Coast to Coast by Automobile: The Pioneering Trips, 1899–1908. By Curt McConnell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 349. $45.00.

Abstract

Coast to Coast by Automobile is a detailed account of eight early efforts to drive across the North American continent. The first two expeditions, undertaken in 1899 and 1901, met with failure; but from 1903 to 1908, at least six groups successfully crossed from west to east. Dr. H. Nelson Jackson completed the first transcontinental journey on 26 July 1903, arriving in New York City in a stock 1903 Winton touring car approximately 63.5 days after he and his mechanic Sewall K. Crocker left San Francisco. Chapter 2 reports on the Jackson-Crocker venture, and subsequent chapters describe how later groups using teams of drivers managed to reduce total travel time to a little more than 15 days by 1906 and to five days by 1916.