1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California. Ramsey was born Alice Taylor Huyler, the daughter of John Edwin Huyler, a lumber dealer, and Ada Mumford Farr. She attended Vassar College from 1903 to 1905. On January 10, 1906, in Hackensack, New Jersey, Ramsey married congressman John R. Ramsey (1862–1933), with whom she had two children. In 1908 her husband bought her a new Maxwell runabout. That summer she drove over 6,000 miles near their Hackensack home. On June 9, 1909, the 22-year-old housewife and mother began a 3,800-mile journey from New York City to San Francisco in a green, four-cylinder, 30-horsepower Maxwell DA. On her 59-day trek she was accompanied by two older sisters-in-law and 19-year-old friend Hermine Jahns, none of whom could drive a car. They arrived amid great fanfare on August 7, although about three weeks later than originally planned. The group of women used maps from the American Automobile Association to make the journey. Only 152 of the 3,600 miles that the group traveled were paved. Over the course of the drive, Ramsey changed 11 tires, cleaned the spark plugs, repaired a broken brake pedal and had to sleep in the car when it was stuck in mud. The women mostly navigated by following the telephone poles with more wires in hopes that they would lead to a town. Along the way, they crossed the trail of a manhunt for a killer in Nebraska, Ramsey received a case of bedbugs from a Wyoming hotel, and in Nevada they were surrounded by a Native American hunting party with bows and arrows drawn. In San Francisco, crowds awaited them at the St. James Hotel. Ramsey was named the "Woman Motorist of the Century" by AAA in 1960.
