“Let’s go!” cried the automotive argonauts when they set out from Denver on an audacious road trip 89 years ago.
The year was 1920 and the plan was to visit 12 national parks by the newly named National Park-to-Park Highway, a trip that eventually would cover 5,600 miles over rutted, muddy, uninviting roads. It was a blatant publicity stunt dreamed up by Stephen Mather, director of the National Park Service, and implemented by Anton Westgard, a mapmaker and auto advocate for the American Automobile Association, which was designed to get Americans on the road to America’s parks system.
Ken Burns’ latest epic, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” a 12-hour, six-part series which debuts today at 2, 8 and 10 p.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS, chronicles the beauty and importance of what many consider the cathedrals of America.
But it was the automobile that made them playgrounds for the public. Open-road advocates encouraged Americans to visit their own country. “You sing ‘America’; why not see it?” went the slogan.
When Henry Ford introduced low-cost automobiles after World War I Americans fell in love with cars, but their travels were limited by the poor condition of roads — unpaved and prone to becoming muddy quagmires in rainy weather. A lack of maps, service stations and roadside accommodations made cross- country travel perilous. The Lincoln Highway, the first fully paved coast- to-coast roadway, wasn’t completed until 1935. If tourists visited the national parks, it was almost always by train.
And so it was that Mather and Westgard concocted the idea of a mammoth road trip, one that stretched from Colorado to Montana to California to Arizona. It was, The Denver Post warned four years earlier, “not a trip for an amateur driver or for a low-power car. From Yellowstone to Glacier and from Glacier to Rainier, the going at present would be hard. It could be done but not an undertaking to be lightly ventured by the ordinary vacationist.”
In “The Playground Trail,” a book by Lee and Jane Whiteley that became a TV documentary, the dangers were more specific: “We spent the next uncounted hours bouncing and crashing over some of the worst roads I had ever experienced,” wrote a man who made an open-road trip in 1917. “Convict labor had been used to make these so-called roads. These men probably took out their hate and frustration on the project.”
Nevertheless, it was with high spirits and even higher hopes that six automobiles, led by one driven by Westgard, who laid out the route, set out from Denver’s Overland Park just before noon on a bright and sunny day on Aug. 26, 1920, with a hearty “Let’s go!”
Before the travelers left, politicians made speeches, and Mather, ever mindful of getting good publicity, announced to the crowd, “With Denver the gateway, as it is, to all national parks, it is the fitting place for the pathfinders to start their journey.”
In 76 days, the tour visited 100 cities and Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, Lassen, Yosemite, General Grant, Sequoia, Zion, Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde, taking in an area larger than all of Europe. There were breakdowns, washouts, violent weather and, perhaps most dangerous of all, banquets and liquid welcomes from towns and cities along the route. The travelers, who supplemented their supplies with roadside purchases of grapes, apples and melons, weren’t without creature comforts. Among the items they hauled along was an electric piano mounted inside a truck, used to accompany concerts held on the way.
The party — those who made it through — returned in triumph on Nov. 9, a snowy, blustery day, with a parade of 100 automobiles honking their horns from Littleton, up Broadway to 16th Street in downtown. Twelve bombs were set off on the roof of the Rocky Mountain News/Denver Times building, and their feat was celebrated with a dinner that night at the Brown Palace Hotel.
Mather, for whom the trip turned out even grander than he envisioned, promised the aid and support of the Department of the Interior for an appropriation of $100 million to pave the Park-to-Park Highway, a remarkable commitment that never came true; the parks had been limping along on a $10,000 annual appropriation for years.
“I believe the opening of the National Park-to-Park Highway will greatly stimulate automobile travel to the West next summer,” Mather said.
Among those who didn’t finish the marathon was the 54- year-old Westgard, who fell seriously ill en route and was forced to drop out in Los Angeles. The man who mapped much of the West for AAA and carefully charted the Park-to-Park journey died the next year.
Hitting the road in 1915 wasn’t for faint of heart
Five years before the National Park-to-Park Highway excursion, Anton Westgard, “pathfinder” for the American Automobile Association, warned automobilists of the hazards of cross-country driving. The dangers were more real than just the kids squabbling in the back seat. Roads then were built for horses, not for cars. Services were few and far between.
Writing in Motor Magazine in 1915, Westgard advised, “It is well to outfit with reasonable limited equipment to provide against mud, possible breakdowns and climactic changes.”
Included in his advice to adventuring cross-country motorists:
• Allow one suitcase to each person.
• Use khaki or old loose clothing.
• Bring wraps and a tarpaulin to protect against cool nights and to provide cover in the case of being compelled to sleep outdoors.
• Wear amber glasses, not too dark, to protect against the glare of the desert.
He also suggested a long list of supplies: “Carry 60 feet of 5/8-inch Manila rope; a pointed spade, a small ax, a camp lantern, a collapsible canvas bucket and a duffle bag for extra clothing.”
Wait, there’s more. You also would need “new tires all around, of the same size, if possible” and two extra tires and four extra inner tubes.
He warned, “Give your car a careful inspection each day for loose bolts or nuts and watch grease cup and oil cups.” Carry two sets of chains and two jacks, a coil of soft iron wire, a spool of copper wire and some extra spark plugs.
In case you were to become stranded in the vast expanses of the West, it was advisable to be well stocked with canned meat, sardines, crackers, fresh fruit or canned pineapples and milk chocolate.
And one more thing: Bring a good hair cleaner and a jar of hand cream to fight off the effects of dry air. “Use them every night.” Dick Kreck
