Packard proved it could be done

0 0 October 10, 2025 Edit this post

by Bill Buys

IN 1903, Packard investor Henry Joy hired test driver E T ‘Tom’ Fetch to drive a 4.5-horsepower Model F across the country to prove American-made cars could ‘negotiate the all but impassible mountain and desert roads and trails of the Far West.’

These days the 4700km trip from San Francisco on the West coast to New York in the East can be done in about 44 hours – but that’s on national highways.

Things were different in 1903, when the word ‘highway’ did not exist in motoring parlance – and Tom’s journey took all of 63 days.

Fetch was an enthusiastic Packard employee, serving as a foreman and test engineer and he had enough faith in the durability of his company’s product to happily accept the task Henry Joy set for the transcontinental challenge.

Powered by a one-cylinder, 12-hp engine, Fetch’s 1902 Packard Model F runabout had few modifications, which included the removal of all mudguards, the addition of extra fuel tanks and a special low gear for hill climbing or descending mountains.

Fetch equipped the car for expected dilemmas, carrying along several lengths of log chain for use on the wheels in tenacious ruts, and a pick and shovel to cut roads along hillsides and fill in the inevitable washouts.

He also packed two strips of canvas that could be laid down ahead of the car to get starting traction on the desert sand.

For unknown reasons, except perhaps that he started on the West Coast, Fetch nicknamed the Packard ‘Old Pacific.’

Chugging out of San Francisco in June, 1903, Fetch and his passenger, automotive editor Marcus Karup, had no real road maps, signs, or route numbers to follow, so they used the only published guide of the period, the Union Pacific railroad map.

There were no decent roads anywhere west of Chicago, and no bridges, except, again, those used by the railroads west of Denver.

Riding on 34x4 tyres the two-seat buggy had a top speed of 20 mph (about 35km/h) as it travelled eastward.

Fetch quickly learned to avoid the best-looking main roads since they often ended at the front door of a fancy ranch or a working mineral mine.

Seeking directions from the locals proved unreliable, since most had never travelled more than a day’s ride from home in their lives.

It really was the wild west back in 1903.

Clever logistics made sure the Packard never ran short of fuel as adequate supplies were shipped ahead by train to prearranged stations along the entire route.

When they finally reached Colorado Springs, Krarup wrote of the terrain they had just traversed.

“Nevada is awful, but Utah is the worst I ever saw," he said.

“We carry a pick and shovel along, and we found it necessary in more than one instance to use them when we had to build roads ourselves, cutting along the sides of hills.”

When ‘Old Pacific’ arrived in Carson City shortly after a murder had been committed, everyone, including the sheriff, left the crime scene and flocked around the first horseless carriage ever seen in that part of the country.

Besides the rut-filled trails that needed to be navigated, there were section-line fences strung across roads, which Fetch had to unfasten and refasten after passing through.

Yet, except for prying ‘Old Pacific’ out of the mud and onto solid ground with fence rails, the vehicle was propelled the entire distance under its own power.

To make up for some of the lost time, Fetch drove the final lap from Herkimer, New York, to New York City almost steadily for 40 hours, fighting off sleepiness and the effect of road glare.

After the two-month journey, the still-solid-running Packard reached the outskirts of New York City, where Fetch and Karup were met by nearly 200 cars, gathered to escort them to the Astor Hotel. Fetch to the finish at the Astor Hotel, “bending all the eight mile-per-hour speed limits,” Motor Age noted.

While the many cars were waiting in front of an orphanage, the drivers took the children for rides, which became an annual orphans outing.

As the exhausted Fetch got out of the Packard at the giant hotel on Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets, he was asked to say something to the assembled crowd.

He had but four words: "Thank God, it’s over."

Tom Fetch died at the age of 72 in March, 1944. He was memorialised as one of those robust pioneers, whose courage demonstrated to the world the horseless carriage had passed the experimental stage, and was here to stay.

When Packard’s hometown newspaper, the Warren Tribune, reported on the trip, it noted that the completion “demonstrates the superiority of the Packard machine over all other models, and this will be worth all the thousands of dollars it has cost the company.”

But it turned out Tom and Old Pacific were not the first to complete a west-to-east coast trip.

A Vermont doctor, his chauffeur/mechanic, and their dog had arrived in New York after a similar epic journey from San Francisco, just a few weeks earlier.

Dr Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K Crocker did their journey in a 1903 Winton a two-cylinder, 20-hp touring car, which Jackson named ‘The Vermont’.

The plan was to avoid the deserts of Nevada and Utah and the higher passes of the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies, so the expedition swung north to follow the Oregon Trail in reverse.

North of Sacramento, a woman misdirected them for a total of 108 miles so her family could see their first car.

When more tyres blew out on the rocky road toward Oregon, they wound rope around the wheels.

Along the way, they wired the Winton Company for supplies to be sent ahead.

Nevertheless, they occasionally had to walk or cycle long distances to find fuel or spare parts.

In Idaho, Jackson and Crocker acquired a bulldog named Bud as a travelling companion—and fitted him with goggles to keep the dust from his eyes.

Things got easier once they crossed the Mississippi, as there were more paved roads in the eastern half of the country.

Then the press heard of them and Jackson, Crocker, and Bud became celebrities. Reporters, and ever larger crowds awaited the trio at every stop.

They also had a tough time, but apparently not nearly as rough as Old Pacific’s.

So 1903 was quite a year for the pioneers of the east-west crossing of the US by car.

A likeness of the good doctor, his Winton and Bud is housed in the National Museum of American History while Old Pacific is on show in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.