Old rivalry remembered on centennial of first auto trip across Nevada

One hundred years ago, the Nevada desert and a feud between two automobile industry pioneers played key roles in the first two automobile crossings of Nevada and the continent.

This summer, a vestige of the old rivalry lives on with two cross-country automobile tours under way.

The tour coming through Carson City Monday afternoon is being recreated by Terry Martin, who in 1983 retraced the journey of Old Pacific with a restored 1903 Packard of the same model driven by Tom Fetch in 1903. On the 100th anniversary of the first transcontinental trips, 72-year-old retired dentist Peter Kesling is retracing Dr. Horatio Nelson's route in a restored 1903 Winton.

Martin and Tom Fetch, the grand-nephew of 1903-driver Tom Fetch, are leading a centennial tour of Packard enthusiasts along the route.

Following Monday's visit to Carson, a banquet will be held at the National Automobile Museum in Reno before the drivers push on to Elko on Tuesday. The tour culminates at the National Packard museum in Warren, Ohio, on July 24, in time for a three-day celebration of the 1903 runs.

n n n

The rivalry began in 1898, when James Ward Packard purchased a horseless carriage from Alexander Winton, then the largest U.S. producer of automobiles. The 65-mile journey from Winton's factory in Cleveland to Packard's home in Warren took 11 hours -- ending with the car being towed ignominiously behind a horse team.

Packard continued to have problems, suggesting numerous improvements to Winton. In 1899, the cantankerous Winton told Packard, "Well, if you are so smart, maybe you can build a better machine yourself!" Packard took up the challenge and built his first experimental car in 1899.

On May 20, 1901, Alexander Winton departed San Francisco in a 12-horsepower Winton, in an attempt to be the first to cross the continent by motorcar. He was accompanied by Charles Shanks, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. They drove into Reno from Truckee, breakfasted at the Riverside Hotel, and pressed on to Wadsworth. accompanied by rain and gale-force winds. The next day. they crossed unbridged stream beds and washouts before lunching in Lovelock. Near Mill City, the wheels dug into ruts of deep sand and wouldn't budge. They hiked back to Mill City and caught the next train east.

Two years later, Dr. Horatio Nelson of Vermont was visiting San Francisco and engaged in a debate about the capabilities of the new automobiles. Nelson boasted he could cross the continent in less than three months. A bet of $50 said he couldn't.

He purchased a 1903 20-horsepower Winton and set out May 23, 1903, with his mechanic, 22-year-old Sewell Crocker. Avoiding the Nevada desert, Nelson headed north to Oregon and Idaho. Winton claimed later in an advertisement that the northern route was taken because the Sierra Nevada was impassable due to snow. Nelson began without sponsorship by Winton, but Winton aided the effort with shipments of tires and replacement parts.

By this time, the upstart Packard Co. was enjoying good success due to its reputation for reliability. Production had grown from five cars in 1899 to 213 by 1903 (compared to 850 for Winton).

Packard had been toying with the idea of a transcontinental trip, but news of a Winton attempt undoubtedly put the effort on the front burner. Packard added a 12-horsepower Model F Packard to a shipment to California. Tom Fetch, a foreman at the Packard factory, was selected to drive the car, and a guide was hired to navigate the unmapped tracks of the West.

The guide failed to show up at in San Francisco, however, and Marius C. Krarup, a reporter for The Automobile magazine chose to ride and experience the story, rather than report from railroad stations along the way.

Sixty-year-old Krarup likely would not have been Fetch's first choice for a companion. Their trip would be more akin to pioneers in wagons than 20th century automobile travel. Their car was truly a horseless carriage -- two seats mounted atop a wooden body. sans roof, doors or windshield.

Somewhere along the way Fetch acquired a large umbrella for some relief from the searing sun. Imagine taking off across Nevada in the summer off-road on a lawn tractor. There were no road maps, and routes were taken based on the advice asked along the way. Fuel had to be shipped ahead as there were no gas stations.

n n n

On June 20, Fetch and Krarup drove up to San Francisco's Cliff House, took a look at the Pacific Ocean, and headed east. Their start was nearly a month behind Nelson. Fetch's only real hope of reaching New York first was for Nelson to have enough serious breakdowns to slow him or persuade him to give up.

Fetch and Krarup nicknamed their tireless Packard "Old Pacific," soon shortened to "Pac." On the way to Sacramento, they were forced to detour to Davis, due to a flood sweeping away the bridges and culverts. In Placerville, the owner of several stagecoaches advised Fetch that they must stop and wait at Riverton to allow a stage full of women and children returning from Lake Tahoe to pass.

They spent a night at Kyburz, and after a 5 a.m. start, had breakfast at Martins Hotel in Strawberry (near present-day Strawberry Lodge). Old Pacific made the arduous climb to the 7,300 foot elevation of Echo Summit up grades measured by Krarup's clinometer to vary between 13 percent to 17 percent. After dropping down to Lakeside (Stateline), Krarup said, "Since crossing the summit, we were on ground untrodden by automobiles and the car was the subject of much curiosity."

The afternoon of June 24, they reached the summit at Kingsbury after an even harder drive up steeper sandy slopes.

"The difference was undoubtedly mostly due to the fact that the road, now in Nevada, was no longer under state supervision, but left to the none-to-tender mercy of Douglas County, Nevada," Krarup said.

Weekend warriors, overconfident in the rarely used off-road capabilities of their air-conditioned, steel-encased SUVs, might well consider the spirit of Fetch and Krarup as they viewed the spectacle of Kingsbury Grade. They sat atop a single-cylinder, 12-horsepower open carriage with two-wheel brakes about to plunge thousands of feet down a narrow, single-lane wagon trail.

"We had no conception whatever that the descent over Kingsbury Grade, through Daggett's Pass, meant a drop of 2,400 feet over a mountainside whose natural angle was 45 degrees or more had been so doctored by the road builders of the (18) fifties and sixties, that the traveler could get down without breaking his neck. This ignorance added spice to the descent which caused us both unbounded surprise ... In our opinion, it was by far the most superb unfolding of weird vistas, changing at every turn, that the day had given us.

"The road started down at about 12 or 15 percent slope, turning and twisting around from side to side of one conical peak to that of another a little lower, and every moment we expected to bring up on more level ground, but there was no let up. We slid down a mile or two in this fashion and began to smell hot brakes, but whenever the direction was such that we could see the Carson Valley conveniently, it seemed just as far below as ever E it was the cause of much regret that the last photographic film had been exposed just before the descent began. E We made a brief stop to cool the trusty brakes. The consolation came to the writer that surely Carson City photographers would have views for sale of all these grand vistas (they didn't). ...

"The uncertainty about the whole thing magnified time and distance. The brakes were hot again. The gradometer now showed 15 to 17 per cent gradient, occasionally 20 E Here we were, as we found out the same evening, in a historical spot, the main national thoroughfare to California in ante-railroad days, ... but the population of Carson Valley generally seem to be unaware that Kingsbury Grade presents a succession of views unsurpassed for grandeur in any country and of a most pronounced local color."

What seemed like two hours to Krarup took 37 minutes, including three stops to cool the brakes. They descended 2,400 feet in a scant six miles. They continued on through Genoa and Jacks Valley, arriving in Carson City at 6:10 p.m.

Pac was the first automobile seen in Carson City. Within minutes of their arrival, the Chinese head cook of the Arlington Hotel was murdered during a scuffle ended by a butcher knife. Krarup said, "Of the two events, our arrival seemed to excite by far the greater amount of comment."

Spending the night in Carson, they motored to Reno the next morning.

Thinking the biggest challenge was behind them, the Reno residents disabused Fetch and Krarup of this notion. The memory of Winton's failure in the desert was still fresh.

N.O. Allyn, a skilled machinist was following Old Pacific by railroad to make any needed repairs. "Pac" had not needed his help, and Allyn was annoyed at having to ride the train with nothing to do. In Reno, he elected to ride with them. He left the venture entirely in Colorado.

They left for Wadsworth that afternoon. Fresh supplies of gasoline and film were to be waiting for them. Leaving Saturday morning, they found the sand hill east of town formidable, and the town turned out to watch.

An entrepreneur was waiting at the top of the hill with a team of horses, but Tom Fetch pulled out a secret weapon undoubtedly invented with the foreknowledge of Winton's unhappy experience two years before. Two 20-foot-long strips of canvas were placed ahead of the wheels, and Old Pacific chugged up the infamous hill under its own power. The citizens of Wadsworth cheered loudly.

It took Fetch and Krarup three hours and 40 minutes to do 12 miles. It was 94 degrees in the shade and 125 in the sand. The sand required so much power to drive through that, at one point, they were using low gear to force their way down a 14 percent grade.

Surprisingly, they did not have a flat tire until near Lovelock. They took on a nail from a small board left in some construction litter next to the railroad track. They entered "the wonderful little valley of which Lovelocks is the centerE" and overnighted. The next day, they traversed ravines; despite these they were able to make good time, reaching Rye Patch by 8:33 p.m. where a supply of gasoline was taken on.

n n n

Across Northern Nevada, the trip was followed with interest. Winnemucca's Humboldt Standard reported the arrival in Lovelock and paraphrased an interview.

"Mr. Fetch, in speaking of Winton's experience, stated that the Packard car was a much superior automobile and had no apprehension of serious difficulty after passing Wadsworth Hill."

Fetch intended to travel to Battle Mountain by way of Stillwater and Austin, bypassing Winnemucca and Mill City, but changed his mind. Winnemuccans saw the "novel sight" of Old Pacific driving in June 28. Krarup learned that following the railroad tracks would save them 50 miles, but the Winton rivalry apparently played a role as well.

Krarup said "Eif they could reach Winnemucca they would have accomplished something where others had failed." They avoided the sand that stopped Winton, braving the rocky pass at Dun Glenn. On the way to Winnemucca, they found the sand of the last stretch covered with cut sagebrush by a squad of "enterprising citizens," what the locals called a "brush road."

On June 29, it rained, and they delayed departure to avoid wet alkali and mud. They took off after dinner (midday) and made Golconda at 2:40 p.m. As in Winnemucca, it was the first car ever seen.

They continued on through the mountains with little trouble, save attacks by "hawk-like mosquitoes" at Stone House. At Battle Mountain, the Central Nevadan newspaper noted, "Many of our people who had the pleasure of seeing an automobile took advantage of taking a good look at this machine Tuesday evening."

On June 30, they hit the trail for Elko, reaching Rock Creek at 11 a.m. "It did not look very bad. True, the descent was at an angle of about 45 degrees, but in the middle there was a little bank of shale and stone." Still, Old Pacific got stuck in the creek bottom, and it took the efforts of all three pushing, backing, and steering to get it across.

They reached Carlin -- "a pretty little railroad town -- all towns in Nevada are on the railroad" -- at 7:30 p.m., continuing the 28 miles to Elko as night fell. Traversing the canyon, they approached with their kerosene headlight illuminating the narrow road next to the railroad tracks.

At times, the ruts had been so bad that they took to driving over "virgin trackless ground." Soon the gear shift, brake, and clutch mechanisms were choked with sagebrush pulp. The muffler became polished, and the handle of their shovel strapped underneath was eventually torn to shreds. The tires were "still in good condition, though beginning to show the canvas on the inner sides, where the rubber was gradually being ground off."

If Tom Fetch had any way of knowing, his hopes for overtaking Horatio Nelson would have been lifted. The Winton was broken down in Cheyenne, Wyo., awaiting its second set of connecting rods from the Winton factory.

After passing through Deeth, they reached Wells at 5 p.m. July 1, where Krarup commented "E the horses take more kindly to the automobile than those of the eastern states." They reached Ogden and then Salt Lake on the Fourth of July. There the local constables seized Old Pacific, due to legal actions for breach of contract issued by the guide who had failed to show up in San Francisco. They continued after the Packard factory posted bond.

Utah proved to be a harder go. Fetch later said, "The worst roads were encountered through Utah between Carleton and Grande Junction. The Nevada desert was not as bad as told to us, but Utah was seven times worse."

n n n

In the end, through tremendous perseverance and tenacity, Nelson and Crocker managed to maintain most of their head start. The Winton was the first to reach New York City on July 26.

Tom Fetch and the Packard Co. had to satisfy themselves with the much better mechanical reliability of Old Pacific and beating the Winton's elapsed time of 63 days by two days, arriving in New York on Aug. 21.

Unproven accusations were thrown about that the Winton had not driven the journey entirely under its own power and had resorted to railroad shipment at times. Winton and Nelson vociferously denied the allegations and offered $10,000 and $15,000 respectively to anyone who could prove the rumors. The bounties went unclaimed.

Both Packard and Winton heralded the men's accomplishments while taking oblique digs at each other in full-page newspaper ads. Winton taking pride in pointing out that Nelson was "in no way connected to the automobile business" and unaccompanied by a "factory mechanic." Packard replied "there has not been the slightest assistance by man or beast since our car left San Francisco. It has never been towed by horses, carried by trainsE"

n n n

Jim Chase is a member of Silver Circle Packards, the Northern Nevada region of Packard Automobile Classics. Quotes are from Krarup's articles in The Automobile magazine June-August 1903, except as noted.