The Guy Who Drove Across America For A $50 Bet

foreign Social Club a lively debate was about to begin club members were fixated on a discussion about cars the question was whether these new Horseless carriages could ever replace the horse but it wasn't much of an argument because most of these club members agreed that the car was a fad a trend that would only temporarily remain relevant before people came to their senses now this might seem silly today but honestly at the time most believed it this was 1903 almost nobody owned a car for the most part they were just too expensive the cheapest budget models would usually cost 650 or so which was about a year and a half of the average worker's salary and this was the low end stuff if you wanted a nicer vehicle that might cost 10 times as much as what most people would make in a year these were for the wealthy and even then not everybody had one because the reality was they weren't really that useful people had horses and carriages and Society was built around this you generally lived and worked in the same town if you needed to go across the country or another state you just use the railroads the Transcontinental Railroad could get you from coast to coast in three and a half days the car couldn't get you from coast to coast ever very few roads in the United States were paved because why would they need to be outside of the major cities you generally expect to find a dirt path and out west in the most undeveloped regions miles from civilization a car was useless even in the cities in the ideal circumstances these cars were extremely unreliable if you wanted to just take a drive for even a few miles it wouldn't be too unexpected to have some mechanical failure or need a repair along the way this is a time before any standards of what a car should even be existed some models had Electric engines some steam and some powered by gasoline sometimes the steering wheel was on the left side or the right or you might not even have one some cars had three wheels some four and most cars didn't have doors or roofs or windshields they were seen as unsafe a nuisance for pedestrians and cyclists alike some states went as far as passing laws to ban cars or at least limit their use with extreme restrictions an automobile back then was this uncommon expensive impractical means of transportation that was seen as little more than a status symbol for the wealthy they were not seen as legitimate competition to horses now as this debate went on a guest at the club decided to chime in his name was Horatio Nelson Jackson he was not from San Francisco he was from Vermont years prior he had been a doctor but fell ill to tuberculosis and left his practice behind he was in town because he was heading home after searching for gold and silver in Alaska and Mexico Horatio liked cars you could call him something of a motoring Enthusiast he wasn't a expert by any means or even a proficient mechanic he was just a fan and he didn't take too kindly to somebody trash talking about this cool new technology he believed that the car could replace the horse it had potential and he would prove it to these naysayers so he made a bet the wager was for fifty dollars and he claimed he would get a car and drive it from San Francisco to New York City in under 90 days this seemed unreasonable to the members of the club because it had never been done before and people had tried every car manufacturer would love to have made the first car to drive across the country and some had gone through great planning and expense to try and make it happen but they never could it was just too difficult the infrastructure did not exist how could you cross the Great Plains what if the car broke down how would you get repairs in a timely manner even with seemingly unlimited funds and months of meticulous planning these corporate sponsored teams couldn't come close to driving across the United States and then this guy this random guy is betting that he'll be the first to do it with no experience or training or motivation beyond the fact that he wants to do it so they accepted the bet a 50 wager might seem a bit low for such a massive endeavor and that's because it was don't get me wrong fifty dollars was still a lot of money in 1903 it would be the equivalent of around Seventeen hundred dollars in 2023. Horatio's wife was traveling with him at the time and when he told her about this bet she surprisingly didn't seem to mind she wasn't gonna ride along with him she just took the train back to Vermont he was going to need somebody to join him in this adventure though because you know he wasn't a mechanic but he knew one Sewell K Crocker a 22 year old former bike racer turned auto mechanic now there's some discrepancies of whether Sewell and Horatio knew each other well before this adventure some statements claim Sewell taught Horatio and his wife to drive cars before but regardless Sewell was coming along he suggested that Horatio should buy a 1903 Winton touring car which he believed to be the most reliable model around it was a fancy car and it came at a price since this was a fancy car not a lot of people had this specific model especially out west most of the time people would order cars directly from the factory so you weren't really gonna find something like this at a local car dealership luckily a Wells Fargo executive in San Francisco had that exact model and offered it to Horatio for three thousand dollars this was about 500 over the list price and the car already had quite a few miles on it the tires were not in great shape but Horatio bought it anyway if you were wondering three thousand dollars in 1903 money would be like a hundred grand today which is pretty expensive and excessive when you consider that this isn't an attempt to win a 50 bet now the reason Horatio had this kind of money is all because his wife's family was incredibly wealthy they got their Fortune from something called a celery curiel whatever that was and he was gonna need that money because this was gonna be expensive he named his expensive new car the Vermont because he was from Vermont makes events over the next few days he got some supplies plop those in the back of the car and just four days after making this bet Horatio and Crocker set out on a journey with no expertise or Preparation these two were going on the first cross-country road trip in American history Horatio may not have had a plan on how he was going to get to New York but he did have a general strategy in mind he wanted to avoid the roughest terrain the mountains the deserts so from San Francisco they just went North pretty quickly the true scale of this challenge became apparent almost immediately the car needed repairs and it would continue to need repairs every few miles the winton's top speed was a humble 30 miles per hour but it wasn't like they were going to reach that on the rough roads in the west this was going to be a slow Journey as they went through the first few towns they started to get quite a bit of attention from the locals not because they were trying to make history by crossing the United States in a car no know it was just because they had a car cars weren't common even in the cities so most people in these small towns had never seen one of these things they didn't even know if they would see one again every time these guys would show up in a small town it would be a big story the newspapers would report that a car was coming to town so people would line up and down the streets kids would try to get out of school the whole town would stop what it was doing just to try and see these two guys driving a car they'd ask for rides it would be a big event rumors would spread across the countryside a car is coming to town and this just brought a huge surge of excitement through these rather isolated communities a lot of people didn't really know what these things were or what they were capable of and because of that some seem to have some pretty Grand expectations there's reports that people expected this car to zoom through the center of town at like 90 miles per hour it was going to be so fast you couldn't even see it the car was also a sensation since Horace and Crocker might have to spend a few nights at each location because the car was breaking down constantly some repairs were simpler than others and maybe a blacksmith could throw something together but if some specialty part broke the only way to get a replacement was to contact the manufacturer and wait for them to ship it across the country which might take a few days they had to stop for supplies frequently too as much of their stuff would fly off the car since it was a pretty bumpy ride even if they had three months to make this journey I don't think anybody genuinely expected them to get to New York City on time as they got further away from the western coast they saw less and less people the roads turned into Trails which turned into Untamed Wilderness if they ran into a shallow Creek they might be lucky to drive through it but more than likely they'd have to bring out the old block and tackle to get this car unstuck through the thick mud if there was a boulder in the way you gotta move the boulder every few miles had some sort of obstacle getting traction was a challenge it might require ripping up fences and getting those under the car without road signs or roads it was difficult for these guys to figure out where exactly they were going which sometimes resulted in some backtracking until they found their bearings the best case scenario was to run into the railroad tracks which they could then take to cross some of the more difficult Terrain in the Lesser populated areas they would come across people who hadn't seen another human in weeks and relied on their generosity for lodging and food but sometimes nobody was around they might go days without eating and this all became pretty dangerous when you consider the possibility that the car was constantly breaking down on occasion the car would just come to a halt and there was no easy way to fix it on the road so they'd have to hope that somebody would just come along and find them at one point this assistance came from a guy and a horse who then had to tow the car back to town with his horse because this is 1903 obviously there weren't any gas stations they'd have to find local shops that sold fuel for farm equipment and hoped that they didn't get swindled by opportunistic businessmen the weather could also be quite an issue even just driving normally the crew were goggles since you know there wasn't a windshield but without a door without any protection they were stuck in the rain thunder or worse with Nowhere to Run most days Horatio wrote back to his wife who he called swipes for some reason he kept telling her well it's been pretty rough so far but I'm sure once we get to the next town it's gonna be a lot easier and he just kept saying that for every new town and it never got easier in the most remote regions of the sparsely populated West the car became even more of a spectacle sometimes too much of a spectacle they encountered a man who had likely never seen or even heard of a car before and he was so scared by this mysterious oncoming vehicle that he scrambled to set his horse is free he thought it was a train that had derailed and it was coming straight for him Horatio left his jacket in a hotel in Idaho and when he realized that he drove back to the town to retrieve it when he got there a man asked him if he wanted a new mascot for his journey it was a dog his name was Bud Budd was a good dog he traveled the countryside wearing these goggles and people just loved him why wouldn't they he was a dog riding a car to get from San Francisco to Cheyenne it took 42 days at that pace the prospect of making it across the country in under 90 days seemed less realistic but they carried on anyway you see this road trip was about to turn into a race on June 20th two other men set out from San Francisco with the same plan as Horatio and Crocker they were gonna drive to New York City but they had some big names backing them up the Packard motor car company was sponsoring their trip and this was all planned well before Horatio made his bet every aspect of the route the placement of supplies repairs it was all planned in detail in fact they were so confident in their success that this was really more of a publicity stunt they would take breaks waiting for film to arrive to capture the moment this was all to show off that Packard's cars could make the journey and the crew didn't even need to consider it much of a race Horatio and Crocker didn't have that backing and they certainly didn't have this planned out then on July 6 another team sponsored by Oldsmobile also left San Francisco this was now a three-way race but Horatio and Crocker had no idea at the time they were even in one they were in the middle of the country and just hadn't gotten the news yet the problem now was that the Packer team was actually about to overtake them in a few days without having to worry about waiting for repairs with all of this actually planned in advance they were moving at near nearly twice the rate as a ratio in Crocker now once the two found out they had some competition it didn't really change anything Horatio was still confident that he could not only make it to New York City but he would win this race that he just found out he was a part of I love this man as they finally made it to the Midwest they started getting some different reactions it wasn't the car getting the attention now cars were far more common the further east you went but Horatio and Crocker and especially Bud had gotten pretty famous over the past few weeks they had made it a decent way across the country and had tackled the most difficult part of their Journey the further they moved East the better the roads would be and they'd actually have access to more parts and lodging and food while it wasn't going to be easy they had shown they were definitely capable of getting to New York City it was no longer really a question of whether they'd make it it was just when the Winton company the man who manufacturer who made Horatio's beloved car contacted the team and offered to sponsor the rest of their Journey they would have access to all the resources they would need supplies Parts repairs and the trip would become significantly easier Horatio declined this the other two teams with sponsors might have started off strong but now they were having their own issues the Packer company pretty much had this in the bag they were about to pass a ratio within just a few days the marketing team for the Packer company didn't plan a route of convenience or ease instead they picked the most photogenic path which meant going into canyons and even the Rocky Mountains without roads in these early cars this was nearly impassable especially in a reasonable time frame and it slowed them down to a point where they pretty much lost any chance of winning as for the Oldsmobile team well they started so late they were probably never going to win anyway by the time Horatio and Crocker and and of course bud got to the east it was clear they were about to win so now every stop they made resulted in huge crowds tons of publicity because this was history being made it was clear that they were going to be the first people to cross the country in a car and they were on July 26th they made it to New York City at 4 30 in the morning the plan was to cross the country in 90 days the journey took 63. of course the crew was treated as National Heroes the Vermont was now a modern Marvel this machine had taken men from one side of the country to the other sure it wasn't as fast as the railroads but they did it in their own way while their Journey was incredibly difficult it showed something about the car that few people realized before that point it had a purpose it gave you a sense of Freedom these guys picked their own route visited all the towns they wanted to move through the country on their own terms rather than being forced on a straight path and because of this because a car could go across the country this machine that was disregarded by many as a toy or novelty kinda became something more now after this whole Adventure Horatio went home with his wife to Vermont in the Vermont which still kept breaking down he never collected the 50 bet which makes sense honestly this was never about the money but he did end up spending a lot of money throughout all of this he had spent eight thousand dollars which in today's money is about 274 thousand dollars with the constant repairs the incredibly inefficient fuel consumption lodging costs food paying for Crocker to do all of this it added up but it proved that you could drive across the country if you really really wanted to eventually the Packard and Oldsmobile teams made it to New York the Oldsmobile team was the slowest but they had a cheeky way of trying to make the most out of this they dip their car tires in the Atlantic to try and claim that they had actually gone from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic so you know that that's the one that actually counts the Packer team managed to make it in less time overall than Horatio but they were still in second place after all of this with three separate teams now crossing the country successfully more people became interested in the challenge how fast could you make it from one side to the other several more attempts were made by different individuals cutting the time down quite a bit but there was clearly a demand for better infrastructure as cars got cheaper and more people started buying them there was more incentive to build better roads and by 1913 the first transcontinental Highway was built the Lincoln Highway it would take a few more decades for the modern Road systems of the US to be built and even today they still aren't perfect but if you want to drive from one end of the country to the other it's a lot easier this moment though in 1903 is still something special the country that Horatio drove through was real really won at the end of an era a country before modern Transportation one of small isolated towns and Horatio got to see a lot of it and while his intentions were just to prove this one guy wrong he kind of ended up proving his point to the whole country after this whole experience Crocker wanted to try something more ambitious to go around the world in a car however that never really worked out for him before he got the chance he fell ill and died rather young Horatio Jackson continued being Horatio Jackson having a successful set of business ventures but still seeking Adventure he founded in World War one where he enlisted at the age of 42 going on to be a decorated soldier in 1944 he donated the Vermont to the Smithsonian from then on he would occasionally go and visit his old car at the Museum Horatio's achievements are some of the most bizarre in American history in all of exploration actually most of these accomplishments in human history are fueled by Grand aspirations of Fame wealth or political Edge but this was a man taking on one of the greatest challenges of the time because he wanted to win an argument because he liked cars because he thought it would be fun and that is Horatio Nelson Jackson

Channel: AlternateHistoryHub

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Keywords: Horatio, Horatio's Drive, the guy who droves across america, drove across america, america road trip, the first american road trip, history of cars, horatio drive, alternatehistoryhub horatio's drive, history stories, funny history story, the first cars, the guy who drove across america for a $50 bet, 1900 cars, steel ball run, race in 90 days, alternatehistoryhub, pointlesshub, alternate history

Id: nDo2Rpi1Gi0

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023