Today if you were to drive from the East Coast of America to the West Coast it would be a huge journey. According to Google, the journey will take around 4672 kilometers and around 43 hours. That is if you are willing to pay tolls, if not you can add another 316km and three more hours. Whatever way you go, if you go by car it will take a long time and isn’t a particularly fun journey either. Yet if you took that same journey in 1903 it would be a whole new challenge.
In 1903 cars were seen as a fad, something to have fun in but not to be taken seriously. There were few people who understood them, few places to buy petrol and very few roads with proper surfaces to drive on. The world was not ready for cars and neither were people. Yet in 1903, Horatio Nelson Jackson accepted a bet for the sum of $50 that he could drive from New York to San Francisco. Knowing absolutely nothing about car mechanics he brought one along with him, Sewall Crocker.
The pair started their journey in May, 1903 but would not reach San Francisco until July 26th, 64 days later. From the outset, the journey was a disaster. A tire blew just 25km outside of New York, they used their only spare to get going again and still had 4650km to go. From that point on they had to make numerous repairs and lost lots of equipment. Cars in 1903 had no windshield, doors or roof and were far from comfortable. The men managed to lose a lot of their personal possessions along the way.
While they lost a lot of things they found something too. The pair decided to purchase a dog along the way and Bud made most of their journey by their side. As the car had no windshield poor Bud suffered a lot with irritated eyes so Jackson made him his own pair of goggles to help.
While the pair did win the bet and took him the astounding prize of $50, it is estimated it cost them over $3,000 in repairs to get to their destination. Yet in the end, it was not about money. As they traveled across the country they met many who had never seen a car before. One person was so impressed that she gave the wrong directions on purpose so that her cousins in a nearby town could see the car as well.
Before the event took place cars were seen as a joke. After, people started to take them a little bit more seriously. If these machines could make it across the span of America maybe they could be relied upon after all!