In this excerpt from his new book Drive!, Lawrence Goldstone recounts one of the first coast-to-coast road trips. 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." It took 63 days.

The Packard set out from San Francisco on June 20, 1903. The Model F that E.T. "Tom" Fetch drove had been modified only slightly---the fenders had been removed, and it had been fitted with extra gasoline tanks and an additional low gear for negotiating mountains. In addition to the canvas---to roll out and lay under the wheels to allow the car to traverse the most inhospitable tracts of soft sand---Fetch took along a pick and shovel and log chains to get the car through ruts.

The car weighed 2,200 pounds stripped and almost 3,000 when laden with equipment. Finally, Fetch thought his chariot should have a name, and since they would initially be following the Southern Pacific tracks, he chose Old Pacific.

Fetch detested the route, “straight through the Rocky Mountains and on to Denver,” which he believed was chosen by an advertising man Fetch later called a “dumb fool.” In fact, Packard’s general manager, Sidney Waldon, had chosen the route, but he didn’t disagree with Fetch’s assessment. “I didn’t understand the difficulties and consequently selected the wrong route from San Francisco to Emigrant Gap, Reno, Lovelock, Winnemucca, around the north end of Great Salt Lake, and from Salt Lake City told them to go right through the center of Colorado. Like a dumb fool, I was thinking from the standpoint of publicity, with pictures of the mountains and canyons, but what I sent them into was something terrific.” Clearly, Waldon was not using “terrific” in the positive sense.

It took the Packard a full month to arrive in Denver. But the route, as hoped, provided a plethora of opportunities for publicity. A series of regular press releases were issued, such as this one that appeared in Horseless Age: “The Packard Motor-car Company reports that E. T. Fetch and M. C. Krarup, who have undertaken to run a Packard automobile from San Francisco to New York City, have reached Wadsworth, Nev. in their progress eastward. This is the first time that an automobile has succeeded in crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains.”

They would also cross the Rockies; at 11,000 feet, the Packard set a record for altitude. There were no bridges built to accommodate automobiles, so Fetch had to use more than a little creativity to nudge the Packard along the tracks on railroad bridges. He also learned that the appearance of good fortune could be deceiving.

More than once in the early weeks of the trip, Fetch found what appeared to be a well-groomed main road, only to learn after following it, sometimes for miles, that it led only to the entrance of a mine or some wealthy rancher’s spread. Asking directions was equally knotty, as few of those encountered on the trail had ever been more than a day or two’s horse ride from their homes.

The journey was immensely challenging. Extremes of temperature and altitude were exacerbated by bad food, no bathing facilities, fatigue, and a series of impediments that seemed to have been drawn from a Greek saga. Fetch and Krarup were called upon to use all the skills they had learned and some that they had not, like road construction.