American Road

Mr. Davies talked about his book, American Road: The Story of an Epic Transcontinental Journey at the Dawn of the Motor Age, published by Henry Holt and Company. It is the story of the First Transcontinental Motor Train, a military caravan that traveled from the White House to California in the summer of 1919. It took the group of sixty-nine military vehicles sixty-two days to reach San Francisco, and they traveled at an average speed of five miles per hour. Along the way, the caravan encountered extreme weather, uncooperative equipment, and poorly-made roads. Ironically one of the participants was a young soldier named Dwight Eisenhower, who, four decades later as President, launched the building of the interstate highway system. Davies also provides a colorful history of transcontinental car travel in this country, including the first cross-country trips and the building of the Lincoln Highway. close