There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

25 Alice Goes for a Drive

120 There’s More to New Jersey . . . forced the trustees of the Girls’ School to resign, and the new board of trustees promptly fired Mrs. Eyler and six of her relatives and friends. The scandal had lasted for five years, but Matron Eyler had finally been vanquished by the press. The triumphant title of a Trenton Times editorial said it all: “At Last.” 25 Alice Goes for a Drive Some feminists look down their noses at “famous firsts”: the first woman astronaut, the first woman to swim the English Channel, the first woman senator, and so forth. And maybe it is a bit condescending to look at women’s history as just a game of catch-up. But what the heck, Alice Huyler Ramsey was an appealing, selfpossessed , competent New Jersey woman who deserves to be remembered for her famous first: back in the summer of 1909, the twenty-two-year-old Ramsey became the first woman to drive an automobile from coast to coast. Ramsey was the young wife of a well-to-do Hackensack attorney. She could have lived a life of ease, but she had a taste for adventure. To indulge his wife—and to keep her from riding horses, which he thought too dangerous, her husband bought her a new Maxwell automobile. This was just before the age of the mass-produced Model T, and cars were still exotic and expensive toys. Ramsey proved to be an excellent motorist and an ace mechanic. In rallies and long-distance trips, she established a reputation as one of the best drivers in the Northeast. A sales manager from the Maxwell company was struck with a public relations inspiration: why not have the plucky woman drive a Maxwell from New York City to San Francisco? When the Maxwell man proposed the idea, Ramsey was embarrassed: “My face felt like a fireball, and I would gladly have disappeared under the table,” she recalled. But the Alice Goes for a Drive 121 more she thought about it, the more enthusiastic she became. She decided to take the challenge and to take along as chaperones three companions who had been passengers with her before: her sisters-in-law and an unmarried female friend from Hackensack. This being 1909, Ramsey had to obtain her husband’s permission. The Maxwell company supplied the car and paid expenses. Maxwell agents on the route were instructed to help by providing guidance through unfamiliar territory. An advance man was hired to precede her by train from town to town, to handle publicity and make hotel accommodations. But it was still a perilous undertaking. Outside of a few big cities, there were virtually no paved roads in the nation and no road maps. Much of the country was still unsettled, and friends advised Ramsey to take a gun along. (She decided not to.) Alice Huyler Ramsey In 1909, the plucky, twenty-two-year-old Alice Ramsey of Hackensack became the first woman to drive an automobile from coast to coast. Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries— Women’s Project of New Jersey Collection. 122 There’s More to New Jersey . . . By modern standards the car was primitive. It was a four-cylinder, 30-horsepower vehicle, with a top speed of forty miles an hour. The crank had to be turned to start the ignition. The tires had no treads. A pulldown canvas top was the only protection against rain and dust. The gas gauge consisted of a wooden ruler that had to be dipped into the gas tank to check the level. The headlamps were started by dropping a pellet in water to generate gas that was then ignited with a match. The car had little storage space, so luggage, spare tires, tire chains, water, and tools had to be lashed on the back and running board. On a rainy June 9, Ramsey and her companions began the trip from the Maxwell headquarters in Manhattan. The first leg, from New York to Chicago, was relatively easy by the standards of 1909. On a good day Ramsey was able to make over 130 miles on the bumpy and dusty roads, reaching Chicago in fourteen days. But conditions deteriorated once she crossed the Mississippi. The roads were hardly roads at all in any sense we would recognize: sometimes they were wagon ruts through the sagebrush; other times they were rain-soaked mudflats. Ramsey became an...