Posted by Christopher Blackwell on February 24, 2026, 5:29 pm
Old Historical Pictures Olden Scrolls · Go to page for picture .Sdsetnpoorgc4iu555uu10ifh3044032ah127lg0mt89f3t35t4h96hc10hh · Old Historical Pi"
In 1909, when most women were expected to master parlors, not pistons, a 22-year-old housewife named Alice Huyler Ramsey decided she would drive from New York to California.
Not ride.
Drive.
She did not bring along a husband to guide her. She did not hire a mechanic to trail behind. She packed three other women into a dark green Maxwell touring car—none of them licensed, none of them trained—and pointed the hood west.
The plan sounded absurd. That was part of the point.
At the time, America barely had roads. What passed for highways were wagon paths gouged into dirt, rutted and unpredictable. After rain, they dissolved into mud. In dry weather, they kicked up choking dust. Gas stations were rare. Road signs were rarer. Maps were optimistic guesses. And women behind the wheel were still treated like curiosities.
Alice did not set out to shatter records. She set out to make a statement: that women were as capable of handling machinery and distance as any man.
Before leaving, she had done something practical and quietly radical. She dismantled her car and put it back together again. If something broke—and something would—she intended to fix it herself.
On June 9, 1909, the Maxwell rolled out of New York City carrying Alice, her two sisters-in-law, and a close friend. They wore long skirts and wide-brimmed hats, the uniform of respectable women. They also carried grit disguised as good humor.
Alice handled the steering wheel every mile. They bumped through Pennsylvania’s rough tracks, navigated Ohio’s fields, and slogged through Midwestern mud that clung to tires like cement. When the road disappeared entirely, they followed railroad lines or aimed for telegraph poles stretching into the horizon. Sometimes they asked farmers for directions. Sometimes they guessed. Tires blew. Eleven of them.
Rain blinded them. Heat baked them. At times, curious men on horseback followed, unsure whether to laugh or salute. Crowds gathered in small towns just to witness the spectacle: four women emerging from a dust-covered automobile, grinning. There were no hotel bookings waiting at the next stop. No repair garages on call. No roadside assistance. When something failed, Alice knelt in the dirt and fixed it. The other women steadied parts, passed tools, and kept spirits from sinking.
The journey stretched across 3,800 miles and nearly two months—59 days of persistence. They crossed deserts and mountain passes. They encountered Native American families living on reservations and farmers who had never seen women travel so far unescorted. Every mile carried the same quiet defiance: we belong here. When they finally reached San Francisco, the reaction was electric. Newspapers splashed headlines across front pages. Reporters marveled. Some men praised the mechanical skill. Many women saw something else.
Possibility.
Alice Ramsey had not shouted slogans. She had not staged protests. She had simply done the thing people insisted women could not do. She proved that independence did not have to be loud to be revolutionary. It could be steady hands on a steering wheel. It could be grease under fingernails. It could be driving straight through doubt.
She became the first woman to cross the United States by automobile, but more than that, she helped redraw the boundaries around what women were allowed to attempt.
Not dramatic. Not boastful. Just fearless enough to keep going west. " ChristopherBlackwell
They clearly didn't have children else that would have been impossible in those days. Plus, their husbands must have been pretty far ahead of their time if they approved. Then again, it sounds like she would have gone anyway.
on February 24, 2026, 5:29 pm
