizing it.

By 8: 00, thick dust was already clogging one of the Vermont's two carburetors and they had to stop to clean it.

Then the car wouldn't start.

The new batteries were defective.

Time after time, they struggled to get the engine going, but with no luck.

Hours ticked by.

Crocker tried everything he could think of to coax the Vermont to life, but still it refused to start.

Noontime came and went; then most of the afternoon.

(horse whinnying) JACKSON: About 4:00 a cowpuncher went by... (gunshot) ...and we called him to us by firing my gun.

He tied his lassoes to our car and towed us.

COWPUNCHER: Ha, yea, yea.

NARRATOR: The 20-horsepower automobile that people had called, "one of the wonders of the century" now found itself being slowly dragged like a stubborn calf across the desert floor by a cowboy and his horse.

Somehow, word of Jackson and Crocker's troubles filtered back to the "Lakeview Examiner."

"If they meet with as many accidents and are delayed as long as they were in Alturas and Lakeview," the newspaper reported, "it will be winter before they see the Atlantic."

When they finally arrived at the nearest ranch house, Crocker again went to work, and at last, got the Vermont running.

They set off immediately, following what Jackson called "the damnedest, rough, rocky, sandy road this side of Hades."

14 long hours after leaving Lakeview, they reached a ranch called the S.L.

JACKSON: The ranchman kindly offered to give us his attic for the night, so we crawled up the ladder for bed.

Here we found a pile of rags in one corner with two blankets that every settler coming that way since '49 had slept under.

It is needless to say that we each sat on a nail keg and waited for our host and hostess to get to sleep.

This we soon discovered from the sonorous sound that came up through the planks of our floor, whereupon we both jumped out of the window and had a very comfortable night in one of the horse stalls in the barn.

NARRATOR: On the morning of June 7th, Jackson and Crocker resumed their journey across the desert, and soon encountered homesteaders traveling by wagon to some of the only free land still available in the nation.

JACKSON: I cannot see why they come to this desert, but the Oregon agents seem to be able to paint them a most beautiful picture of the homesteads here.

One poor fellow, seeing us coming down the road, thought the train had got off the track, so he hastily unharnessed his horses and he and his wife crawled under the wagon.

Of course, when we came along we frightened their horses and they ran many miles across the desert.

I was very sorry for the poor fellow but he was as green as they make them.

NARRATOR: The wagon roads were so rough that Jackson and Crocker decided instead to make their way through the sagebrush, which soon stripped off their new cyclometer, making it impossible to measure distances.

And somewhere along the way, the gasoline in their extra storage tank leaked out.

When they reached an outpost called Oakerman's on Silver Creek that evening, they had less than a quart left.

It was 26 miles to Burns, the nearest town where gas might be available.

With no telephone at Oakerman's, Jackson rented the owner's bicycle and sent Crocker off on it.

Crocker was gone all night and half the next day, forced to walk most of the distance when his bicycle tire was punctured; finally returning with four gallons of gasoline and three gallons of benzine which, Jackson complained, cost him nearly $20.

Finally, on the afternoon of June 10th, their 19th day on the road, they motored into Ontario, Oregon, a town near the Idaho border and, more important, a stop on the Oregon Shortline Railroad.

Waiting for them at the station were a full set of new tires and a new front spring.

"When we saw the railroad," Jackson wrote his wife, "we both felt like throwing up our hats and giving three cheers."

JACKSON: Thursday, June 11th.

My dear Swipes... We put on our new springs and one new tire and left Ontario a little after four.

We crossed the Snake River by a ferry and are now in Idaho.

Shortly after we left, it commenced to rain and for the first time, we had to take out our rubber clothing.

This made traveling very bad.

We found a stream to ford and thought, of course, we could make it, as we had many others, by shooting it.

But the mud was very deep, and we got stuck in the center of it.

We did not arrive in Caldwell until 12: 00 at night and then soaking wet.

We put up at the Pacific Hotel and the people noticed we were carrying with us a very strong odor.

We had run over a skunk.

NARRATOR: Before leaving Caldwell, Idaho, the next morning, Jackson added a third member to the expedition, a young bulldog named Bud, which he purchased for $15.

Riding in front, and, just like his master, wearing a pair of goggles to keep the dust from stinging his eyes, Bud quickly learned to watch the road ahead just as intently as Crocker and Jackson, bracing himself for every bump and turn.

"Bud soon became an enthusiast for motoring," Jackson bragged, adding he was, "the one member of our trio who used no profanity on the entire trip."

(barking) NARRATOR: Taking roads that paralleled the rail line, Jackson now planned on making up for lost time.

But once again he got some bad advice and followed the wrong set of tracks, which took them 38 miles out of their way before they realized it.

They motored on to the town of Hailey, just south of Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains.

From there, Jackson telegraphed the Winton company in Cleveland, placing an order for them to ship him a new air intake pipe, since the original had dropped off somewhere along the road.

It was the first time he had contacted the company directly, and the first time Winton officials became aware that one of their cars was trying to cross the continent.

JACKSON: Monday morning, June 15th.

We started on what they call the "zig-zag" road, which runs along a great lava bed.

The country took on a new character... soaring heights of denuded slopes, monstrous cliffs, and giant boulders scattered in magnificent confusion.

NARRATOR: Their route took them through what is now Craters of the Moon National Monument, a desolate, eerie landscape shaped and reshaped by a series of volcanic cataclysms.

60 years before Jackson, wagon trains of pioneers had ventured this way on what was called the "Goodale's Cutoff" on the Oregon Trail.

60 years after Jackson, astronauts would be brought there to train for the first lunar landing.

Throughout rural Idaho, just as in Oregon, people surrounded the Vermont, one local newspaper reported, "as flies surround the keg of molasses," and they often gave the travelers home-cooked meals in exchange for short rides on what some of them called the "Go-Like-Hell Machine."

By June 16th, they had passed through the towns of Blackfoot, Pocatello, and Squaw Creek, and found what Jackson called "an exceptionally good road" that allowed them to open up the Vermont's throttle as they whirled into the quiet village of Soda Springs.

READER: The first automobile to invade Soda Springs rounded the corner at Whitman's store just at sundown Tuesday night, and with a toot that sounded like a young fog horn, whizzed up Dillon Street and stopped at the Idanha Hotel.

When the cowboys, sheep herders, and Indians recovered from their surprise they caught their breath and let out a whoop that was taken up and passed along the entire length of the block.

The interest in "roulette" and "twenty-one" was temporarily suspended until the strange machine had been thoroughly examined and the curiosity of the crowd appeased.

– The Idanha Chieftan HEAT-MOON: When Jackson would come into a town and the people would see for the first time, would lay their eyes for the first time, on on an automobile a whole new era has arrived, and a sense that even though when eras arrive, we don't quite understand them or know where they're taking us, we still have the sense, everything has just changed.

When this horseless carriage comes into town, things are not gonna be the same ever again in this in this village.

NARRATOR: In Soda Springs, Jackson discovered that yet another personal item had fallen off the bouncing car, this time, it was his coat, with most of his remaining cash.

He telegraphed his wife to wire him $200, in care of the Western Union office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which he now felt confident he would reach in a few days.

On June 17th, they rattled out of town, headed for Wyoming, and quickly made 30 miles until the hub and bearings on a front wheel gave out.

In Montpelier, Idaho, they borrowed some bearings from a farmer's mowing machine and once again had to rely on a local blacksmith to install them.

The delay cost them the rest of the day, but Jackson's optimism was undiminished.

JACKSON: Darling Swipes.

Just a line to say that everything is alright with your wandering boy.

I can't write much, as we sleep, then work.

When you hear that we have reached Rawlins, Wyoming, you will know that I can make the trip a go, so bet all the money you have got on it.

Well old girlie, I can't say any more, you know how I feel.

I shall make up for lost time.

-Nellie.

DUNCAN: If ever there was somebody who saw the glass half full even if it's only a quarter, it's gotta be Horatio Nelson Jackson.

Every time, every single time, it seems, that something goes wrong with his car, and at a time when, you know, a rational person probably would say "I've gone far enough, gave it my best shot; I'll catch the train, go home."

Instead, he writes to his wife and it's this sort of, I don't think it was all bravado or just trying to reassure her that everything was okay, I think he believed it.

He thought, "If I just get over this next thing it's gonna be smooth sailing from here on out," and he said that time and time and time and time again.

Every obstacle that he encountered was going to be the last obstacle, and of course, it never was.

(thunder) NARRATOR: Things got even worse on June 20th, after they had crossed into Wyoming.

A tremendous cloudburst struck the area after they passed through the town of Granger, flooding and washing out the road.

They now resorted to trying to navigate across the open country, changing direction every time they encountered a gully too deep to cross, and getting hopelessly lost.

"We zigzagged as best we could," Jackson wrote.

"Sometimes we went north instead of east; at others we even went northwest, bringing us back where we had been before."

They struggled along for hours, ultimately going 69 miles out of their way.

JACKSON: Coming to the bank of a river, we judged from our maps and compass that it was the Green River, and we resolved to follow its downward course.

When night came on we made camp beside the car, and having lost our cooking outfit and provisions, and it being an uninhabited region went to bed without any supper.

NARRATOR: As they went to sleep that night, Jackson and Crocker had no way of knowing that two other men had started on their own car trip across the country.

KRARUP: San Francisco, June 20th, 1903.

At 2: 00, Tom Fetch took his place at the steering wheel.

Beside him, I took my seat, and the course was steered to the famous Cliff House overlooking the Pacific Ocean... Thence to depart on the long land-bound expedition.

-Marius Krarup.

NARRATOR: Marius Krarup and Tom Fetch had been chosen by the Packard Motor Car Company to drive one of their brand-new 12-horsepower touring cars from San Francisco to New York.

Fetch was already a test driver for the company; Krarup was a reporter for "Automobile Magazine," along to file regular dispatches on what Packard's advertising chief admitted was "a spectacle" to gain publicity and to prove the car's durability.

For three months, well before Horatio Nelson Jackson had ever made his bet, the Packard Company had been planning their trip.

It was everything that Jackson's expedition was not.

Each day's itinerary along the main route of the transcontinental railroad had been pre-determined, with extra supplies placed at strategic points, and the men's personal luggage shipped ahead by train each morning to the next stopping place.

An expert machinist from the Packard factory was even sent along, riding in the car some days, taking the train ahead on others.

Right from the start, Fetch and Krarup made excellent time.

By the fifth day, they had crossed the summits of the Sierra Nevadas at Lake Tahoe and descended into Carson City.

Learning from Alexander Winton's disaster with deep sand two years earlier, they came equipped with two long strips of heavy canvas to roll out across soft spots and provide enough traction to keep from bogging down.

Their first day on the Nevada desert they covered more than 70 miles and felt confident enough about their progress to take the next day off, simply to wait for more film for Krarup's camera.

Everywhere they went, they ignored the fact that Jackson was already on the road, and claimed to be the only "official" team crossing the continent.

(air hand pump) WALL: I think that he had no idea how hard it would be.

BLANCHARD: I think that once he had the focus of accomplishing this dream, that was the, that was what drove him was to finish the trip and do it, and it wasn't the bet.

WALL: No.

BLANCHARD: It wasn't getting the money, it was just doing it.

And in the letters that he sends back, he says, every once in a while, "I'm going to do this."

WALL: Yes.

BLANCHARD: "I'm going to do it."

NARRATOR: When he awoke on the morning of June 21st, Jackson was still lost in western Wyoming, and he would later describe his night camped by the river as the time that "30,000 mosquitoes died on the back of my neck."

But his more immediate concern was food.

It had been nearly 36 hours since they had last eaten, and "as we tightened our belts," he joked later, "both Crocker and I were stealing speculative glances at Bud."

They followed the river south, hoping it would lead them to a town or a homestead.

Instead, they finally came upon a lonely sheepherder, who said he hadn't seen another human being in three weeks and happily offered them a feast of roast lamb and boiled corn, "the finest meal," Jackson said, "I ever ate."

When the sheepherder refused to be paid for the food, Jackson insisted that he at least accept a rifle as a token of appreciation.

"If he had asked us then for my car," Jackson added, "I believe we would have given it to him."

The sheepherder also directed them to the nearest road, and they were soon heading east once more, along the route that would one day become the famed Lincoln Highway, and half a century after that, Interstate 80, the principal thoroughfare across the nation.

It parallelled the transcontinental railroad line and took them through the towns of Bryan, Green River, and Rock Springs.

A circus arrived in Rock Springs the same day, Jackson wrote his wife, "And we are taken for part of the show."

(elephant trumpeting) JACKSON: Monday, June 22nd.

We are spending most of the time trying to get out of water and mud holes.

We buried our car completely in one and after working half a day to get it out again, three Italians came along, each packing a heavy bag.

I explained to them that the next stop was 12 miles away and that if they would help us out I would take their baggage in for them.

This they consented to do and in about an hour we were on our way again.

After delivering their luggage to the section boss we started on for Bitter Creek, crossing two rivers over the railroad bridge.

We had no trouble in crossing railroad bridges.

With practice, bumping over bridge ties is no great task.

Sometimes, though, we had to hunt for five miles to find a place where we could get our machine on the track.

NARRATOR: On June 23rd, exactly one month after leaving San Francisco, they pulled into Rawlins, the same town Jackson had assured his wife would signal easygoing for the rest of the trip.

They made arrangements to stay at the Ferris Hotel, looking forward to their first comfortable bed in nearly a week.

But as Jackson and Crocker drove the short distance to park their car in a livery stable down the street, the Vermont came to a noisy and sudden stop.

The stud bolts holding the connecting rod to the crankshaft sheared off, and pierced through the crankcase cover, the worst mechanical breakdown to date.

This was a problem that could not be fixed without new parts from the Winton factory in Ohio.

Jackson had no choice but to telegraph the company and wait for a train to deliver them.

For five days, Jackson was stuck in Rawlins: arranging for his bank to send him more money, writing long letters to his wife, waiting impatiently for the parts to arrive, and learning for the first time that Fetch and Krarup were on their way from San Francisco in their Packard.

JACKSON: Ferris Hotel, Rawlins, Wyoming.

June 28th, 1903.

My darling Swipes, just a line to say that I am still alive... Our things arrived this morning and we held divine services in the Blacksmith shop.

We shall try and get away tonight.

Our car will now be as good as new.

We have had hard luck, but I think it all came at once.

We shall now try and make a record trip.

The worst of it is over and everyone is congratulating us.

There are others on the way trying to beat us across, but I feel confident they will give it up.

NARRATOR: With their car repaired, Jackson and Crocker headed for Laramie and at Elk Mountain encountered the steepest slopes of their journey, rocky trails in which they sometimes had to jack up the car to get out of deep ruts or stop to push boulders out of their path.

In other places, ranchers were using the road as irrigation ditches, slowing the travelers down even more on the slippery surface.

17 times the men resorted to the block-and-tackle to keep moving.

"I never worked so hard in my life," Jackson told his wife, "but we can show what the machine and good men can do."

Then, in Medicine Bow, they encountered an enterprising storekeeper who had heard just how badly they needed gasoline and smelled an opportunity.

READER: Dr.

Jackson said that when he left Oregon the sheriff there warned him to beware of hold-ups, but that the only place he believed he had been held up so far was at a place called Medicine Bow where they charged him $5.25 for five gallons of gasoline.

– Laramie Boomerang NARRATOR: East of Laramie they struck the best road they had traveled since California's Sacramento Valley, and they sped along on it to Cheyenne.

There, large crowds gathered to gawk at what the Wyoming Tribune called a "Whizz Wagon", and Jackson was elated to find letters from Bertha waiting for him.

JACKSON: July 1st, 1903.

Darling Swipes... I have just shook hands and talked to 200 people and the only way I could get away was to say that I had a little wife at home that was expecting a letter from me.

You don't know how glad I was to get your three dear letters.

They put new vigor into me, you dear girl.

Well, the worst of our trip is over and everyone now says that we can make it, and although there are others on the way we will get there first.

Just watch me now.

-Nellie.

(engine misfiring) (dog whimpering) NARRATOR: But less than an hour out of Cheyenne, the stud bolts on the other connecting rod broke off, and the Vermont ground to a dead stop.

A railroad grading crew towed the car to their isolated camp near the small station of Archer.

Crocker stripped the front seat off the car to get at the engine while Jackson wired the Winton factory once more for replacement parts, and once more settled in to wait for their delivery by train, day after agonizing day.

JACKSON: Sunday, July 5th, 1903.

My darling Swipes... We expected our express on No.

5 at three this afternoon, but a message this noon from the train agent says that he has nothing, so it is another day.

It has been an awful long time to us and I shall be mighty glad when we are on the way again and unless another serious accident happens we ought to be able to make good time across these plains.

Well, tomorrow is our anniversary and I wish I could be with you.

I want to celebrate here by getting my new parts.

I shall think of you a good deal tomorrow, as I always do.

You are the best little wife in the world and I'm a mighty lucky fellow to have you.

Yes, Old Girl, I appreciate it, if, sometimes I have a queer way of showing it.

Four years tomorrow!

They have been very short and dear ones to me.

You have done everything in the world to make me happy.

I shall just tear up the ground until I can be with you.

With lots of love to all, I am yours.

-Nelson P.S.

I am not much of a hand to write love letters: you didn't give me a chance for much practice, but you know dear how I feel.

July 6th, Archer, Wyoming.

Parts did not come today.

NARRATOR: Jackson had now been on the road for 42 days, nearly half of the 90 days specified in his wager.

But he was only a third of the way to New York, and his car now seemed to be breaking down at every turn.

Even worse, with Tom Fetch and Marius Krarup and their Packard following a more direct route, Jackson was concerned that they might be catching up with him.

They were.

Fetch and Krarup had been constantly on the move, averaging twice as many miles a day as Jackson, and running right on schedule.

On July 3rd, they completed their second week of travel by covering 114 miles and reaching Promontory, Utah, where the golden spike joining the first transcontinental railroad had been driven in 1869.

And on July 4th, they drove another 106 miles and pulled into Salt Lake City to a wave of publicity, precisely what the company's advertising executive had planned.

At the rate they were going, despite starting nearly a month later, Fetch and Krarup were now only 10 days behind Jackson and Crocker.

Then, on July 6th, yet another automobile set off from San Francisco.

Lester Whitman and Eugene Hammond, two experienced drivers and automobile mechanics, were driving a 1903 Oldsmobile runabout, the first automobile to be made on an assembly line, and the first that would out-sell electric and steam-powered machines.

It was smaller and cheaper than the two big touring cars that were already on the road.

But like the Packard expedition, this one was also underwritten by the manufacturer.

Following the same route as Fetch and Krarup, Whitman and Hammond quickly crossed the Sierras and were well into Nevada within a week's time.

There were now three automobiles racing to become the first to cross the continent.

(train whistle) JACKSON: July 7th.

Darling Swipes... Parts arrived.

Leave this noon.

Now in good shape.

Hope to be with you soon.

(dog barking) NARRATOR: Jackson and Crocker and Bud were finally on their way once again.

They entered Nebraska, and at the Platte River once more began following the route blazed by the pioneer wagon trains headed for Oregon and California half a century earlier.

DUNCAN: If you're out in the West even today, you can see such great horizons but part of those horizons sometimes are some of the fiercest, frightening storms you can imagine.

They're in the open, in an open-seated car and you see off behind you or off in the distance or coming right at you one of these mothers of all storms, it's gotta be a frightening prospect.

The rain starts pelting you, and of course, you're on a bad road anyway, so there's no place to go, there's no place to hide, you just gotta try to slog it on a little bit further.

(thunder) Even an optimist like Horatio Nelson Jackson must've felt a little bit scared every once in a while and discouraged every time he looked up into the horizon and saw yet another storm coming over.

(thunder) JACKSON: When we crossed into Nebraska the mud became worse instead of better.

Here it rained constantly.

The mud was a cement-like mass that stuck to things like the best Portland.

And it seemed to have no bottom.

The car sank in it clear up to the battery boxes, that is, nearly to the tops of the wheels; and then we would get out the block and tackle and haul it out.

One day we repeated this performance 18 times... These places were locally termed 'buffalo wallows.'

We wallowed in them, sometimes tearing down a section of fence and put them under the wheels to make a foundation.

(dog barking) NARRATOR: They detoured north for a while, away from the Platte River, picking up speed as they finally found better, and drier, roads.

DUNCAN: As he moved east, the car became a sensation less because it was totally new as it had been farther west, but it became in a certain extent a greater sensation because now there was the news that this might be history in the making.

Crocker and Jackson and particularly Bud became celebrities because people wanted to come out now and see whether this guy could make it across or not.

People knew that there were two other cars on the road and that this was something of a race.

NARRATOR: They rushed through Kearney, Grand Island, Columbus, and dozens of smaller towns, and as the telegraph lines announced their impending arrival in each one, people flocked to see Jackson and his machine.

"Disappointment was keen," one newspaper reported, "when he tore through the towns at a 40-mile-an-hour clip, without stopping."

In a final, long day in Nebraska, they covered an astonishing 250 miles, despite breaking a front axle that had to be welded by yet another blacksmith, and on the morning of July 12th they rolled into Omaha, near the place where Lewis and Clark had held their first meeting with a handful of American Indians a century earlier.

Now, a huge crowd turned out to greet Jackson and his expedition.

READER: The "Omaha Morning World-Herald".

The experiences and adventures of the trip have been of an exciting nature, which may be better understood when it is known that he traveled 3,000 miles through a country never before touched by an automobile.

Before leaving, the machine will have a thorough overhauling and be put into condition for fast running.

Incidentally, half a ton of Nebraska clay, which it has gathered during the past few days, will be removed.

NARRATOR: The spreading news of Jackson's quest, as well as the intense publicity surrounding both the Packard and the Oldsmobile journeys, had not only aroused greater public interest in the Vermont's progress; it had spurred the Winton Company into action.

JACKSON: Darling Swipes... On our arrival here I was much surprised to find a man from the factory with a letter congratulating me and stating that they were willing to place men along the line with supplies at their expense.

NARRATOR: The Winton company now offered to provide Jackson with the same financial support the Oldsmobile and Packard companies were giving the other expeditions.

But it would also mean the Winton Company would be in charge of the rest of the trip.

That evening, in his letter to Bertha, Jackson revealed his answer.

JACKSON: I have informed them that we have made the trip so far without their assistance and thought that perhaps we two greenhorns could do the rest of it.

NARRATOR: "Winton's man," he added in a telegram the next morning, as he pulled out of town with Crocker and Bud, "cannot understand how we made it."

Following the route of the Chicago and Northwestern railroad, they sped across Iowa and western Illinois in such a rush that Jackson didn't even stop to send telegrams to Bertha about their progress.

Everywhere they went, people turned out to cheer them on.

Four days after leaving Omaha, they pulled into Chicago, where Jackson proudly told reporters, "We have come to the conclusion that we can run our car over any road that a man can take a team of horses and a wagon, providing we can get traction."

"We were honored with receptions by city officials, automobile dealers, and hero worshippers generally," Jackson wrote, "But the one thought in our minds was to finish."

The next day, a caravan of automobile enthusiasts escorted them out of Chicago, although their departure was delayed a few hours until they could find Bud, who had wandered off in the crowd.

They rushed through Hammond and South Bend, Indiana, then Toledo, Ohio.

And on the 20th of July, the 59th day of their journey, they were personally greeted by the Winton company's advertising manager, Charles B. Shanks, who had accompanied Alexander Winton on his aborted trip in 1901.

Then a convoy of cars led them triumphantly into Cleveland.

JACKSON: Monday Evening.

Darling Swipes, Well Old Girl I have brought the car to its birthplace and a great reception it got.

We had quite a procession into the city.

They are all like a lot of kids... NARRATOR: Surrounded by reporters who now hung on his every word, Jackson said his chief advice to anyone trying to make a similar trip would be for "them to figure out their expenses, and multiply that by 20."

(dog barking) READER: The Jackson party went to the Hollenden Hotel for a clean-up and for supper while the faithful bulldog mascot, so ugly that he's handsome, remained in charge and fought flies and kept off inquisitive newsboys.

-The Motor Age.

NARRATOR: Jackson was now confident that the other two cars could not beat him to New York.

It seemed like a safe bet.

Despite all their meticulous planning, both expeditions had run into problems of their own.

Instead of continuing to follow the direct route of the transcontinental railroad, Tom Fetch and Marius Krarup had turned southeast into the canyons of Utah and the heart of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, a route pre-selected for them by the Packard company's advertising director back in Ohio.

"Like a dumb fool, I was thinking from the standpoint of publicity, with pictures of mountains and canyons," he said later, "but what I sent them into was something" absolutely horrible.

Meanwhile, the Oldsmobile runabout was even farther from its goal.

After a series of breakdowns, Lester Whitman and Eugene Hammond were still in Nevada with a broken part that allowed them to drive in reverse, but not in forward.

(indistinct street noise) JACKSON: Darling Swipes, The car is at the shop and they are to work all night so that I can get away in the morning.

I go from here to Buffalo.

I am tired and got to get up early in the morning and I am damn anxious to get you in my arms.

Watch me now come to you.

-Nel.

NARRATOR: Jackson set off from Cleveland with Crocker and Bud on the 21st of July, intent on reaching his goal as quickly as possible.

To avoid the risk of crossing the Allegheny mountains, he now decided to turn northeast, along the Great Lakes, to Buffalo, then to Albany on a new state road, before turning south again to follow the Hudson River into Manhattan.

It would add several hundred miles to the trip, but, as Jackson told a reporter, "we have had enough of mountains."

They covered the 200 miles to Buffalo in less than two days, despite rain so fierce that Jackson telegraphed: "If it continues, will ask you to send paddles for the wheels and a rudder for the rear of the car."

The Vermont, he told a reporter, was now splattered with samples of mud from every state they had crossed, and he didn't intend to wash any of it off until the trip was finished.

Running on roads that paralleled the old Erie Canal, they pushed on across New York state, sometimes driving well into the night, simply to put more miles behind them.

He was sure he could make it to New York City in less than a week, win his bet, and become the first person to drive across the continent unless the Vermont broke down completely.

(automobile crash) JACKSON: East of Buffalo... Traveling in high, at least 20 miles an hour, the machine struck a hidden obstruction in the road.

Crocker, Bud, and myself were thrown high in the air but fortunately, none of us was hurt.

NARRATOR: The Vermont was bruised, but, to everyone's relief, still able to run.

They drove on, through Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady, determined now not to stop for anything.

They crossed the Hudson at Albany and turned south to follow the east bank of the river.

News of their approach brought out cheering crowds as they passed through the towns of Hudson and Poughkeepsie.

In Peekskill, they were delayed briefly to patch a punctured tire by the glow of a hotel's outside light.

There a delegation of reporters, Winton company officials, and Jackson's wife, Bertha, met them in a fleet of cars to join in the final miles.

It was 4: 30 in the morning on Sunday, July 26th, when they crossed the Harlem River into Manhattan, drove down the city's deserted streets, and finally honked their horn to awaken the night porter at the Holland House Hotel on 30th Street and 5th Avenue.

Jackson had made it from San Francisco in 63 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes, well within his wager of 90 days.

And having become the first to drive a car across the nation, once New York woke up to the news, he and Crocker, and Bud, were the toast of the town.

("Stars and Stripes Forever" playing) READER: "The New York Herald" Dr.

H. Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker, his chauffeur, finished the first transcontinental automobile trip at half past 4:00 yesterday morning.

On their arrival, the mud-besmirched and travel-stained vehicle which had borne them so faithfully and sturdily over 5,600 miles of roads... was housed in a garage in West 58th Street.

All day yesterday it was visited by admiring automobilists, and curious passersby peeped in upon it.

In honor of its achievement, it was decorated with tiny flags and draped with national standards.

A thick coating of mud gave evidence that it had been somewhere and that "somewhere" a long way off.

("Stars and Stripes Forever" continues) NARRATOR: Newspapers all across the nation retold Jackson's story, sometimes embellishing details, including one report that claimed the Vermont had floated across rivers, using its revolving wheels as propellers.

Jackson had lost 20 pounds during the long journey.

And he had spent $8,000 of his own money, the price of the car, a salary for Crocker, food and lodging, the seemingly endless need for new tires and replacement parts, 800 gallons of gasoline, and the $15 to purchase Bud.

But, he said, "it was worth every cent and every pound to win that $50 bet."

And yet, when it was all over, he never bothered to collect his winnings.

BLANCHARD: He never collected the $50 bet.

WALL: Never.

BLANCHARD: Never.

It wasn't the money.

I don't think that was what drove him to do this.

NARRATOR: On Thursday, July 30th, Jackson and his wife, with Bud on board, headed home together in the Vermont.

The trip took a week and was punctuated by the problems and delays he had become accustomed to by now.

The low-speed clutch broke in Hudson, then the high-speed clutch gave out in Albany, and a breaker box failed in Middlebury, Vermont.

Near Shelburne, Jackson's two brothers showed up in their own automobile to escort him and Bertha the final ten miles.

But the cylinder blew out in their car, so Jackson chained it to the Vermont and towed them the rest of the way into Burlington.

He reached his home at last in the late afternoon of August 7 and went to park his trusted car in the stable.

Just as the Vermont crossed the threshold, its drive chain, one of the few parts that had made the entire journey without a problem, snapped in two.

Two weeks later, Tom Fetch and Marius Krarup finally made it to New York, having completed their trip in a day and a half less than Jackson's time, but finishing second nonetheless.

They were escorted into the city by a host of Packards and greeted by a cheering crowd.

"Thank the Lord," one of them said as he got out of the car, "it's over."

On September 17th, Lester Whitman and Eugene Hammond reached New York in their small Oldsmobile runabout in the slowest time of 73 days.

But in a gimmick to gain greater publicity for their company, they then drove up the coast to Boston, where they dipped the Oldsmobile's front wheels into the Atlantic, and claimed to be first true "sea-to-sea" drivers.

Meanwhile, back home in Vermont, Jackson soon had his car up and running again.

GUYER: October 3rd, 1903.

Dr.

H.N.

Jackson, first man to cross the continent in an automobile, was arrested in Burlington, Vermont, and fined $5 plus court costs for driving the machine more than six miles an hour.

(bird screeching) WHITMAN: Lo, soul!

Seest thou not God's purpose from the first?

The earth to be spanned, connected by net-work, The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together.

– Walt Whitman DUNCAN: Three cars had now crossed the continent in the same year and that was significant.

It meant you can do it.

Prior to 1903, it was a question of whether an automobile could make it across the United States; after 1903 the question became, in what time can you make it, in what comfort can you make it, so it was a very important year.

Jackson's trip and the other two of saying that the car is going to be this vehicle of individual freedom and of distance, that it could have this potential to replace the railroad and the horse as the main means of transportation.

And if you wanted to say what defines the 20th century in terms of changes undertaken in the United States, some good and some bad, it'd be hard to get past the automobile as the first thing.

NARRATOR: In 1903, as the nation celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark's first epic journey across the continent, Americans sensed that their world had suddenly gotten much smaller.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a New Year's greeting to England's King Edward VII using Marconi's new wireless radio that could transmit signals across the Atlantic.

In 1903, a cable was laid across the Pacific Ocean, the last link in a web of wires that allowed Roosevelt to telegraph the first message sent around the world.

The complete circuit took 12 minutes.

In 1903, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, named Orville and Wilbur Wright made the world's first airplane flight, soaring in their gasoline-powered machine over the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

And farther down the coast that same year, Alexander Winton drove one of his cars an astonishing 68 miles per hour at Daytona Beach.

HEAT-MOON: I think of all the, the nations on earth, perhaps none has a history that's more closely tied to travel, and particularly the open road, then is American history.

We are a nation in whose history you must understand movement, not only a movement of the mind but clearly a movement of people physically through the landscape.

READER: August 4th, 1903.

What is admitted to be the greatest automobile performance of the year was the transcontinental tour of Dr.

H. Nelson Jackson from San Francisco to New York.

The trip is considered as a signal triumph for the comparatively new means of travel.

The journey was made purely for pleasure and to satisfy an enthusiastic motorist that it could be accomplished.

But it has demonstrated much more than this.

It has shown the possibilities of the automobile, even with the generally disreputable highways which are characteristic of nearly every rural district in the country.

But when good roads shall be the rule, instead of the exception it may be predicted with confidence that such journeys as that made by Dr.

Jackson will be far from extraordinary.

"The Boston Herald" NARRATOR: Within a few years of Jackson's trip, an organized movement began in the United States to improve the nation's roads to accommodate the automobile, to provide better surfaces, better maps, better ways for people in cars to travel wherever they wished to go.

In 1904, an automobile would be driven across the continent in half of Jackson's time; two years later, the time was cut in half once more.

In 1908, Jacob Murdock loaded his wife and children into his new Packard Model Thirty, and drove from Pasadena to New York in 32 days, becoming the first family to drive across the country, and beginning a tradition of road trips that generations of American families would follow.

Murdock refused to let anyone else behind the wheel, didn't like to ask for directions, and some days kept on the move for more than 12 straight hours in order to put some extra miles behind him.

"I know nothing more disheartening," he said, "than to see the sun just about to set below the horizon, when one is many miles from the place he had hoped to make that day."

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 1916, an automobile had raced across its entire length in just five days' time.

Jackson's traveling companion, Sewall Crocker, did not live long enough to see that day.

Immediately after his and Jackson's journey in 1903, he had looked for someone to sponsor him on an automobile trip around the world, but nothing ever came of it.

His health broke and he died in his hometown of Tacoma, Washington, on April 22nd, 1913, at the age of 32.

(dog barking) DUNCAN: Bud went home with, with Jackson and Swipes to Vermont and apparently lived a full life and died and went to dog heaven.

NARRATOR: Horatio Nelson Jackson never stopped moving.

He became a successful businessman, newspaper publisher, radio station owner, president of a bank.

Despite being in his 40s, he insisted on going overseas with the Army in World War I and returned a decorated hero, having received the Distinguished Service Cross as well as France's Croix de Guerre.

Back in the United States, he helped found the American Legion and later ran unsuccessfully for governor of Vermont.

(engine sputtering) In 1944, Jackson donated his car to the Smithsonian Institution, and for the rest of his life never tired of telling anyone who would listen, the story of his great adventure crossing the continent in a 1903 Winton called the Vermont.

WALL: Our grandparents took us to see it.

We motored, as they called it.

And so, we went in and we, we got up into the car.

BLANCHARD: He wanted us to sit... WALL: Yes, sit in the car BLANCHARD: Sit on the car.

WALL: And the little attendant came by and said, "Oh, no, you can't go near it."

So we got down, and he went up and sat in it.

He said, "I guess I can sit in the car if I drove it across the country."

And I'll always remember that.

BLANCHARD: Mm-Hmm.

NARRATOR: By the time Jackson died at age 82, on January 14th, 1955, his nation had already begun planning an interstate highway system, a series of roads that would soon carry millions of cars and trucks from coast to coast, moving at such speeds and in such comfort that anyone traveling them would find it nearly impossible to imagine anything like "Horatio's Drive."

SINGER: You have to get under, get out and get under to fix his little machine.

He was just trying... JACKSON: We have had hard luck, but I think it all came at once.

The worst of it is over and we will get there first.

Just watch me now.

-Horatio Nelson Jackson SINGER: And then the darned old engine, it would miss, and then he'd have to get under, get out and get under and fix up his automobile.

(music playing through credits) Johnny O'Connor bought an automobile, he took his sweetheart on a ride one Sunday.

Johnny was hoped up in his best Sunday clothes, she nestled close to his side.

Things were just dandy 'til he got down the road then something happened to the old machinery, that engine had his goat, off with his hat and coat, everything needed repairs.

He had to get under, get out and get under to fix his little machine.

He was just dying to cuddle his queen, but every minute, when he'd begin it, he had to get under, get out and get under then he'd get back at the wheel.

A dozen times they'd start to hug and kiss and then the darned old engine, it would miss and then he'd have to get under, get out and get under and fix his automobile.

(music continues playing through credits) (dog barking) NARRATOR: Funding for the digital restoration of "Horatio's Drive" was provided by The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund, a member of The Better Angels Society supporting excellence in American history documentaries.

Original production funding was provided by General Motors Corporation, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Park Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and public television viewers.

NARRATOR: "Horatio's Drive" is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.