Turner's Public Spirit, March 18, 1922
A look back in time to a century ago
By Bob Oliphant
“Center. Clarence Hildreth, proprietor of the Prospect Hill Garage, and brother of Arthur G.
Hildreth, attended a banquet given by the Nash Motor Car dealers in Boston on Wednesday
evening. He is agent for the Nash car in this town.
“Rev. Habib Yusufji, a student at Gordon college, Boston, will occupy the pulpit on Sunday
morning at the Congregational church, and will appear in native costume and tell his life story,
including his conversion from Mohammedanism, Sunday evening, at 7:30….
“Wesley Davis has resigned his position as foreman on the farm of William R. Carver, and has
accepted a like position with George F. White of this town. Mr. Carver’s present plan of farming
will not necessitate the service of a foreman.
“Linwood Morse moved his family to Maine on Wednesday. He was formerly employed on
the George F. White farm [62 Main St.].
“The engine on the freight train due at Westford station on Tuesday evening at 6:15 became
derailed at Westford station, and therefore it was an offset to traffic over the Stony Brook branch
for several hours.
“Miss Mabel Prescott is recovering from her recent illness and expects to report on duty at the
local telephone exchange the early part of next week.
“Frank Everett Miller has been appointed truant officer.
“Tadmuck Club. The regular meeting of the Tadmuck club was held in the Unitarian church
on Tuesday afternoon. A memorial service was held in memory of Mrs. Samuel L. Taylor, a
charter member of the club. Mrs. Perley E. Wright read a poem, “Away,” by James Whitcomb
Riley.
“After the memorial service Mrs. George F. White, president of the club, introduced Miss
Cutter, of Dracut, who gave a very interesting talk on “Suggestions for the gardens for 1922.” …
“About Town. The funeral of Mrs. Samuel Law Taylor took place last week Thursday
afternoon at 2:30 o’clock from the Taylor homestead. Owing to illness in the family the funeral
services were private, with only relatives and a few friends present….
“Rev. Edward A. Horton, chaplain of the Massachusetts senate and well known in Westford
[as a trustee of] Westford academy, has just recovered from a six-weeks’ illness from pneumonia.
To state it in his own words, “I have been in dry dock for six weeks. I am now out and good for a
ten-years’ cruise.” Mr. Horton, who is in his eighties, is a remarkable man in a variety of ways.
Genial and easily approached by all classes, a rare student of life and the most inspiring literature,
an ever ready eloquent, inspiring and witty talker at public gatherings, his life stands forth from
the crowd as a unique illustration of the power and inspiration of individuality in all its higher and
ideal aspects.
“The funeral services of George W. Nesmith were held at the family home, [233] Concord
road, Parkerville, last week Wednesday afternoon…. As a gallant soldier during all of the civil
war and member of the Westford Veterans’ association we shall miss him in the Memorial day
parade. His tall form, erect bearing and handsome physique made him conspicuous at all parades
of the G.A.R.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Adams Cram, of Boston, announce the engagement of their daughter,
Miss Mary Cram, to Jerome Greene, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jerome D. Greene, of New York city.
Mr. Cram used to live in Westford, when his father was minister at the Unitarian church [1872-
1876].
“The contract for building the new schoolhouse at Brookside, at the junction of Plain, Oak hill
and Brookside roads, has been awarded by the school committee to Edwards & Monnahan, of
Westford and West Chelmsford. The building will be of brick and have two rooms on the ground
floor….
“Graniteville. The Abbot Worsted Soccer club is keeping in training in preparation for the
state championship to be played with the Fore River club of Quincy at the grounds of the
American Woolen Company at Shawsheen Village in the near future….
“The roads have been fast drying up on the village streets during the past few days, although
the traveling has been rather heavy in the outlying districts. It is hoped that all snow storms will
be sidetracked for the rest of the season.
“Our Silver Wedding Anniversary. [This fascinating 6600-word travel journal written by
Leonard Wheeler (1864-1937), who lived at what is now 66 Main St., describes a trip he and his
wife, Mary (Williams) Wheeler (1871-1922), took in May-June 1921 from Westford to Lansing,
Mich., by train, where they got their new Reo automobile, and from thence to Denver, Col. and
back to Westford by car, usually camping overnight. It can be read in fill below.
Ralph Adams Cram (1863-1942) entered Westford Academy in 1875; he became a nationally-known architect of Gothic Revival style collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings. Courtesy photo /wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Adams_Cram.
Our Silver Wedding Anniversary.
By Leonard Winthrop Wheeler, March 1922
Edited by Bob Oliphant, February 2022
[This fascinating 1921 travel journal was written by Leonard Winthrop Wheeler (1864-1937), who lived at what is what is now 66 Main Street, Westford, Mass. It appeared in The Westford Wardsman, part of Turner’s Public Spirit, published in Ayer, Mass., March 18, 1922. The article covers nearly all of page 3 and describes a five-week trip Leonard and his wife, Mary Houghton (Williams) Wheeler(1871-1922), took in May and June of 1921 from Westford to East Lansing by train, where they bought a new Reo automobile, and from thence to Denver and back to Westford by car (and boat across Lake Erie), usually camping overnight. It is rich in detail of the many places they visited, the frequent rainy weather, the often barely passable roads, and the fauna and flora that they saw. Leonard must have written this with a heavy heart in tribute to, and memory of, his wife who had died quite suddenly of lobar pneumonia on January 6, 1922, only two and half months before this piece was published. Her obituary appears in The Westford Wardsman of January 14, 1922. The Wheelers were married March 23, 1896, in Concord, Mass., so this article must have served as Leonard’s 26th anniversary present to his dearly departed wife.
Mr. Wheeler does not say what model Reo he purchased, but it may well have been the 1921 Model T-6, a six-cylinder, 50-horsepower machine pictured here.]
The auto had seen much use and newer ones in the dealer’s show-room looked desirable.[1] Many short trips made a long one look attractive. Madam had been married twenty-five years. Her wedding trip was from her old home to the new one by the shortest route with the slight consolation of “perhaps sometime.” Now, home duties as never before shaped themselves favorably for a longer neglect than usual so we took the first west bound train from town on the morning of May 26, 1921.[2] In Worcester we boarded the Wolverine[3] express and rolled rapidly along the Quinebaug Valley to Springfield, crossed the Connecticut river and ascended the Westfield River Valley into the Berkshires beautiful in spring-time verdure. As Nature drew the shades and the country faded from view we so lost sight of our native New England that not until five weeks later, when we had returned as far as Niagara, did we see an auto number plate of any New England state. Venturing then to speak to the people in a Vermont car, they began to inquire after people in our little town.
In the early gray of dawn we crossed the Niagara river and the Welland canal marked by a double row of lights. Then for several hours in Ontario we rolled through a farming country of such a dead level as we had never imagined. The smallness of the buildings took our attention. An almost treeless country it had become, though many a stump fence and stump-strewn field told that it was not always thus. Plainly lumber must now come from a distance and building must be expensive.
In due time we dove into a tunnel under the Detroit river, and on coming out were in the United States again. Afterleaving the city the country looked precisely like Ontario; or did Ontario look just like Southern Michigan and Western New York? At Jackson we changed cars and reached Lansing shortly before noon. After dinner we inquired at the salesrooms of our brand of auto, the Reo, the way to the factory, and found that it was in one of their machines which quickly carried us to it. Therein, showing our credentials, we were very courteously shown over the plant and then introduced to the car that was to be our home for five weeks. A thunder shower vetoed our start until morning, when I drove the machine down town to the hotel and gathered in madam and our hand luggage. At the express office we found our bedstead which was a contrivance whereby two people can sleep in a machine quite comfortably.[4]
At the depot we claimed our trunk and emptied it into the tonneau [rear seating compartment of an automobile]. The trunk would not go in so we found a furniture store that was willing to invest a dollar and madam’s old trunk was left behind. Our next concern was provisions and so bread and cake, butter, eggs and bacon, and things that are cooked, with a can opener were purchased. At one store a box about fifteen inches each way came with our purchases and became the pantry. Another similar box became the kitchen, for in it were packed the Sterno outfit, the Florence one-burner oil stove, the kerosene can and a few other utensils. Our outfit proved adequate, our only addition on the road being two half-pint enameled dippers. In clothing we had surplus.
About 9:30 a.m. I turned the chariot southward past Michigan’s capitol and we were on our way as gasoline gypsies.
At Battle Creek we dined in a restaurant as was our rule throughout the trip. Kalamazoo was the next large town. Having got the mastery of the new car in the afternoon madam was given the wheel awhile, somewhat to her trepidation. So docile was the car that thereafter she was anxious for the trick at the wheel, which was in theory one-third of the time. Rough driving and detours somewhat interfered, but a goodly share of her joy in the trip was in being at the wheel. On the whole the roads were fair, but in places muddy and rutted from the shower of the night before. The country was open, gently rolling prairie with little wood. Part of the time we were in a region of small tree fruits—sour cherries, plums, peaches, grapes and a few apples.
At Niles [Mich.] we reached the St Joseph river, which we followed to South Bend, Ind., where we found before starting was a public auto tourist camping ground. This we reached after inquiry likewise after dark. The bedstead was gotten out of its box, which just fitted across the floor at the front of the tonneau, and was say eight inches each other way. As the “long box” it became the useful receptacle of many small articles. The mystery of how the bedstead went above the top of the seats was solved in time. A heavy blanket over the canvas served as mattress. An army blanket as sheet and a steamer rug supplemented the first nights with overcoats and two small sofa pillows, completed the bedding. A ten-yard piece of tarletan had been made into a square for a mosquito bar, but was not needed at any camp during the trip. The gymnastics necessary on going to bed were mastered after a trial or two. It was like the upper berth in a sleeping car—climb and roll; reverse in the morning, that is, roll and climb backwards. A canvas that was once a Concord buggy wagon cover, suspended from one side of the auto and preferably passed around a small tree, made a dressing-room.
Our camp was 176 miles from the factory. The machine was new and stiff and some of the roads had been far from first-class, so we were glad to get to bed. Whether or no madam dreamed of the old homestead left to itself and the buildings boarded up as they had not been for over seventy years or more of home duties, I did not. Not since childhood had I felt so carefree and by sleep in the open we awoke rested in spite of the first day having been a bit strenuous. In fact throughout the trip we felt fresh and ready every morning. An essential part of our outfit was an eight-quart ex-milk can which I filled at a handy hydrant. By regularly filling this can at municipal supplies we always had water of which we had no fears on sanitary lines.
Bacon and eggs were soon sizzling over the lamp stove and coffee boiling over the Sterno outfit. With bread and butter, dry cereal and tin can fruit we satisfied appetites that had an edge.
Joliet, Ill., seemed a distance for an easy day’s run, but a condition not sufficiently foreseen made the 127 miles of the second day far from easy. Road construction work was in progress and hardly a day passed without several detours until we got back to Buffalo. This day the detours were long, poor, muddy, ill-marked and abundant. When I was a schoolboy Valparaiso was the capitol of Chile in South America, but this day I found it, or Valpo for short, a county-seat in Northwestern Indiana. An attractive restaurant did not appear and a bench on the courthouse grounds under some trees where we could inspect the town proved our lunch place. About eight miles beyond Joliet, where we crossed the Illinois river and the Chicago drainage canal, at a crossroad, was an unused schoolhouse with few trees and a double allowance of land, where we were allowed to camp.
Our third day’s run was 146.5 miles mainly on concrete. With fair weather, a prosperous farming country of rolling prairie, every acre under cultivation, great fields of corn just above ground, some small grain growing, pigs everywhere, other live stock in evidence, neat towns, more trees than I expected, two Memorial day parades, one of them while eating dinner in Dixon, and camping at night in Fulton, Ill., on the bank of the Mississippi, the joy of living was with us. This night we came in contact with the long-distance tourist camping ground. Camping with us were two California outfits. One outfit did not look thoroughly prepossessing, and when the man made a remark about fortune-telling to help out his finances, the woman showed how strenuous she was finding their travels by saying “I can’t find time to spit.”
Crossing the suspension bridge in the morning took us into [Clinton] Iowa and the second stage of our journey was past, the railroad part being the first. Beyond Clinton, the first town, was a twenty-mile detour for road construction. Showers in the morning showed us the slippery nature of the roads in this country when wet.
Nooning was at Cedar Rapids, where we crossed the Cedar river. In the afternoon was forty-five miles of mud. As the roadbed, while wide, was bounded on either side wherever improved by a steep-sided ditch two to six feet deep, slippery mud was to be respected. So slippery was this mud that a ten-mile gait was more dangerous than a forty-mile rate on concrete. The salvation of the situation sometimes was in ruts deep enough to hold the wheels in the track, and 157.6 miles brought us to Tama. The camp ground was in a little grove of cottonwoods between the road and a muddy creek, pleasant enough, so we made a special effort to use it again on our homeward trip. We did not see a stream of clear water west of New York.
The Iowa country on our route is rolling, almost hilly, prairie with more wood than I expected, enough so that on one hillock was a portable sawmill working up lumber. Pigs were plenty, though not as abundant as in Illinois. Cattle were more plenty. Cornfields were everywhere. Two-horse cultivators, two or three to a field, were at the first cultivation. In some fields plowing was in progress with three or four horses abreast; never a tandem hitch, unless there were more than four horses; never a single horse at work. Small grains, grass, clover and alfalfa increase as we go westward.
At Tama three California parties were camping that night. We began June with what would have been a splendid day’s run but for a shower, which made the road so slippery we were obliged to halt in a little village called Arion, after driving 174.7 miles. A little park with a few trees in the midst of the hamlet close to the depot of two railroads was the camping place for the night. Yet that was better than the looks of the hotel across the street. For some hours we had been riding southward in the Boyer River Valley and noting flood water debris on fences, even three or four feet above the roadway. Washed and flooded fields were everywhere. There had been a terrific rain about a week before.
From South Bend we had been following the Lincoln highway [basically today’s U.S. Route 30] whereon the pole markings are red, white and blue bands. A gay looking bird, a bit larger than a robin, with a red head, white body and wings, and tail very dark blue, was so noticeable that I called him the Lincoln highway bird. He is a woodpecker. Later, we saw him as far east as Western New York. A drab dove-like bird about the same size I found to be the mourning dove. A third bird of similar size, of rumpled mottled plumage, not handsome, had a trick of lighting on a fence post and just as we were abreast pour out four or five clear, beautiful notes. It was the western meadow lark and he did much to cheer our progress. These three birds were constant and interesting companions all the way west of the Mississippi. Our nooning had been at Boone [Iowa, birthplace in 1896 of first lady Mamie (Doud) Eisenhower].
Overnight we listened to thunder showers which kept the roads from drying out. Because of a bridge washed out beyond Arion we had to start with a detour so slippery we barely made two hills. After about fifteen miles we were beyond the region of the last shower and had easier traveling. At one muddy spot another fellow became stuck in its midst and with a third party I had to help push him through. After No. 3 had got through and both men were out of sight I put through. A few miles further on was a still worse place of deep, crooked, heavy ruts, but the chariot rambled right along. Presently we were beside a very steep hillside extending for miles on our left with outcroppings of rock that looked like clay. We had reached the valley of the Missouri and were alongside the bluffs from which Council Bluffs [Iowa] is named. Soon we had to drive over an outreaching tongue of these bluffs and then across a level stretch into Council Bluffs. Crossing the Missouri by a suspension bridge into Omaha, [Neb.] we were in the west. Here we had dinner, looked the town over, loaded up with road information and went into camp in a large park with 78.9 miles to our credit for the day.
So far we looked in vain for the prairie flowers, of which we had read. Cultivation of all the land and scraping the
roadsides had destroyed them. This day we noted a flower we were to see in wonderful profusion and prosperity, the blue spiderwort of the home flower garden. Occasionally specimens of a pink variety were seen. Later, we saw railroad land for miles blue with this flower.
Leaving Omaha in the morning a cement road was enjoyed a few miles. Then dirt was the rule, save strips of cement or brick in the towns. We did see gravel being applied in two or three places. This day’s progress was 158.4 miles of good traveling through level prairie in the Platte River Valley. We could perceive that we were steadily though slowly going up grade.
Near Columbus, where we dined, we crossed the Loup river. The bridge that was only wide enough for one vehicle was often found [sic]. Getting westward we saw more pasturing of cattle which were plainly of beef brands, unlike our milking breed. At times we met bunches of fat steers under convoy of cowboys on their way to market, creatures as big and round as molasses hogsheads. Roadside flowers of varieties unknown to us were now more in evidence. Less and less trees, and now only cottonwoods were to be seen. A clump of trees meant a dwelling. Occasionally an acre or so of cottonwood near the house told that a settler had availed himself of the timber act.[5] A treeless country makes small houses. We begin to see an increase in horse raising and the proportion of pigs decreases. Roofless corncribs begin to be seen, an indication of sparse rainfall. A cottonwood grove near Grand Island is our camping place with a dozen others.
Saturday 162 miles took us to North Platte, where we crossed the North Platte river [to Lexington, Neb.]. We dined in Lexington many times, sixteen miles from Boston. This camping place had the most facilities of any we came across. There was a small building with stoves and fuel, shower bath and a janitor, all within three minutes’ walk of the business part of the town. This day the prairie showed us abundant yellow flowers unfamiliar to us. During the day we gradually passed out of the tillage country into a grazing country. We were on the border of what the old geographies called “The Great American Desert,” and began to see bluffs, sand dune-like, with sparse grass and yucca plants thereon. Here we spent the afternoon cleaning up, oiling the chariot and so on. Some young fellows, who had thought it smart to race with a railroad train, spent the day tightening up engine bearings. After dinner madam got the go bug and we pushed on, and eight-seven miles landed us in Colorado’s first town, Julesburg—497 Miles in 2 ½ days and a half a day in camp carried us through Nebraska. This, with 200 miles of Colorado, was the most monotonous part of our trip.
The rolling, dryland country now surrounded us. Yucca and sage brush are now common. More horses than cattle are on the range and the pig is in the pen as at home. The irrigation ditch has put in its appearance, and the jackrabbit now alternates with the cottontail in bounding out of our way. The gopher runs from the track every few minutes. Just out of Julesburg we were referred to a high sightly location for camp, where there was a brand new shed for our accommodation. A Chicago couple were there ahead of us, but welcomed us. They had as traveling companion an unfettered tomcat which wandered about and drove off other cats over night as he saw fit and turned up in the morning.
Our route through Nebraska had been in the Platte River Valley to the junction of the North and South Platte rivers. Thence we were with the South Platte. At the same time we were near the Union Pacific railroad. At times our route for miles lay alongside the railroad, occasionally crossing to the other side of the track. Then for a time the railroad would be as far out of sight as was the river. We saw much less of the river than we expected. Sometimes, when near it, all we could see was swamp. Instead of a plain stretching beyond eyesight, the valley now had bounds on either hand of higher, dryer land. There lay the “desert.”
We were now reading in the papers of the cloudbursts that flooded Pueblo [Colo., south of Colorado Springs] and made washouts throughout Colorado. We remembered Iowa mud, the Boyer River Valley with its mud and well we might. Monday 136.2 miles took us to Fort Morgan, where we were told we could only go to the next town, a small village [probably Wiggins], because of road conditions, and what we had just been over disposed us to believe them, for mud, puddles and flooded areas were everywhere. This, where roofless corncribs and other indications told us this was a dry country long before Volstead was heard of.
Sterling [Colo.] had been our dining place. Its streets were awful, the main ones impassable, being torn up for paving. Here the cowboy and the Indian, in European clothing, were abundant as were the ranch owners who had driven into town. Theirs was always a two-horse hitch; the single horse had a saddle. Where irrigation was available this day the sugar beet was the crop. At one time we were in a potato section. Throughout the trip I noted the scarcity of kitchen gardens. Through this country the first we would see of a town was a bit of smoke; next a water tank would appear, and then a grain elevator. They, not the New England church steeple, were the heralds of towns.
The Fort Morgan camping place was in a corner of the fair grounds. Overnight an enormous quantity of moths, said to be cut worm, filled every crevice and cranny of our outfit so that I scooped them out in double handfuls in the morning. Two nights previous we had a similar invasion, which resulted during the day in a clogged air intake to the carburetor. This was the nearest to real trouble we had with the auto, and then we couldn’t blame the machine. Never did we have to send for help.
In the morning others in camp had seen someone who had got through from Denver the day before so all started. For twelve miles, to Wiggins, it was passable. Then we were sent northward a mile to a temporary lake running over the crossroad. Into it we went, turning at right angle in the middle, and after another turn and a few miles we were on the main Lincoln highway, headed for Greeley, traveling close to the South Platte river, across which was a bee [sic, beef?] ranch. Thunder showers were gathering in all directions. In alternate sunshine, cloud and pouring rain we pushed on in deep mud until we came in sight of another strip of flooded road. Here we held down barbed wire fence as each machine drove into the field, and then it was across two empty ditches close together, one of them three feet deep to another road deep with rutted mud, which we followed to a farmyard. There we were directed across two irrigation ditches into the fields, where we were told to follow the ditch-tender’s path along the upper ditch. Five horse pastures we went through, the horses therein gazing in surprise as madam opened the barbed wire gates at each boundary and leaving them for the outfit behind us.
Near LaSalle we came onto a main road nine miles south of Greeley, to which no road was open. One sizable building and a few widely scattered farmhouses made up LaSalle. We sat on the bank by the roadside and a few leftovers made the most make-shift lunch we had on the trip. As we ate we watched a heavy thunder shower in the direction of Greeley. In the cloud we could see a funnel shaped tongue of cloud like the pictures we had seen of tornadoes. While eating I was amused to have a resident ask me, a tenderfoot, how to get to Fort Morgan. We were told the road to Denver was clear. One more stop had to be made on account of a tire punctured in the mud in the morning.
Thunder showers in all directions so obscured the air that not until hours after we should have welcomed the sight did I see a dim outline which I soon declared must be the Rocky Mountains. On through the mud we churned and slipped and slid until a cement road appeared. Oh joy! Almost there! But, like Sheridan, we were twenty miles away.[6] However, a six-cylinder Reo auto has a different time schedule from Sheridan on horseback. Signs of a city quickly increased and the city was in sight and then we were in it and through its splendid municipal square and out to Overland park in the south of the town, where we found good camping facilities and a hundred other outfits in camp. Weary we were after our hardest day’s drive of 122.5 miles, but triumphant, for when cloudbursts and floods had wrecked bridges and highways throughout Colorado and brought disaster to cities we had won through to our goal from Sterling, where we had been turned aside because of an impassable bridge, nearly 200 miles of route which the next morning’s papers called “impassable.”
We had driven 1526.7 miles in a strange country under adverse and unusual road conditions with no mishap other than a punctured tire, and once getting a start in the wrong direction when after dinner in Sterling we were sent south of the river because of a damaged bridge at Merino. With incomplete directions and lacking guideboards, a chronic condition throughout our trip, we neglected what looked like somebody’s cart path into his field and so drove several miles before finding our mistake. Extraordinary rains made traveling unusually hard for the season.
Once, in Central Nebraska, we came to a flooded half mile of road in the midst of which stood a machine, stuck and abandoned. For us it was retreat, turn a half mile south, a mile west, then north to the main road again. One morning, for fifty miles we were in the trail of a tractor hauling a scraper and a roadside ditch digger, which was putting fresh mud into the road. When we overhauled and passed that outfit we did not weep. The country being surveyed in squares made zigzags in the road with very abrupt turns. Occasionally was added a double jog where the road jumped from one side of the section line[7] to the other.
Going to the camp ground the first night in Denver was somewhat a matter of variety for the new Reo had picked up so much mud it looked like any old Lizzie [nickname for an old Model T Ford]. Also, we had clothing with us which had not been subjected to eleven days on the road. So our first day in Denver gave the auto its second bath, the first being in Omaha where the darky who officiated said “She am a long ways from home.” I retorted to his surprise, “She hasn’t been there yet.” So far from home were we that our A.L.A.[8] badge was taken to mean “Alabama.” We heard an urchin say, “Massachusetts—that’s near Rhode Island.”
Yesterday’s thunder showers had drifted on and through the clear air we gazed with rapture on that great rampart, a gigantic wall, rising out of the plains west of Denver, surmounted by the gigantic snow-clad Pike’s Peak southward, Mt. Evans westward, and Long’s Peak northward. How those snows shone in the morning sunlight! To the dome of the statehouse we went, noting on one of the doorsteps, “This step is one mile above sea level,” where the whole city was spread out before us with the mountains to the westward and the plains all about. With visiting Cheeseman park, one of Denver’s beautiful parks, and photographing where bridges on 46th and 52nd streets had been washed away, we used up the day. The next day we found the Denver National bank, where my brother [Roy Blanchard Wheeler (1871-1932) who was born in Westford] worked. After dinner with him we visited City park, where there was a fine menagerie and a museum in which was the most beautiful exhibit of minerals we had ever seen and the finest exhibit of the taxidermist’s art with birds and animals of the state.
Friday we took the only mountain trip available, to Golden and up Lookout Mountain, on top of which is Buffalo Bill’s grave, whence is a splendid view of Denver and its surrounding plains. We then drove on as far as Bergen park. We were on the Rocky Mountains and had many fine views of higher snow-clad peaks in the distance. “Forests” were here, but the trees were so scattered as to contrast noticeably with our thick-set woodlands. Our noon lunch was in a shelter house over a fine spring on the mountain side. Saturday we wandered about the city and did our memento shopping.
With my brother and his wife [Avis (Coffran) Wheeler (1880-1921)] we spent Sunday in the open from early morning until after dark. While the ladies were preparing breakfast by some cottonwoods beside Dry creek we watched the prairie dogs. Nearby I found the mummied carcass of a heifer that had strayed away in the winter. One of the cottonwoods had fallen and the bark having come off, the grain showed crooked and snarled as a mass of metal shavings. Only a saw could split it. Then we drove on beyond Parker until we came to an uphill strip of road of rutted and dried mud so rough that I turned back and near Hilltop lunched again. Here we found petrified wood by the ton and saved specimens to take home. Supper was beside a creek we had to ford. This day took us into the country away from the beaten track and gave us a memorable bit of visiting.
Wednesday we saw silver dollars being made in the [Denver] mint. In the afternoon we saw “Peck’s Bad Boy” in the movies.
On Thursday, June 16, we bade good-bye to my brother and his wife and started the long, long trail for home. How little did we dream that inside of seven months both ladies would go on that longer journey, from which there is no return.[9] Northward was our route to Fort Lupton, where we turned eastward until well toward Wiggins, on a high treeless swell we stopped for dinner by the wayside. Here was our last and finest view of the Rockies. Here were visible above that great rampart before mentioned all the western horizon snow-clad ridges and peaks from Pike’s peak to Long’s Peak.
Passing through Fort Morgan, at Brush, we left the Lincoln highway as we were told the Burlington was the only route east. That night we camped with others beside the grandstand on the fair grounds of Akron [Colo.] on a wind-swept plateau of treeless half desert range country. A wayside lunch was had again Friday, as the route afforded no towns with restaurants we cared for. They were the typical western towns we had read of. There were the buildings with the false fronts. There were the cowboys with chaps on horseback. There were their horses tied to railings alongside the rancher’s two-horse hitch. There were the Indians. The wind increased. At Culbertson [Neb.] we reached the Omaha, Lincoln, Denver highway, the O.L.D. for short, and twelve miles farther on, at McCook, we camped by a creek, where were the usual cottonwoods, the standard thing for an auto camp ground. This was the one place where we had to pump our water supply.
For about 170 miles we felt we were on detour as the Burlington was third choice for route. Some of that road was not good. Now the traveling was better and the third day we dined in Holdredge and camped in Hastings [Neb.] in a large park well supplied with trees and near an open-air theatre. Here we saw an armless man who was traveling alone in a Ford. We afterwards saw in a paper a little account of him. We seemed to be passing out of the arid country. Our mileage so far had been 150, 159.1 and 154 miles. From McCook to Oxford [Neb.] in architecture and shade trees, now not all cottonwoods, the towns were more like the east than we had seen. At Oxford the road left the Republican River Valley and we were again in dry country for a time. The sage brush and prickly pear and yucca were behind us as were the jackrabbits. The cottontails and gophers were still with us. One coyote I had seen in a hollow at his lunch. Madam happened to be driving when in the road we saw our only rattlesnake. She successfully drove around him. Yucca we had seen where there were many hundred plants to the acre with one to four blossom stalks apiece, four or five feet high, just opening into bloom. Cottonwood was now ceasing to be the only tree.
One detour for road work took us across fields and through a barnyard. At another place a washed out bridge was being replaced over a ten-foot-deep gully. We had to cross the roadside ditch, cross a corner of a well hilled cornfield and then to the bottom of that gully and up into the road again. Once for ten miles. It was first one side and then the other of the road dodging work teams and piles of dirt and gravel with a short detour around the steam shovel. Scrapers in that country have twenty-foot blades or three blades covering the same distance. Shovels hauled by three or four horses abreast are used. Once we met a contrivance hauled by twelve mules and six more behind pushing. Once we met a big tractor hauling a big scraper with a cable out to a smaller tractor in the ditch hauling another scraper that was cutting both sides of the ditch and throwing the dirt into the road.
Sunday morning we spent in camp, going over our outfit and the car. We attended services in the Presbyterian church. After dinner the call of the road prevailed. We stopped in Lincoln, but the camping place was far from attractive and was close to a menagerie and the park was filled with a Sunday afternoon crowd, so we went on to Waverly [Neb.], where we pulled up beside a schoolhouse after 128.6 miles.
Early Monday morning we crossed the Platte on a slender seeming suspension bridge over a wild, raging flood. The wind still kept blowing and the sun shone still hotter, and the dust blew. Soon after crossing the Platte road work drove us onto crossroads that brought us onto the Lincoln highway a few miles west of Omaha. From this point to Geneva, Ill., we followed our outward route for 500 miles. Our dinner was in Council Bluffs and our camp in Carroll, Ia. This afternoon a machine passed us as we were resting under a tree. A lady had seen our Massachusetts number
plate. She had left Greeley, Colo., at the same time we left Denver, and while her husband was with her, was doing all the driving to her parents’ home in Seekonk, Mass., where she arrived about three hours before we reached Westford. They were camp-mates with us that night in Carroll on a little vacant lot beside a Standard Oil “filling station.” All through the west we found “filling stations” of various companies where gas was about two cents cheaper than at garages. At some place gas prices were figured in tenths of a cent.
This 500 miles, with as much more either side of it, was in hot, yes hotter weather, with a strong southwest wind of the kind we read of as bad in the grain country, and daily in the papers we read of the upward climb of prices in grain in Chicago because of the hot winds. The corn, which three of four weeks before was getting its first cultivation, was now three or four feet high. The wind that came over these fields was as from a furnace. But in a few minutes we would be passing fields of alfalfa or clover or white clover, each in full bloom, giving out a fragrance worth some travel to get, and 163 miles were left behind this day.
At noon of another day we were in Marshalltown and at night we were “tenting on the old camp ground” at Tama [Iowa], where we stopped when going west. Madam considered this one of our pleasantest camping places; 139.1 miles this day.
The next morning we started before breakfast, which we got in Cedar Rapids, fifty-four miles away. Memories of Iowa mud had not faded away and we drove on while the roads were dry, reaching Clinton for a late dinner. Then Madam had the pleasure of driving across the Mississippi. Crossing the Missouri we called “good-bye to the west,” and now in truth the west was behind us. This day was our record run, 200.1 miles, which brought us to camp in Dixon, Ill. Here we saw more than elsewhere how some people were solving the rent problem by camping while traveling in search of work. The grounds showed the result of much use. A few trees on a gentle slope furnished shade. Save for detours, of which we had three on poor dirt in the first twenty miles of the next day, we had cement road in Illinois. At Geneva we left the Lincoln highway for Chicago, where we saw some of the park system, the Lakeside Drive and Michigan avenue, in the heart of the city, and drove southward out of the city until we found a small abandoned apple orchard where we pulled in for the night after 156.3 miles for the day.
The next noon, June 24, after dinner in South Bend, Ind., we went to our first camping place content with 98.6 miles advance. Here we stopped for the afternoon and night, as we wanted to wash and grease the auto and rest a bit. That morning we had quite a detour on side roads, where we saw that we were back in a country of natural forest. Wayside flowers were much more to be seen on the detour. In fact, wherever I go I find more of Nature is to be seen on the side roads. In Iowa, on some side roads, the profusion of wild phlox of several colors repaid for poor traveling. I must also mention the great white poppy blossoms we saw on thistle plants that we found to be the prickly poppy.
Saturday we drove through a black walnut country, dining in Bryan, Ind., and reached Toledo, Ohio, in a rainstorm and spent the night in a hotel.
Sunday, we heard Roger Babson[10] at the First Congregational church.
After dinner we left Toledo and failing to find opportunity for camping on the shore of Lake Erie we found a side road in a woodlot that was acceptable twenty-three miles south of Detroit. Our sight-seeing in Detroit was marred by violent thunder showers in the wake of the hot weather we had endured most of the way from Denver. Here we made a break in our mode of travel indulging in the extravagance of the trip in a night trip on the lake to Buffalo, which we reached about nine o’clock in the morning. The popularity of this trip is indicated by the fact that there were over seventy other machines on the boat that night. At noon we ate our lunch by Niagara Falls.
In Batavia, we stopped at the Holland Purchase House and viewed the antiques therein. This building held the land office of the region early in the last century, when the land once claimed by Massachusetts under royal grants was parceled out. Toward night we had gotten into hill country and turned up a side road, where, in a sightly spot under a tulip tree in full bloom, we camped between Lima and West Bloomfield. Before we got packed up in the morning it began to rain, and it poured all the forenoon while we were in the Finger Lake region, spoiling with fog our chance at the scenery. It was still raining lightly during our trip through Watkins Glen.
After dinner our road took us past Montour Falls and Buttermilk Falls and through Cornell university grounds in Ithaca. Showers in the afternoon made some sheds by an unused chapel in DeRayter acceptable for the night.
A particularly muddy detour in the morning kept up the custom of the trip. Dinner at Canajoharie saw us well into the Mohawk Valley. A splendid roadside spring of water out of a mountainside, cold the last of June, replenished our water can. Church sheds by a brick church of the Dutch Reformed variety offered us shelter for the night at Nishkayuna. A cemetery just back of the church kept us peaceful company.
A few miles in the morning took us through Troy and across the Hudson river. Then the road wound over the Hoosac Mountains. The amount of mud for a number of miles before reaching Williamstown (Mass.) mystified us until we found there had just been a very heavy rain after a drought of all our absence from New England.
After dinner in North Adams we entered the Mohawk Trail [Mass. State Rte. 2]. Soon after reaching the top of Hoosac Mountain it began to rain again and we had another dose of mud, especially going down Shelburne Mountain. We had planned to make a camp in the Berkshires but rain interfered, and as the road from Greenfield was good the day’s drive of 168.4 miles ended at home [66 Main St., Westford].
Our silver anniversary was finished. The auto had been driven 4210 miles with no accident, and unarmed we had camped and traveled unmolested. L. W. Wheeler.
Silver Wedding Anniversary Trip Chronicled in
The Westford Wardsman
The Wheelers’ trip, like most things happening in Westford or happening to Westford people in 1921, was chronicled in The Westford Wardsman newspaper.
May 28, 1921
Center. Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Wheeler started this week Thursday on a trip to Denver, Colo. Going by rail to Lansing, Mich., where their new Reo automobile is delivered, they go the rest of the way by auto. While in Denver they will be the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Roy B. Wheeler.
July 2, 1921
Center. Word has been received that Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Wheeler are enjoying their western trip. They are now on their way home.
About Town. Pleasant greetings have been received from Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Wheeler, who were in Chicago, ready to start back on the last lap of their auto trip homeward.
July 9, 1921
Center. Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Wheeler returned from their trip to Denver., Col., last week Friday evening. They made a journey of 4210 miles in their new car, camping by the way part of the time. A very pleasant visit was enjoyed at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Roy B. Wheeler in Denver. Although they saw many attractive places, New England looked good to them.
July 23, 1921
Center. The Board of Trade met at the town hall on Thursday evening of last week with President W. C. Roudenbush presiding, and A. R. Tuttle in the secretary’s chair. Some items of business were acted upon and L. W. Wheeler gave an informal talk of his recent automobile trip to Denver, Col. The speaker gave some account of the various states and cities passed through, their road conditions, industries, crops, flowers, birds, etc., and of the many and beautiful sights in and around Denver.
The following comment on “Our Silver Wedding Anniversary” was published the following week, March 25, 1922, by Samuel Law Taylor, the “About Town” correspondent for The Westford Wardsman:
About Town. We read with much helpful interest the one-page article in last week’s issue by L. W. Wheeler, entitled “Our silver wedding anniversary.” We have long wanted to take this trip to Denver and we were glad of this comparatively inexpensive opportunity to trail it through the mud, the washed away bridges and detours, its occasional oasis of forest, its cornfield and pumpkin vines, its cattle, swine, horses and small affairs, its unusual charming wild flowers, its rolling prairies and snow-capped mountains, its wet thunder showers and rattlesnakes. We were charmed with everything here listed and much else that time and space will not permit our listing. The only two items listed which failed to charm us were the rattlesnakes and thunder showers—they rattle us rather than charm us even here in New England, where they are not so abundant.
[1] The automobile dealer was George F. White, the Wheeler’s neighbor at 62 Main St., who owned and operated a Reo dealership in Lowell.
[2] “Center. Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Wheeler started this week Thursday on a trip to Denver, Colo. Going by rail to Lansing, Mich., where their new Reo automobile is delivered, they go the rest of the way by auto. While in Denver they will be the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Roy B. Wheeler.” The Westford Wardsman, May 28, 1921.
[3] “Wolverine” because it was bound for Michigan, the wolverine state.
[4] The bedstead must have been purchased in Lowell and shipped to East Lansing, Mich., where the Reo factory was located.
[5] “The Timber Culture Act was a follow-up act to the Homestead Act. The Timber Culture Act was passed by Congress in 1873. The act allowed homesteaders to get another 160 acres (65 ha) of land if they planted trees on one-fourth of the land, because the land was “almost one entire plain of grass, which is and ever must be useless to cultivating man.” (qtd. in Daily Life on the 19th Century American Frontier by Aleesha White)
“The primary impetus for the act was to alter the climate and ecology of the Great Plains. Scientists in the 19th century believed that substantial afforestation would cause an increase in rainfall, which would enable greater agricultural development. A second motivation was the need for timber on the frontier.” Quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Culture_Act.
[6] This is a literary reference to the poem Sheridan’s Ride by Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872) in which the phrase “Sheridan twenty miles away” appears several times. It is a reference to Civil War Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan (1831-1888) riding from Winchester to rally his troops to victory after a surprise attack by the Confederates at Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, on Oct. 19, 1864.
[7] When land was surveyed in the Northwest Ordnance of 1785, and subsequently further west, it was surveyed in 1-square-mile “Sections” bounded by section lines. Sections were grouped in 6-square-mile “Townships.” Normally, when section lines crossed from one township to another, the line was straight. However, occasionally, because of physical obstacles or corrections for the curvature of the earth, surveyors would make a jog in a section line when it crossed from one township to another. As the section lines were always at the boundaries of lots, roads were typically laid out along these lines.
[8] The Automobile Legal Association was founded in 1907 to help motorists with legal advice, touring services, emergency road service, emergency medical treatment, bail, and watching over “hostile” government legislation. Members displayed an ALA badge on their vehicle. Garages that displayed an ALA sign, indicating membership in the ALA, provided automotive services that included changing tires, putting on chains, changing batteries, starting cars, and towing.
[9] Leonard Wheeler’s wife, Mary Houghton (Williams) Wheeler was born June 20, 1871, in Taunton and died Jan. 6, 1922, in Westford where she was very active in town affairs. Roy Wheeler’s wife, Avis (Coffran) Wheeler, was born in 1880 and died Dec. 9, 1921, in San Diego, Calif., where she was traveling.
[10] “Roger Ward Babson (1875-1967) was an American entrepreneur, economist, and business theorist in the first half of the 20th century. He is best remembered for founding Babson College” in 1919. He was born in Gloucester, Mass., part of the 10th generation of Babsons living there. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Babson.