Documentary Style
HistoricalHoratio's Drive: America's First Road Trip
Ken Burns' entertaining chronicle of America's first cross-country car trip. A $50 bet, a dog in goggles, and the beginning of automobile America told through adventure and love letters.
Year
2003
Type
film
Runtime
107 min
Language
English
Director
Ken Burns
Genres
Summary
n May 1903, Vermont doctor Horatio Nelson Jackson bet $50 he could drive across America. Most thought the automobile had no future.
Ken Burns follows Jackson's 63-day journey through a country with only 150 miles of paved roads, no gas stations, and virtually no maps. Traveling with mechanic Sewall Crocker and pit bull Bud, they battled deep mud, broken engines, cowboys using lariats for towing, and ranch wives trading meals for rides on the "Go-Like-Hell Machine." Tom Hanks narrates using Jackson's photographs and passionate love letters to his wife alongside period films and newspapers.
The journey marked the beginning of automobile America. As transportation transforms again today, the story of skeptics proven spectacularly wrong resonates across a century.