How long did the first cross-country U.S. road trip take?

On May 18, 1903, Horatio Nelson Jackson, a doctor from Vermont, was in San Francisco, California with his wife when he made a $50 bet over drinks. Jackson wagered that an automobile could be driven across the United States.

Jackson convinced a young mechanic and chauffeur, Sewall K. Crocker, to serve as his travel companion and backup driver. Five days later, on May 23, the pair departed San Francisco in a slightly used Winton automobile, eventually winding up in New York City 63 days later, on July 26.

At the time, motorized vehicles were still a novelty. A few rich people owned them, and some folks believed that the machines would be the future of transportation. For the most part, however, cars had been driven in cities, on paved roads; as yet, no car had been driven across the entire country.

Sewall taught Jackson to drive along the way, and was primarily responsible for making the necessary repairs of the vehicle, which broke down frequently on the harsh, unpaved roads.

Jackson was given 90 days to make the trip. In order to avoid the heat of the western deserts, he and Sewall chose a Northern route. Along the way, they stopped in Idaho and purchased a pit bull named Bud, who accompanied them for the remainder of the journey.

The coast-to-coast drive was financed by Jackson, using some $8,000 of his wife’s money, after his own went missing along the way. Ironically, although the pair quickly became national celebrities, they never collected on the $50 wager.