Alice Huyler Ramsey

Alice Huyler Ramsey (November 11, 1886 – September 10, 1983) was an American who was the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States from coast to coast, a feat she completed on August 7, 1909.

Early life Ramsey was born Alice Taylor Huyler, the daughter of John Edwin Huyler, a lumber dealer, and Ada Mumford Farr. She attended Vassar College from 1903 to 1905. On January 10, 1906, in Hackensack, New Jersey, Ramsey married congressman John R. Ramsey (1862–1933), with whom she had two children: John Rathbone Ramsey, Jr. (1907–2000), and Alice Valleau Ramsey (1910–2015), who married Robert Stewart Bruns (1906–1981).

Career In 1908 her husband bought her a new Maxwell runabout. That summer she drove over 6,000 miles near their Hackensack home. One of the other Maxwell drivers was Carl Kelsey, who did publicity for Maxwell-Briscoe. It was during this event that Kelsey proposed that she attempt a transcontinental journey, with Maxwell-Briscoe's backing. The company would supply a 1909 touring car for the journey and would also provide assistance and parts as needed. The drive was originally meant as a publicity stunt for Maxwell-Briscoe At that time, women were not often encouraged to drive cars.

Transcontinental drive On June 9, 1909, the 22-year-old housewife and mother began a journey from New York City to San Francisco in a green, four-cylinder, 30-horsepower Maxwell DA. although about three weeks later than originally planned.

Along the way, they crossed the trail of a manhunt for a killer in Nebraska, Ramsey received a case of bedbugs from a Wyoming hotel, and in Nevada they were surrounded by a Native American hunting party with bows and arrows drawn.

After her husband's death in 1933, Ramsey lived with Anna Graham Harris in New Jersey and then later in West Covina, California, until Anna's death in 1953, and eventually with Elizabeth Elliott in Covina, California, from 1968 until Ramsey's death on September 10, 1983.

Legacy On October 17, 2000, Ramsey became the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

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