This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that cruises the highways of history every day of the week. I'm Gabe Lusier, and in this episode, we're talking about the fast life of Alice Ramsey, a pioneering female motorist and the first woman to be inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. The day was August seventh, nineteen oh nine. New Jersey homemaker Alice Ramsey completed her historic cross country road trip. She and her three girlfriends had set out from New York City to San Francisco as part of a publicity stunt sponsored by the Maxwell Brisco Motor Company. They had covered thirty eight hundred miles in fifty nine days, with Ramsey behind the wheel the entire way. It was the first time that a woman had ever driven a car coast to coast, helping dispel the sexist belief that women were too emotional and too delicate to handle an automobile. Alice Ramsey's driving career had begun the previous year, when she went out for a horseback ride near her home in Hackensack, New Jersey, only to have her horse get spooked by the noise of a car speeding past them. This close call convinced her attorney husband, John Rathbone Ramsey, that the roads were no longer safe for horses and that his wife would be better off driving a car and so unconcerned with the social norms of the day, he bought a Maxwell touring car and gave it to Alice as a present. The twenty one year old Vassar grad quickly fell in love with the freedom of driving. That summer, she logged six thousand miles on the mostly dirt roads near her home, and later that year she was one of just two women to compete in an endurance reach, traveling two hundred miles to and from Montauk, New York. It was there that she caught the eye of Carl Kelsey, a publicist for the Maxwell Brisco motor company. Kelsey had long thought that the brand was leaving money on the table by only marketing its cars to men, and Alice Ramsey seemed like the perfect partner to help the company break into the women's market. Kelsey proposed that she drive coast to coast with all expenses paid by the company, as a way to prove the dependability of both its cars and women drivers. At that point, it had been five years since Horatio Jackson and Sewell Crocker had become the first men to drive across America. In the time since twenty or so other mail drivers had also completed the same arduous trek. A handful of women had tried to make the drive two, but thus far none had succeeded. Alice Ramsey was determined to be the first. She accepted Kelsey's offer that same day and began making plans to hit the road the following summer. To make her journey as smooth as possible, the Maxwell Company set her up with a dark green nineteen o nine D, a touring car top of the line for the era. It was a four cylinder, thirty horse power vehicle with two bench seats and a removable roof made of imitation leather. The company also promised to pay for all of Ramsey's meals and lodging, as well as any replacement parts that she might need along the way.

Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that cruises the highways of history every day of the week. I'm Gabe Lusier, and in this episode, we're talking about the fast life of Alice Ramsey, a pioneering female motorist and the first woman to be inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. The day was August seventh, nineteen oh nine. New Jersey homemaker Alice Ramsey completed her historic cross country road trip. She and her three girlfriends had set out from New York City to San Francisco as part of a publicity stunt sponsored by the Maxwell Brisco Motor Company. They had covered thirty eight hundred miles in fifty nine days, with Ramsey behind the wheel the entire way. It was the first time that a woman had ever driven a car coast to coast, helping dispel the sexist belief that women were too emotional and too delicate to handle an automobile. Alice Ramsey's driving career had begun the previous year, when she went out for a horseback ride near her home in Hackensack, New Jersey, only to have her horse get spooked by the noise of a car speeding past them. This close call convinced her attorney husband, John Rathbone Ramsey, that the roads were no longer safe for horses and that his wife would be better off driving a car and so unconcerned with the social norms of the day, he bought a Maxwell touring car and gave it to Alice as a present. The twenty one year old Vassar grad quickly fell in love with the freedom of driving. That summer, she logged six thousand miles on the mostly dirt roads near her home, and later that year she was one of just two women to compete in an endurance reach, traveling two hundred miles to and from Montauk, New York. It was there that she caught the eye of Carl Kelsey, a publicist for the Maxwell Brisco motor company. Kelsey had long thought that the brand was leaving money on the table by only marketing its cars to men, and Alice Ramsey seemed like the perfect partner to help the company break into the women's market. Kelsey proposed that she drive coast to coast with all expenses paid by the company, as a way to prove the dependability of both its cars and women drivers. At that point, it had been five years since Horatio Jackson and Sewell Crocker had become the first men to drive across America. In the time since twenty or so other mail drivers had also completed the same arduous trek. A handful of women had tried to make the drive two, but thus far none had succeeded. Alice Ramsey was determined to be the first. She accepted Kelsey's offer that same day and began making plans to hit the road the following summer. To make her journey as smooth as possible, the Maxwell Company set her up with a dark green nineteen o nine D, a touring car top of the line for the era. It was a four cylinder, thirty horse power vehicle with two bench seats and a removable roof made of imitation leather. The company also promised to pay for all of Ramsey's meals and lodging, as well as any replacement parts that she might need along the way.

Although the twenty two year old would do all the driving herself, she didn't make the trip alone. Joining her were her two sisters in law, Neddie Powell and Margaret Atwood, both of whom were in their forties, as well as her sixteen year old friend Hermina Yance. None of these companions knew how to drive, but they all received a crash course in car safety, and by the end of the trip they had changed a combined total of eleven and completed a slew of mechanical repairs. They all dressed for the job too, donning duster coats, hats, veils, and driving goggles to help protect themselves from dirt and dust. On the morning of June ninth, nineteen o nine, Alice Ramsey posed for pictures in the pouring rain outside of Maxwell's showroom in Manhattan, Then, with a wave to the drenched crowd, she and her three friends set off on the long, muddy road to San Francisco. Although it was a marketing stunt, Ramsey's drive was still a serious challenge. Only one hundred and fifty two miles of her nearly four thousand mile route was on paved roads. For the rest of the time she was driving on dirt roads riddled with potholes and wagon ruts. Faced with that kind of terrain, it became clear very quickly that the Maxwell touring car was not well suited for long distance touring. For starters. It lacked a whis which meant that while the fabric roof did keep most of the water out, the riders still got soaked in bad weather. Making matters worse, the car's tires had no tread to stop them from sliding on the wet roads, or to give them any traction when they inevitably got stuck in the mud. Navigating the country's makeshift roads proved equally tricky. At first, Ramsey and her friends had used the Blue Book series of automotive guides, which gave directions using landmarks, since most of the roads didn't have signs yet. Unfortunately, the book editions couldn't quite keep up with the changing landscape, rendering many of the directions useless. For example, at one point early on, the women struggled to find the yellow house and barn where they were supposed to turn left, only to learn, after stopping to ask directions, that the horse loving owner had repainted his house green just to mess with passing motorists. The guidebook's limited usefulness ran out completely when the women traveled west of the Mississippi River, the roads out there were too new and unwieldy to be mapped yet, so Ramsey and her crew had to resort to following telephone poles to get from one town to the next, and sometimes when the path forward was really unclear, the Maxwell company would hire local drivers familiar with the area to lead the women further westward. Yet even then the party occasionally hit a dead end and had to backtrack for miles to try again. In stark contrast, the easiest part of the drive was apparently on the Cleveland Highway in Ohio. That's where Ramsey achieved her personal best what she described as quote the terrific speed of forty two miles per hour. Ohio Aside, most of the trip was slow going thanks to the sorry state of American roadways. But on August seventh, fifty nine days after leaving New York, Alice Ramsey and her friends made it to California. They drove onto a ferry to cross San Francisco Bay and then made their way to Saint James Hotel, where representatives from Maxwell Briscoe were waiting to greet them, along with a huge crowd of adoring fans and reporters. The San Francisco Chronicles celebrated their arrival with the headline pretty women motorists arrive after trip across the continent. It wasn't the most progressive phrasing, but the headline still got the point across Alice Ramsey and her companions had proven that women could go the distance just as well as men, or, as she told one reporter quote, good driving has nothing to do with sex. It's all above the collar. After her time in the spotlight, Ramsey returned to New Jersey by train and lived a quiet life with her family. She and her husband raised two children together, and she can see you'd making coast to coast road trips whenever she could. She lost count after her thirtieth trip, but considering that Ramsey kept her driver's license until age ninety five, I imagine the true number was quite a bit higher. I'm Gabe blues Gay and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show. And if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my way by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot Com. Thanks to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in history class.

Although the twenty two year old would do all the driving herself, she didn't make the trip alone. Joining her were her two sisters in law, Neddie Powell and Margaret Atwood, both of whom were in their forties, as well as her sixteen year old friend Hermina Yance. None of these companions knew how to drive, but they all received a crash course in car safety, and by the end of the trip they had changed a combined total of eleven and completed a slew of mechanical repairs. They all dressed for the job too, donning duster coats, hats, veils, and driving goggles to help protect themselves from dirt and dust. On the morning of June ninth, nineteen o nine, Alice Ramsey posed for pictures in the pouring rain outside of Maxwell's showroom in Manhattan, Then, with a wave to the drenched crowd, she and her three friends set off on the long, muddy road to San Francisco. Although it was a marketing stunt, Ramsey's drive was still a serious challenge. Only one hundred and fifty two miles of her nearly four thousand mile route was on paved roads. For the rest of the time she was driving on dirt roads riddled with potholes and wagon ruts. Faced with that kind of terrain, it became clear very quickly that the Maxwell touring car was not well suited for long distance touring. For starters. It lacked a whis which meant that while the fabric roof did keep most of the water out, the riders still got soaked in bad weather. Making matters worse, the car's tires had no tread to stop them from sliding on the wet roads, or to give them any traction when they inevitably got stuck in the mud. Navigating the country's makeshift roads proved equally tricky. At first, Ramsey and her friends had used the Blue Book series of automotive guides, which gave directions using landmarks, since most of the roads didn't have signs yet. Unfortunately, the book editions couldn't quite keep up with the changing landscape, rendering many of the directions useless. For example, at one point early on, the women struggled to find the yellow house and barn where they were supposed to turn left, only to learn, after stopping to ask directions, that the horse loving owner had repainted his house green just to mess with passing motorists. The guidebook's limited usefulness ran out completely when the women traveled west of the Mississippi River, the roads out there were too new and unwieldy to be mapped yet, so Ramsey and her crew had to resort to following telephone poles to get from one town to the next, and sometimes when the path forward was really unclear, the Maxwell company would hire local drivers familiar with the area to lead the women further westward. Yet even then the party occasionally hit a dead end and had to backtrack for miles to try again. In stark contrast, the easiest part of the drive was apparently on the Cleveland Highway in Ohio. That's where Ramsey achieved her personal best what she described as quote the terrific speed of forty two miles per hour. Ohio Aside, most of the trip was slow going thanks to the sorry state of American roadways. But on August seventh, fifty nine days after leaving New York, Alice Ramsey and her friends made it to California. They drove onto a ferry to cross San Francisco Bay and then made their way to Saint James Hotel, where representatives from Maxwell Briscoe were waiting to greet them, along with a huge crowd of adoring fans and reporters. The San Francisco Chronicles celebrated their arrival with the headline pretty women motorists arrive after trip across the continent. It wasn't the most progressive phrasing, but the headline still got the point across Alice Ramsey and her companions had proven that women could go the distance just as well as men, or, as she told one reporter quote, good driving has nothing to do with sex. It's all above the collar. After her time in the spotlight, Ramsey returned to New Jersey by train and lived a quiet life with her family. She and her husband raised two children together, and she can see you'd making coast to coast road trips whenever she could. She lost count after her thirtieth trip, but considering that Ramsey kept her driver's license until age ninety five, I imagine the true number was quite a bit higher. I'm Gabe blues Gay and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show. And if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my way by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot Com. Thanks to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in history class.