Touring America by Automobile in the 1920s

For someone living in the 21st century, it is hard to imagine life without all of the conveniences: hotels, numerous restaurants, gas stations, and paved roads! Touring America by Automobile in the 1920s by William Cook gives us a glimpse into the life of a road traveler in the early days of automobiles. I not only enjoyed learning how difficult travel was but also how much planning went into the drive: sleeping accommodations, daily food, etc. This is not only a diary of the travel, but it also shares the history of the areas visited. Being a "Chattanoogan," I enjoyed seeing my city's history through their time spent here in the 1920s.

This is a lovely little window on travel and the U.S. in the 1920s. We tend to forget that the roads were very different then, before Eisenhower's national highway system was put in place. We also tend to forget how well we have adapted as a nation to auto travel. Back then there weren't handy hotels or restaurants when driving cross country. What did you do? Oftentimes you took a tent and did your own cooking over a campfire.

This book not only reminds us of how different travel was back then but also gives a look at how distinctive regional differences were in the West and the South. Covering two different trips, we get a feel for a bygone time in these short but enjoyable journals.

This fascinating book by author William Cook has four components to it. Firstly a brief history and development of the American automobile industry together with the road network across the country, secondly a narrative set in diary form of a 3,180.00 mile car journey made by his grandparents in 1920 from Vermillion, South Dakota to Yellowstone National Park and back again to Vermillion, thirdly another car journey made in 1927 from Ohio through the southern states to Alabama and back and finally a history of the Cook family themselves with the remarkable fact that his grandfather lived to be over 100 years old.

What I liked is how it gave you a real sense of what an adventure it was to travel on the roads of the time before the completion of the interstate highway system. Without handy hotels and motels there was no alternative but camping and the car was liable to constant repairs mainly due to the nature of the roads. The trip through the southern states I found quite uncomfortable reading at times as segregation was still in place in schools and shops and the teaching of evolution was outlawed in Tennessee state schools prior to the Scopes trial of 1925. The effects of the civil war were still felt and a number of battle sites were visited.

I certainly enjoyed this read which for me was both educational and enlightening.

This one another biggest dreams I have: to visit the USA on the road.

The beauty of the USA in fact is in its diversified landscapes, rivers, beautiful natural attractions, original people who you wouldn't never met if you just stop by in a big city.

So when I decided to request this book I knew immediately that I would have loved it.

Dear Old America I love you so badly.

Touring America by Automobile in the 1920s The Travel Journals of Hepzy Moore Cook by William A. Cook published this May 2 by Sunbury Press, Inc. is an extraordinary book that if you love history, if you love to rediscover the country under a different perspective, you can't miss to buy.

You know what happen: time pass by, someone before us leave some old journals somewhere and then we read it, and we found that not only this material is interesting but realistically wonderful and a great portrait of the USA during the 1920s.


It's what happened to William Cook. His grandmother loved to keep journals like also loved to send letters and postcards to her family and friends.

Correspondence was common in the internal territory of the USA because sometimes a friend or a relative could live for example in the other part/coast of the USA and visits impossible often. So, letters, journals, postcards the only way for keeping updated with the latest novelties.

The grandmother of William Cook Hepzy Moore Cook was a voracious writer.

Everyday describes fascinatingly well their trip started from Vermillion South Dakota to Yellowstone National Park, and return years later.

In total 3.180 miles of adventures, troubles, dangerous encounters, stunning views I can tell you that reading this book is dreaming.

You will find along the way coyotes, geysers, abandoned cities, wonderful sites known personally only thanks to movies, people, and that wild landscapes and life that you can just classified as real and so dear and unique as it is the one of the USA. as, don't forget it, the hot.
With her the husband William A. Cook and the father Ralph Moore.

You would have waited wonderful roads and streets, great automobiles in the USA of 1920s.
Forget it.
Of course it was a luxury an automobile and a trip more than an adventure for this couple and father. If it wasn't a story of wheel it was the engine, if it wasn't the engine it was the gasoline tank, or some other problems. A car wasn't a joke.

Roads at the same time were in a very bad state and a trip so long like the one attended by the three ones a real adventure in the unknown.

But Americans are not just adventurous but able to sort out all the problems with a smile taking advantage also from negativities.

Hepzy won't disdain to keep updated all her family and friends buying postcards and letters very often wherever there was the occasion for sending them constantly news about all their adventures.

At the same time everyday Hepzy found the time for compiling her journals plenty of, as you will see, informations about people, landscapes, places that they were passing and stop by.
I imagine her after dinner, close to a fireplace created not distant from their tent, writing down these long notes for the posterity and for the pleasure of remembering, better, impressing in a piece of paper an extraordinary moment of her life.

It is beautiful this corner of America told by Hepzy, wild and real. At some point during the trip the lady will write: "A reproduction cannot carry the impression of the original." Hepzy loved sketches as well but can we try to capture the essence of the beauty?

Of course there were encounters with wild animals like bears attracted by beacons and jam. And do we want to speak of phantom hotels or fishing in mythical rivers some great yummy trouts?
The Scott's had a tent loved to plant when there was the necessity of staying somewhere for some time as told and it gives the idea of a healthy outdoor life.

Then the return in 1927 passing through South Cincinnati, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. This time without Ralph.
Kentucky appear suggestive and superb, like also the cities with their campus and colleges. Once left Kentucky and the production of tobacco, other adventures lived through immense cotton field, black people and their children, in the State of Georgia, pictures taken of landscapes and people, postcards bought for familiars and friends and memories to remember and share thanks to the journal always accurately kept updated.
Ah, what a wonderful world would have sung Louis Armstrong.

Mr William A. Cook the husband of Hepzy, died at 101 years and asked to put in his gravestone:

"The greatest thing a man can leave behind him in life is a wide circle of friends."

Wise man don't you think so?


I thank NetGalley and Sunbury Press.