Today,
an automobile road trip across East Texas
is a delight for many families, largely because roads are well-paved, signs mark
the towns and distances, and there are ample gas stations and eating places.
But
in 1912, Woodson Nash and C.G. Smith, accompanied by their wives, three Nash sons,
and a friend, Sam Krauss, hopped in Nash’s touring car--a seven-passenger Abbott
Detroit 40-horsepower vehicle--in Dallas
and started to Galveston,
a distance of 288 miles by way of Terrell,
Marlin and other small towns.
Nash had contemplated making the trip in his Chalmers touring car, but decided
that it might not be up to the task.
The party stopped at Sanger’s, a
store in the Dallas area, where Nash
bought a cap because his western hat kept blowing off. Mrs. Nash wore a large
Queen Victoria hat, held on with a heavy veil.
In 1912, roads were often
impassable and ran across farms and ranches. The Nash-Smith party stopped frequently
to open and close gates, some of which were made of barbed wire.
“On the
second day, leaving Marlin, we began
having lots of sand, and I had to lower the tires’ pressure down to 45 pounds
which helped some,” said Smith.
Only two cars passed the party on the
way south--a Marton Hanley and a Pierce Arrow. They were enroute to automobile
races on the Galveston
beach.
On the second day, the Nash and Smith party stopped at Navasosta
and spent the night in a small brick hotel. “It was hot and the mosquitoes and
bedbugs made sleeping, or trying to sleep, pretty miserable,” said Smith.
On
the third day, the party reached a white shell road out of Houston,
but, like all the other roads, was one-way and “we we lost time in passing.” The
bridges, observed Smith, were also one-way.
The party rolled into Galveston
on the evening of the third day “with everyone tired but happy.” The return trip
to Dallas also took three days.
© Bob Bowman
October 16, 2011 Column,
updated January 17, 2012
Thanks
to Andy Bergfield for clippings from a 1912 newspaper
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