Alco, Ty Cobb & the 1909 New York to Atlanta Good Roads Tour
After their 1909 win at the Vanderbilt Cup Races, Alco went on tour to Atlanta.
From the 'Randon Connections' blog site. A blog site with collections of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond, with photographs credited to the Detroit Public Library.
Greg O.
It was early 20th Century and cars were just coming into their own. However, the roads weren’t keeping up. Most were still dirt tracks at the best of times, and terrible mud pits at others. A cross-country trek was an adventure, and only for those with the means to obtain and maintain an automobile. Good roads were needed, so several long-distance treks were planned. Typically, these were sponsored by local or national automobile clubs such as American Automobile Association (AAA).
Many of these tours took on the aspect of competition. Emerging automobile companies were keen to show off their new vehicles, and drivers wanted to show of their skills. In 1902 the AAA began a series of tours highlighting the condition of US roads. In 1905 industrialist and automobile enthusiast Charles Jasper Glidden began offering a $2000 prize to the first vehicle that completed the tour, along with the “Glidden Trophy.” The tours not only highlighted the need for good roads but also showed off the reliability of different vehicles. The races became known as the “Glidden Tours,” and were run annually. In 1913, “it was felt the the purposes which had given rise to its birth had been fulfilled, and the activity ended”. In addition, the Indianapolis 500 had begun in 1911, and had stolen some of the Glidden Tours’ thunder as “the most grueling test for automobiles"
1908 NY to Paris
Up to 1908, the longest, and most grueling of tours was the around the world 1908 New York To Paris Race. The granddaddy of all endurance tours.
Instantly making it an eternal motoring legend, the 1907 Thomas Flyer took home the prize as it came in first to Paris.
The Flyer seen here at Pike's Peak on a Long Island Automotive Museum postcard.
1909 NY to Atlanta- Alco
The following year, at a fraction of the distance, but nearly as challenging, was the 1909 New York to Atlanta Tour.
Fresh from their win at the 1909 Vanderbilt Cup Race earlier that October month, Alco continued their quick rise in the automotive world and became a manufacturer sponsor of the famed NY to Atlanta Tour.
The tour started from Herald Square on October 25th, and the convoy consisted of sixty-one cars. In addition to Alco and other manufacturer sponsors, the cars were also sponsored by automotive clubs, as well as the towns through which the tour would pass. The major sponsors being the New York Herald and Atlanta Journal.
Caption: "Handsome 1909 model 40 tourer served as official car for Good Roads tour sponsored by New York Herald and Atlanta Journal."
This was a smaller, 4-cylinder touring car version of the famed 1909 Black Beast Alco-6 Vanderbilt racer.
In the Newspapers
Since the route would take the tour through South Carolina, there was much interest among the state’s newspapers. The Newberry Herald and News featured this story on October 29:
"Great New York-to-Atlanta Endurance Run Begun. – Woman Leads the Way.
New York, Oct. 25—With the cheers of a crowd of enthusiastic spectators ringing in their ears, the sixty-one entrants in the New York-Herald-Atlanta Journal good roads tour rolled out of Herald Square today on the first leg to their ten days’ trip to Atlanta. The start scheduled for a quarter to ten o’clock was made on the minute.
Fred Wagner, [Vanderbilt Cup Race Starter] of the Herald office who was official started at some of the most prominent race meets in the country, fired the gun just as the last of the line of escort cars reached Herald Square from Columbus circle, which was the assembling point or the honorary escorts.
Long before the hour set for the beginning of the tour the sidewalks around the Herald building were jammed with a great throng of curious and interested persons eager to see the cars set off in the most novel tour ever attempted in the instance of good roads for automobiles.
Altogether there were sixty-one cars entered in the run, and with the seven official cars and the seventy lined up in the escort squadron, the line as it left the Herald building was an imposing one.
Mrs. John Newton Cameo, and Miss Mildred B. Schwabach, in a Locomobile, received a great send off as they wheeled their cars into line behind the escort squadron. Although the official and the referee, non-contesting, both of these women will remain with the squad throughout the entire trip to Atlanta. They are the only women drivers who will make the entire trip.
At the Battery the escorts bade farewell to the contesting cars, which were ferried across on Staten Island. Once off the ferry, the speedometers were set at zero and with the aid of the official route book and the large yellow and black signs that have been placed along the entire route to Atlanta, the tourists began their first day’s run in earnest."
The Tour Begins
The 1909 trip was well-documented photographically. The Detroit Public Library has an extensive collection of photographs from that trip. Here is a view of the cars waiting for the Staten Island Ferry.
The line up along the route
1909 NY to Atlanta- Ty Cobb
One of the reasons this particular tour garnered so much interest was that it featured celebrity drivers. None other than baseball legend Ty Cobb would be driving in the 1909 tour. Here he is seen as the driver with a passenger.
A view of the Chalmers-Detroit automobile Cobb drove on the tour.
With Cobb in the driver’s seat the tour gained national attention. The Washington D. C. Evening Star had extensive coverage of the tour. It had this to say about Cobb’s participation:
"Cyrus Cobb, an idol of the baseball world, is driving a car in the good roads tour from New York to Atlanta, which started from New York Monday morning, October 25. That Cobb is one of the star attractions of the tour cannot be doubted. He received a tremendous ovation in New York city at the start of the tour. Cobb is a southern boy, and, in fact, he represents his native town of Royston, Ga., in this tour. The board of trade of Royston wired to Cobb in Detroit, at the close of the world’s series, asking him to drive a car as its representative, and he finally completed arrangements to do so.
Cobb is driving a car which is scarcely less known than himself. He is driving the celebrated Chalmers-Detroit “30,” which has come to be known all of the country as “Old Reliable,” because of the many strenuous journeys it has undertaken and successfully completed. This car was driven last summer and fall 208 miles a day for 100 consecutive days, a total distance of 20,800 miles."
Art's 'Kleiner's Korner' had 2 previous posts further detailing some of Ty Cobb's automotive exploits, Here and Here.
Towns along the way
The tour roughly followed the route of the later Bankhead Highway. When the automobiles reached towns along the way crowds turned out to see Cobb, as well as the novelty of an automobile tour.
In South Carolina it passed through Gaffney, Spartanburg, Greenville, and Anderson. When it reached Gaffney a banner proclaimed, “Gaffney wishes you good luck, come again and stay longer, altogether for good roads.”
Here’s a view from Greenville, S.C.. Notice the rural dirt roads.
In Anderson, S.C., there were more banners. Here, the ALCO makes its way into town.
Motorists in the Alco official automobile at Greer, South Carolina
Since Ty Cobb was in the group, the tour was routed through his hometown of Royston, Georgia.
Maxwell for the win
Motorists in Maxwell car no. 28 at Decatur, Georgia during the 1909 New York to Atlanta Good Roads Tour.
The group eventually reached Atlanta. The Los Angeles Herald states that the car that won the “principal trophy” of the tour was a 12-horsepower Maxwell. The article doesn’t mention the driver’s name until the very end of the article, showing that the model of car was as, if not more important than the driver.
"Remarkable Climb of Maxwell Auto – Twelve-Horsepower Car Climbs to Where No Conveyance Had Ever Been After Perfect Score in Good Roads Tour.
What is regarded as the most remarkable hill-climbing feat ever accomplished by an automobile was the run-up Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Ga., on November 11. The car with which this seemingly impossible feat was accomplished was a twelve horsepower Maxwell runabout, the same which only a few days previous had won the principal trophy in the New York-Atlanta good roads tour and completed the Savannah-Atlanta endurance run with a perfect road score….
…The sturdy little Maxwell scaled the mountain entirely under its own power without any special preparations….
C. W. Kelsey, the originator of the run, left the machine on the summit, where more than 500 people viewed it during the next day."
After a brief time for recovery, the route was reversed, and 57 of the automobiles returned to New York. This was referred to as the 1910 Atlanta to New York Good Roads Tour (obviously.)
Comments
Interesting article on one of the many tours in the US at the time. However in this post a few errors have crept, which I would like to correct. The car on the last photo is not a Maxwell, but a rather unknown make, a White Star. A photo of the same car is shown below, where its participant number 29 can be clearly seen. The make name can be read vaguely on the hood. The make had only a short life, from 1909 to 1911.
Further there is mention of a Mrs. Cameo and Mrs. Schwabach in an Locomobile: I suppose the first lady was the well known Mrs. Joan N. Cuneo, who was driving her own Rainier car as a press car. In the added page from Motor Age (including participant list) the second lady is named Schwaibach.
By the way I count only 38 paricipants and 8 official cars, but indeed in the Motor Age article it is mentioned that several participants had withdrawn.