Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West

by Joanne Wilke

Book Overview

In 1924 eight young women drove across the American West in two Model T Fords. In nine weeks they traveled more than nine thousand unpaved miles on an extended car-camping trip through six national parks, "without a man or a gun along." It was the era of the flapper, but this book tells the story of a group of farm girls who met while attending Iowa's Teacher's College and who shared a "yen to see some things." A blend of oral and written history,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803260199
• ISBN13: 9780803260191
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

book club selection

Our whole book club loved this book. Colorful ,gutsy women on an amazing journey. They passed thru our home area so found that interesting trying to imagine what it was like here in 1924.

Road Trip!

Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West by Joanne Wilke follows a group of women aged 19 to 26 on a car trip from Iowa to the West Coast. In 1924 the roads weren't paved, road maps were not always reliable, and motels hadn't been invented yet. Wilke reconstructs the nine-week journey using interviews, postcards and letters the travelers sent home along the way, and from a travel journal one of the women kept. Another one of the women brought a brownie box camera and took photos along the way, which are reproduced in the book. Driving cross-country in those days was a dusty and potentially dangerous undertaking, with open Model Ts and dirt roads. They camped out most nights. They had to pack light, as four women in each car left little room for luggage or camping equipment, and the Model T was not a large car. They bought the cars shortly before they left, learned to drive along the way, and learned to do minor repairs on the fly. The women, all schoolteachers, wanted to see Yosemite and some of the other national parks. Their time in the Bay Area was familiar to me - they visited Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown and complained about the cold summer weather. But it was also unfamiliar - they and their cars took ferries across the Bay because in 1924 neither the Bay Bridge nor the Golden Gate Bridge had yet been built. I enjoyed this story of what was an early version of what has become a rite of passage in America - the road trip in your first car, driving away from home and parents, and returning, a little bit different.