Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: April 1982 Volume 20 Number 2, Pages 63–66

When the Glidden Tour Went through Paoli

Bob Goshorn

• References

Page 63

On July 23, 1907, a large canvas banner with the word "WELCOME" was stretched above and across the Lancaster Pike in Paoli. It had been placed there by representatives of the Philadelphia Press to greet the dusty and begrimed motorists who were participating in the third annual Glidden Tour. The Tour had started in Cleveland, Ohio almost two weeks earlier and was to end in New York City on the following day. On this next to the last day of the 1907 endurance run, theroute took the motorists from Baltimore to Philadelphia by way of Coatesville and Paoli and down the Lancaster Pike.

The Glidden Tours, started in 1905 and continued through 1913, were originally sponsored by Charles J. Glidden, a retired New England paint manufacturer and industrialist, and also an early avid automobile enthusiast. While sponsorship of the tour was taken over in 1907 by the American Automobile Association, the event continued tobe known as the Glidden Tour, with a large silver trophy awarded each year to the winner by the original sponsor.

The purpose of this annual tour was to demonstrate the dependability of the automobile and that it was a practical and reliable means of transportation, though at the same time the tours also served to emphasize the need for better roads in America. The tours were plannedas "reliability tests" rather than speed races, and the tour routes usually offered a variety of driving conditions - rocky roads, rutted roads, roads that more nearly resembled a plowed field, chuckholes, morasses of mud, and dust, as well as all kinds of weather,(They would, in fact, still be a challenge for cars today!)

A number of control points or check points were established along the route, with a point system developed to determine the winner of the trophy. To obtain a perfect score, an autoist had to check in at each control point within a specified time period (based on an average speed of 10 miles an hour through towns and 20 miles an hour in the open country, with additional time allowed in the event of rain), without mechanical trouble. Seven cars, incidentally, completed the 1907 tour with perfect scores!

Page 64

While it was emphasized that the event was not a race, with penalties imposed for arriving at a control point before the specified time and disqualification in the event of arrest for "scorching" or exceeding the speed limit, there was, nevertheless, "a great dealof racing" among the contestants. To insure reaching a check point at the right time, many of them would speed to a point just short of the control point, where they stopped and made minor repairs or tune-ups while waiting for the time for the check-in. Although there were no penalties for repairs to tires, clocks, batteries, speedometers or odometers, horns, or for changing tires, to discourage major repairs or the "rebuilding" of cars en route the new AAA rules for the 1907 Tour required that all spare parts carried on each car be registered with the officials.

Despite these precautions, the 1907 Tour was described in "Horseless Age" by one of its correspondents, Harry B. Haines, as "little more than an organized road race in which the entrants feel privileged to disregard all speed laws and run at speeds which they would not dare attempt under ordinary conditions. It is significant," he continued, "that Mr.[N.H.] Van Sicklan, who was the official pacemaker, quit the run [on the second day] at South Bend for the reason that the pace was too fast for safety."

In addition to the Glidden Trophy, the AAA in 1907 also offered a new Hower Trophy, named for William J. Hower, chairman of the AAA's Touring Board, for the winning individual runabout, with the Glidden Trophy awarded to the winning automobile club with three ormore entries. There was also a third sub-division in the 1907 Tour, for motorists who desired to participate in the Tour but who were not competing for either trophy.

The distance of the 1907 Tour was 1,519 miles, almost half again longer than that of the previous year and nearly 650 miles longer than the first Glidden Tour in 1905. The longest day's run was 174 miles; the shortest day's run, 97 miles. Beginning in Cleveland on July 10, the itinerary was

Page 65

Altogether, 70 cars participated in the tour, 52 affiliated with automobile clubs competing for the Glidden Trophy, 14 competing for the Hover Trophy, and four taking part for certificates indicating completion of the run. Among the drivers was one woman motorist.

The entrants were preceded by three "confetti" cars, used to mark the route of the tour, though it was perennially suggested that theroute was actually marked better by the feathers of chickens hit by the passing motorists than by the confetti!

By the time the motorists reached Paoli there were only 43 cars stillon the Tour, the others having been forced out of the competition as a result of mechanical failures or accidents, damaged parts, or injuries to the drivers or car's occupants - seventeen of them in the first three days. So "strenuous" was the tour that, at its conclusion, Harry Haines noted in the July 24, 1907 "Horseless Age", "It was a marvel that so many of the cars were able to finish,"

In addition to the canvas banner across the Lancaster Pike, the Philadelphia Press and its "sporting editor" Fred L. Weede hadmade other arrangements to welcome the motorists as they passed down the pike through Paoli.

As reported in the West Chester Daily Local News on the next day,"With the compliments of the Press each autoist was presented witha pasteboard box containing toothsome sandwiches, a bottle of liquid refreshment just off the ice, also a copy of the Press containing the accounts of the tour, with other information and also a red flagto be displayed on the machines, guaranteeing free passage through all the toll gates between Paoli and Philadelphia, Mr. Weede having made arrangements to settle the bill for all the tourists."

(This welcome was quite different from that received in many rural areas along the route, especially where farmers' "anti-automobile" societies had been formed. Before reaching Paoli, for example, the tourists had encountered sprinkled nails and broken glass that had been strewn an the road and, in one case, a plank thickly studded with nails placed in the road to damage tires; as well as ditches dug across the road, near which the local farmers were standing by with teams to pull the motorists out - for a price. In Indiana a barricade had also been placed across the road by a local blacksmith and Socialist agitator who allegedly had heard that "the men in the cars were all millionaires and would have thousands of dollars on their persons as well as a fortune in rare jewels." It was not long afterwards, incidentally, that John Dingee and Henry Biddle, who owned much of the land on both sides of the Lancaster Pikein Paoli and who were described as "great horse lovers" violently opposed to the automobile, formed the Paoli Improvement Association.

Page 66

Its regulations forbade the sale of gasoline or the repair of automobiles on these properties; as a result, Paoli's early automobilerepair shops were located on the north side of the railroad,)

The route of the 1907 Glidden Tour through Paoli also attracted morethan thirty visitors from West Chester, according to the Local, tosee the tourists. Among them were United States Congressman Thomas S. Butler; P. M. Sharples "and several friends in his big car"; S. W. Smith, the secretary of the Y.M.C.A.; and David T. Sharples, a West Chester councilman. There were also several doctors, the medical profession showing an early interest in the automobile to assist doctors in making their rounds to their patients.

"The first of the cars to pass Paoli," it was reported in the Local,"reached there at 1.35 p.m., and they arrived in bunches and singly until about four o'clock, at which time forty-three machines, each carrying at least four and some five and six passengers, had reached there and continued on to Philadelphia, where they received a hearty welcome by the Quaker City Auto Club. ... In the lot were various cars of standard types: Pierce Arrow, Walter, Berliet, White, Autocar, Oldsmobile, Reo, Peerless, Shoemaker, Packard and several others,the competitors for the trophies representing the New York Motor Club;Cleveland, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Buffalo, N.Y.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Detroit, Mich.; Auto Club of America and others." A number of other makes of automobiles were also represented in the Tour, among them the Thomas Flyer, Apperson, Maxwell, Dragon, Welch, American Mors, Royal. Tourist, Premier, Mitchell, Lozier, Deere, Haynes, Punge-Finch, Mateer, Wayne, Elmore, Rapier, Acme, and Pennsylvania, though neither the Knox or Marmon, both air-cooled cars, were among the starters.

Altogether, eight automobile clubs competed for the Glidden Trophyin the 1907 Tour. The winner was the Buffalo club, with 981 points, followed by the Pittsburgh Club, with New York third. Two cars were tied for the Hower Trophy, a Stoddard Dayton Runabout and a White Runabout, the latter the winner in a run-off. Perfect scores for the tour were recorded by the two runabouts, two Thomas cars, two Pierce Arrows, and one American Mors entry.

"The Glidden Tours," Frank Donovan, an automobile historian, has observed, "which continued annually until 1913, did much to convince America that the automobile was a dependable means of transportation." A part of this demonstration took place in this area as the Tour in 1907 was given an enthusiastic welcome to the Main Line - when the Glidden Tour went through Paoli.

References

"1907 Glidden Tour", in "The Antique Automobile", Fall 1957

"Dr. Hughes Turns Back the Clock", in Great Valley Days (Frances Ligget, ed.)

Daily Local News, West Chester

Frank Donovan, Wheels for a Nation

Stephen W. Sears, The Automobile in America

Floyd Clymer, Treasury _of Early American Automobiles