BY MOTOR TO THE GOLDEN GATE
[Illustration: THE PACIFIC AT LAST!]
BY MOTOR
_to the_
GOLDEN GATE
BY
EMILY POST
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAPHS _and_ ROAD MAPS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON, INC.
Printed in the United States of America
TO
MY YOUNGER SON
BRUCE
PREFACE
“Qui s’excuse s’accuse.” Which, I suppose, proves this a defence to start
with! But having been a few times accused, there are a few explanations I
want very much to make.
When this cross-continent story was first suggested, it seemed the
simplest sort of thing to undertake. All that was necessary was to put
down experiences as they actually occurred. No imagination, or plot
or characterization—could anything be easier? But when the serial was
published and letters began coming in, it became unhappily evident
that writing fact must be one of the most unattainably difficult
accomplishments in the world.
In the first place, only those who, having lived long in a particular
locality and knowing it in all its varying seasons, are qualified truly
to present its picture. The observations of a transient tourist are
necessarily superficial, as of one whose experiences are merely a series
of instantaneous impressions; at one time colored perhaps too vividly, at
another fogged; according to the sun or rain at one brief moment of time.
It would be very pleasant to write nothing but eulogies of people and
places, but after all if a personal narrative were written like an
advertisement, praising everything, there would be no point in praising
anything, would there?
Compared with crossing the plains in the fifties, the worst stretch
of our most uninhabited country is today the easiest road imaginable.
There are no longer any dangers, any insurmountable difficulties. To the
rugged sons of the original pioneers, comments upon “poor roads”—that are
perfectly defined and traveled-over highways—or “poor hotels”—where you
can get not only a room to yourself, but steam heat, electric light, and
generally a private bath—must seem an irritatingly squeamish attitude.
“Poor soft weaklings” is probably not far from what they think of people
with such a point of view.
On the other hand if I, who after all _am_ a New Yorker, were to
pronounce the Jackson House perfect, the City of Minesburg beautiful, the
Trailing Highway splendid, everyone would naturally suppose the Jackson
House a Ritz, Minesburg an upper Fifth Avenue, and the Trailing Highway a
duplicate of our own state roads, to say the least!
I am more than sorry if I offend anyone—it is the last thing I mean to
do—at the same time I think it best to let the story stand as it was
written; taking nothing back that seems to me true, but acknowledging
very humbly at the outset, that after all mine is only _one_ out of a
possible fifty million other American opinions.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IT CAN’T BE DONE—BUT THEN, IT IS PERFECTLY SIMPLE 1
II. ALBANY, FIRST STOP 15
III. A BREAKDOWN 18
IV. PENNSYLVANIA, OHIO AND INDIANA 23
V. LUGGAGE AND OTHER LUXURIES 37
VI. DID ANYBODY SAY “CHICKEN”? 41
VII. THE CITY OF AMBITION 46
VIII. A FEW CHICAGOANS 52
IX. TINS 60
X. MUD!! 67
XI. IN ROCHELLE 72
XII. THE WEIGHT OF PUBLIC OPINION 75
XIII. MUDDIER! 79
XIV. ONE OF THE FOGGED IMPRESSIONS 86
XV. A FEW WAYS OF THE WEST 90
XVI. HALFWAY HOUSE 99
XVII. NEXT STOP, NORTH PLATTE! 107
XVIII. THE CITY OF RECKLESSNESS 119
XIX. A GLIMPSE OF THE WEST THAT WAS 135
XX. OUR LITTLE SISTER OF YESTERDAY 150
XXI. IGNORANCE WITH A CAPITAL I 155
XXII. SOME INDIANS AND MR. X 159
XXIII. WITH NOWHERE TO GO BUT OUT 172
XXIV. INTO THE DESERT 175
XXV. THROUGH THE CITY UNPRONOUNCEABLE TO AN EXPOSITION
BEAUTIFUL 187
XXVI. THE LAND OF GLADNESS 198
XXVII. THE METTLE OF A HERO 205
XXVIII. SAN FRANCISCO 211
XXIX. THE FAIR 229
XXX. “UNENDING SAMENESS” WAS WHAT THEY SAID 237
XXXI. TO THOSE WHO THINK OF FOLLOWING IN OUR TIRE
TRACKS—TO THE MAN WHO DRIVES 241
XXXII. ON THE SUBJECT OF CLOTHES—FOOD
EQUIPMENT—EXPENSES—DAILY EXPENSE ACCOUNT 251
XXXIII. HOW FAR CAN YOU GO IN COMFORT?—SOME DAY 278
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Pacific at last! _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
What we finally carried 8
Stowing the luggage 12
Leaving Gramercy Park, New York 16
Still in New York State 20
The crowd in less than a minute. “Out of the window”
in Cleveland 34
One of the exciting things in motoring is wondering what
sort of a hotel you will arrive at for the night 44
Hours and hours, across land as flat and endless as the
ocean 84
A bedroom in the Union Pacific Hotel, North Platte—not
much of a hardship, is it? 108
A straight, wide road; not even a shack in sight—and
a speed limit of twenty miles an hour 112
Wyoming in the ranch country 116
Cripple Creek 120
In the Garden of the Gods 124
Colorado. Pike’s Peak in the distance 128
First cowboys and cattle 132
Halfway across a thrilling ford, wide and deep, on the
Huerfano River 136
A glimpse of the West of yesterday 140
Your route leads through many Mexican and Indian villages 148
The Indian pueblo of Taos 160
To see the sleeping beauty of the Southwest, the path
is by no means a smooth one to the motorist 170
Across the real desert 180
Our chauffeur takes a day off at the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado 184
This is not a gallery in a Spanish palace, but a
gallery in the Mission Inn at Riverside, California 188
In a California garden 192
Under Santa Barbara skies 196
Ostrich Rock, Monterey, California 200
On the seventeen-mile drive at Monterey 208
On a beautiful ocean road of California 216
The portico of a California house 226
Sometimes we struck a bad road 244
In order to cross here, E. M. built a bridge with the
logs at the right 248
On the famous “staked plains” of the Southwest 254
BY MOTOR TO THE GOLDEN GATE
CHAPTER I
IT CAN’T BE DONE—BUT THEN, IT IS PERFECTLY SIMPLE
“Of course you are sending your servants ahead by train with your luggage
and all that sort of thing,” said an Englishman.
A New York banker answered for me: “Not at all! The best thing is to put
them in another machine directly behind, with a good mechanic. Then if
you break down the man in the rear and your own chauffeur can get you to
rights in no time. How about your chauffeur? You are sure he is a good
one?”
“We are not taking one, nor servants, nor mechanic, either.”
“Surely you and your son are not thinking of going alone! Probably he
could drive, but who is going to take care of the car?”
“Why, he is!”
At that everyone interrupted at once. One thought we were insane to
attempt such a trip; another that it was a “corking” thing to do. The
majority looked upon our undertaking with typical New York apathy. “Why
do anything so dreary?” If we wanted to see the expositions, then let us
take the fastest train, with plenty of books so as to read through as
much of the way as possible. Only one, Mr. B., was enthusiastic enough
to wish he was going with us. Evidently, though, he thought it a daring
adventure, for he suggested an equipment for us that sounded like a
relief expedition: a block and tackle, a revolver, a pickaxe and shovel,
tinned food—he forgot nothing but the pemmican! However, someone else
thought of hardtack, after which a chorus of voices proposed that we stay
quietly at home!
“They’ll never get there!” said the banker, with a successful man’s
finality of tone. “Unless I am mistaken, they’ll be on a Pullman inside
of ten days!”
“Oh, you _wouldn’t_ do that, would you?” exclaimed our one enthusiastic
friend, B.
I hoped not, but I was not sure; for, although I had promised an editor
to write the story of our experience, if we had any, we were going solely
for pleasure, which to us meant a certain degree of comfort, and not to
advertise the endurance of a special make of car or tires. Nor had we
any intention of trying to prove that motoring in America was delightful
if we should find it was not. As for breaking speed records—that was the
last thing we wanted to attempt!
“Whatever put it into your head to undertake such a trip?” someone asked
in the first pause.
“The advertisements!” I answered promptly. They were all so optimistic,
that they went to my head. “New York to San Francisco in an X— car for
thirty-eight dollars!” We were not going in an X— car, but the thought of
any machine’s running such a distance at such a price immediately lowered
the expenditure allowance for our own. “Cheapest way to go to the coast!”
agreed another folder. “Travel luxuriously in your own car from your own
front door over the world’s greatest highway to the Pacific Shore.” Could
any motor enthusiasts resist such suggestions? We couldn’t.
We had driven across Europe again and again. In fact I had in 1898 gone
from the Baltic to the Adriatic in one of the few first motor-cars
ever sold to a private individual. We knew European scenery, roads,
stopping-places, by heart. We had been to all the resorts that were
famous, and a few that were infamous, but our own land, except for the
few chapter headings that might be read from the windows of a Pullman
train, was an unopened book—one that we also found difficulty in opening.
The idea of going occurred to us on Tuesday and on Saturday we were
to start, yet we had no information on the most important question of
all—which route was the best to take. And we had no idea how to find out!
The 1914 Blue Book was out of print, and the new one for this year not
issued. I went to various information bureaus—some of those whose
advertisements had sounded so encouraging—but their personal answers
were more optimistic than definite. Then a friend telegraphed for me
to the Lincoln Highway Commission asking if road conditions and hotel
accommodations were such that a lady who did not want in any sense to
“rough it” could motor from New York to California comfortably.
We wasted a whole precious thirty-six hours waiting for this answer. When
it came, a slim typewritten enclosure helpfully informed us that a Mrs.
Somebody of Brooklyn had gone over the route fourteen months previously
and had written them many glowing letters about it. As even the most
optimistic prospectus admitted that in 1914 the road was as yet not a
road, and hotels along the sparsely settled districts had not been built,
it was evident that Mrs. Somebody’s idea of a perfect motor trip was
independent of roads or stopping-places.
Meanwhile I had been told that the best information was to be had at the
touring department of the Automobile Club. So I went there.
A very polite young man was answering questions with a facility
altogether fascinating. He told one man about shipping his car—even the
hours at which the freight trains departed. To a second he gave advice
about a suit for damages; for a third he reduced New York’s traffic
complications to simplicities in less than a minute; then it was my turn:
“I would like to know the best route to San Francisco.”
“Certainly,” he said. “Will you take a seat over here for a moment?”
“This is the simplest thing in the world,” I thought, and opened my
notebook to write down a list of towns and hotels and road directions. He
returned with a stack of folders. But as I eagerly scanned them, I found
they were all familiarly Eastern.
“Unfortunately,” he said suavely, “we have not all our information yet,
and we seem to be out of our Western maps! But I can recommend some very
delightful tours through New England and the Berkshires.”
“That is very interesting, but I am going to San Francisco.”
His attention was fixed upon a map of the “Ideal Tour.” “The New England
roads are very much better,” he said.
“But, you see, San Francisco is where I am going. Do you know which route
is, if you prefer it, the least bad?”
“Oh, I see.” He looked sorry. “Of course if you _must_ cross the
continent, there is the Lincoln Highway!”
“Can you tell me how much work has been done on it—how much of it is
finished? Might it not be better on account of the early season to take a
Southern route? Isn’t there a road called the Santa Fé trail?”
“Why, yes, certainly,” said the nice young man. “The road goes through
Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona. It would be warmer assuredly.”
“How about the Arizona desert? Can we get across that?”
“That _is_ the question!”
“Perhaps we had better just start out and ask the people living along the
road which is the best way farther on?”
The young man brightened at once. “That would have been my suggestion
from the beginning.”
Once outside, however, the feasibility of asking our road as we came to
it did not seem very practical, so I went to Brentano’s to buy some maps.
They showed me a large one of the United States with four routes crossing
it, equally black and straight and inviting. I promptly decided upon the
one through the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh and St. Louis when
two women I knew came in, one of them Mrs. O., a conspicuous hostess in
the New York social world, and a Californian by birth. “The very person
I need,” I thought. “She knows the country thoroughly and her idea of
comfort and mine would be the same.”
“Can you tell me,” I asked her, “which is the best road to California?”
Without hesitating she answered: “The Union Pacific.”
“No, I mean motor road.”
Compared with her expression the worst skeptics I had encountered were
enthusiasts. “Motor road to California!” She looked at me pityingly.
“There isn’t any.”
“Nonsense! There are four beautiful ones and if you read the accounts of
those who have crossed them you will find it impossible to make a choice
of the beauties and comforts of each.”
She looked steadily into my face as though to force calmness to my poor
deluded mind. “You!” she said. “A woman like you to undertake such a
trip! Why, you couldn’t live through it! I have crossed the continent one
hundred and sixty odd times. I know every stick and stone of the way. You
don’t know what you are undertaking.”
“It can’t be difficult; the Lincoln Highway goes straight across.”
“In an imaginary line like the equator!” She pointed at the map that was
opened on the counter. “Once you get beyond the Mississippi the roads are
trails of mud and sand. This district along here by the Platte River is
wild and dangerous; full of the most terrible people, outlaws and ‘bad
men’ who would think nothing of killing you if they were drunk and felt
like it. There isn’t any hotel. Tell me, where do you think you are going
to stop? These are not towns; they are only names on a map, or at best
two shacks and a saloon! This place North Platte why, you _couldn’t_ stay
in a place like that!”
I began to feel uncertain and let down, but I said, “Hundreds of people
have motored across.”
“Hundreds and thousands of people have done things that it would kill you
to do. I have seen immigrants eating hunks of fat pork and raw onions.
Could you? Of course people have gone across, men with all sorts of
tackle to push their machines over the high places and pull them out
of the deep places; men who themselves can sleep on the roadside or on
a barroom floor. You may think ‘roughing it’ has an attractive sound,
because you have never in your life had the slightest experience of what
it can be. I was born and brought up out there and I know.” She quietly
but firmly folded the map and handed it to the clerk. “I am sorry,” she
said, “if you really wanted to go! By and by maybe if they ever build
macadam roads and put up good hotels—but even then it would be deadly
dull.”
For about five minutes I thought I had better give it up, and I called
up my editor. “It looks as though we could not get much farther than the
Mississippi.”
“All right,” he said, cheerfully, “go as far as the Mississippi. After
all, your object is merely to find out how far you _can_ go pleasurably!
When you find it too uncomfortable, come home!”
[Illustration: WHAT WE FINALLY CARRIED]
No sooner had he said that than my path seemed to stretch straight
and unencumbered to the Pacific Coast. If we could get no further
information, we would start for Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis,
as we had many friends in these cities, and get new directions from
there, but as a last resort I went to the office of a celebrated touring
authority and found him at his desk.
“I would like to know whether it will be possible for me to go from here
to San Francisco by motor?”
“Sure, it’s possible! Why isn’t it?”
“I have been told the roads are dreadful and the accommodations worse.”
He surveyed me from head to foot with about the same expression that he
might have been expected to use if I had asked whether one could safely
travel to Brooklyn.
“You won’t find Ritz hotels every few miles, and you won’t find Central
Park roads all of the way. If you can put up with less than that, you can
go—easy!” Whereupon he reached up over his head without even looking,
took down a map, spread it on the table before him, and unhesitatingly
raced his blue pencil up the edge of the Hudson River, exactly as the
pencil of Tad draws cartoons at the movies.
“You go here—Albany, Utica, Syracuse.”
“No, please!” I said. “I want to go by way of Pittsburgh and St. Louis.”
“You asked for the best route to San Francisco!” He looked rather annoyed.
“Yes, but I want to go by way of St. Louis.”
“Why do you want to go to St. Louis?”
“Because we have friends there.”
“Well, then, you had better take the train and go and see them!”
Indifferently he took down another map and made a few casual blue marks
on the mountains of Pennsylvania. “They’re rebuilding roads that will be
fine later in the season, but at the moment [April, 1915] all of these
places are detours. You’ll get bad grades and mud over your hubs! Of
course, if you’re set on going that way, if you want to burn any amount
of gasoline, cut your tires to pieces, and strain your engine—go along to
St. Louis. It’s all the same to me; I don’t own the roads! But you said
you wanted to take a motor trip.”
“Then Chicago is much the best way?”
“It is the _only_ way!”
He did not wait for my agreement, but throwing aside the second map and
turning again to the first, his pencil swooped down upon Buffalo and
raced to Cleveland as though it fitted in a groove. He seemed to be in a
mental aeroplane looking actually down upon the roads below.
“There is a detour you will have to take here. You turn left at a white
church. This stretch is dusty in dry weather, but along here,” his pencil
had now reached Iowa and Nebraska, “you will have no trouble at all—if it
doesn’t rain.”
“And if it rains?”
“Well, you can get out your solitaire pack!”
“For how long?” The vision of the sort of road it must be if that man
thought it impassable was hard to imagine.
“Oh, I don’t know; a week or two, even three maybe. But when they are
dry there are no faster roads in the country. What kind of a car are you
going in?”
I told him proudly. Instead of being impressed by its make and power
he remarked: “Humph! You’d better go in a Ford! But suit yourself! At
any rate, you can open her wide along here, as wide as you like if the
weather is right.” At the foot of the Rocky Mountains his pencil swerved
far south.
“Way down there?” I asked. “That is all desert. Can we cross the desert?”
“Why can’t you?” He looked me over from head to foot. I had felt he held
small opinion of me from the start. “I only wondered if the roads were
passable,” I answered meekly.
“The _roads_ are all right.” He accented the word “roads.”
“I was wondering if there were hotels.”
“And what if there aren’t? Splendid open dry country; won’t hurt anyone
to sleep out a night or two. It’d do you good! A doctor’d charge you
money for that advice. I’m giving it to you free!”
On the doorstep at home I met my amateur chauffeur.
“Have you found out about routes?” he asked.
“We go by way of Cleveland and Chicago.”
He looked far from pleased. “Is that so much the best way?”
“It is the _only_ way,” and I imitated unconsciously the voice of the
oracle of the touring bureau.
* * * * *
One would have thought that we were starting for the Congo or the North
Pole! Friends and farewell gifts poured in. It was quite thrilling,
although myself in the rôle of a venturesome explorer was a miscast
somewhere. Every little while Edwards, our butler, brought in a new
package.
One present was a dark blue silk bag about twenty inches square like a
pillow-case. At first sight we wondered what to do with it. It turned
out afterward to be the most useful thing we had except a tin box, the
story of which comes later. The silk bag held two hats without mussing,
no matter how they were thrown in, clean gloves, veils, and any odd
necessities, even a pair of slippers. The next friend of mine going on a
motor trip is going to be sent one exactly like it!
By far the most resplendent of our presents was a marvel of a luncheon
basket. Edwards staggered under its massiveness, and we all gathered
around its silver-laden contents; bottles and jars, boxes and dishes,
flat silver and cutlery, enamelware and glass, food paraphernalia enough
to set before all the kings of Europe.
“I could not bear,” wrote the giver, “to think of your starving in the
desert.”
[Illustration: STOWING THE LUGGAGE]
Mr. B. brought us a block and tackle and two queer-looking canvas squares
that he explained were African water buckets. All we needed further, he
told us, were fur sleeping-bags and we would be quite fixed!
Another thing sent us was an air cushion. Air cushions make me feel
seasick, but the lady who traveled with us loved them. By the way, we
added a passenger at the last moment. On Friday afternoon, a member of
our family announced she was going with us to protect us.
“The only thing is,” we said, “there is no place for you to sit except in
the back underneath the luggage.”
“I adore sitting under luggage; it is my favorite way of traveling,” she
replied. And as we adore her, our party became three.
We had expected to leave New York about nine o’clock in the morning,
but at eleven we were still making selections of what we most needed to
take with us, and finally choosing the wrong things with an accuracy
that amounted to a talent. Besides our regular luggage, the sidewalk was
littered with all the entrancing-looking traveling equipment that had
been sent us, and nowhere to stow it. By giving it all the floor space of
the tonneau, we managed to get the big lunch basket in. Then we helped
in the lady who traveled with us and added a collection of six wraps,
two steamer rugs, and three dressing-cases, a typewriter, a best big
camera and a little better one—with both of which we managed to take the
highest possible percentage of worst pictures that anyone ever brought
home—a medicine chest, and various other paraphernalia neatly packed over
and around her. Of this collection our passenger was allowed one of the
dressing-cases, two wraps and a big bag. As there was not room for three
bags on the back, my son and I divided a small motor trunk between us; I
took the trays and he the bottom. It seemed at the time a simple enough
arrangement.
On our way up Fifth Avenue, two or three times in the traffic stops, we
found the motors of friends next to us. Seeing our quantity of luggage,
each asked: “Where are you going?”
Very importantly we answered: “To San Francisco!”
“No, really, where are you going?”
“SAN-FRAN-CIS-CO!!!” we called back. But not one of them believed us.