On June 9, 1909, a 22-year-old housewife and mother named Alice Huyler Ramsey climbed behind the wheel of a green Maxwell DA touring car in New York City and began a grueling, 3,800-mile journey to San Francisco. Accompanied by three female companions who did not know how to drive, Ramsey navigated treacherous weather and primitive terrain to become the first woman to ever drive an automobile across the continental United States.
The historic 59-day trek was a monumental feat of manual labor and mechanical endurance. Of the nearly 4,000 miles Ramsey covered, only 152 miles were on actual paved roads; the remainder consisted of wheel-deep mud, shifting prairie sands, and rugged mountain trails. Ramsey had to personally change dozens of flat tires, clean her own spark plugs, and repair a broken axle using water from a ditch, single-handedly obliterating the early 20th-century stereotype that women were physically or mechanically unfit to operate modern motor vehicles.
