Today’s Deja Vu article, “In Early 20th Century, Drivers Started Trips With Pump, Ax,” gives some fascinating car history:
In 1900, there were 8,000 private automobiles registered in the U.S.; two decades later, there were eight million.
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Top speed was around 20 miles an hour, and that was only on the tiny fraction of American roads that weren’t dirt, mud or gravel.In 1903, a Vermont doctor, Horatio Nelson Jackson, and his mechanic, Sewell Croker, crossed the continent in 64 days. By 1922, the Literary Digest was telling its readers that “Anybody Can Cross the Country, Now, in Fifty Days.”
Early cars were open, their tires thin, their shock absorbers primitive. Riders would bounce through dust and rain in little more comfort than if they were on a stagecoach. Drivers were advised to travel with tire chains, several jacks, tire casings and tubes, air pumps, block and tackle, wrench, ax and shovel. Tires had to be changed almost as often as gas tanks needed filling (and early cars didn’t have gas gauges).
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Once outside their own towns, drivers also had to be their own navigators. There were almost no road maps or directional signs. Most roads were named informally, if at all. Often, people in the heartland hadn’t traveled much beyond their local area, and motorists learned not to bother asking directions beyond a 15-mile radius.“If we got lost, we’d take to the high ground and search the horizon for the nearest telephone polls with the most wires,” wrote Ms. Ramsey. “It was a sure way of locating the transcontinental railroad, which we knew would lead us back to civilization.”
Most roads were maintained locally and voluntarily, so their condition varied from bad to worse. There were no lights, shoulders or guard rails. Bridges that had been built for horses and carriages didn’t always hold up under a car.
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There were no motels; travelers might find a room in a hotel, but most hotels were in cities, far from the open road, and they catered to traveling salesmen, changing linens only once a week.
[...]The practice of tipping had just begun in the U.S., and tourists both resented and were intimidated by it.