Horatio Nelson Jackson
Horatio Nelson Jackson was a Canadian-American physician, Army medical officer, businessman, and automobile pioneer. In 1903, he and his hired mechanic and driving partner Sewall K. Crocker became the first people to drive an automobile across the United States, a road trip from San Francisco to New York City, with additional miles travelled to his home in Vermont.
Jackson served in World War I and was a key organizer of the American Legion, where he held the position of Vice Commander. He was also the owner of the Burlington Daily News, president of the Burlington Trust Bank, and owner of the first local radio station WCAX. He was nicknamed "The Mad Doctor."
Early life and medical career
Jackson was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on March 25, 1872, a son of Samuel Nelson Jackson and Mary Anne Jackson. His siblings included J. Holmes Jackson, who served several terms as mayor of Burlington, Vermont and S. Hollister Jackson, who served as Lieutenant governor of Vermont until his death in the great Vermont flood of 1927. Horatio N. Jackson also maintained a close lifelong relationship with his cousin, Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn, who was the founder of The Chicago School of Psychology.Jackson attended the schools of Toronto and Toronto's collegiate institute. He graduated with an MD degree from the University of Vermont in 1893, and became the House Surgeon in the Mary Fletcher Hospital until 1895 when he became a physician at the Brattleboro Retreat also known as the Vermont Asylum for the Insane. He then practiced private medicine in Burlington until 1900, when health issues led him to retire from active medical work.
Cross-country drive
Wager and preparations
Besides his medical practice, Jackson was an auto enthusiast who differed with the then-prevailing wisdom that the automobile was a passing fad and a recreational plaything. While in San Francisco's University Club as a guest on May 18, 1903, he agreed to a $50 wager to prove that a four-wheeled machine could be driven across the country in less than 90 days. He accepted, even though at age 31 he did not own a car, had practically no experience driving, and had no maps to follow. Jackson and his wife planned to return to their Burlington, Vermont, home in a few days, and both had been taking automobile driving lessons while in San Francisco. She returned home by train, allowing him to take his adventure by automobile.Having no mechanical experience, Jackson convinced a young mechanic and chauffeur, Sewall K. Crocker, to serve as his travel companion, mechanic, and backup driver. Crocker suggested that Jackson buy a Winton car. He bought a slightly used, two-cylinder, 20 hp Winton, which he named the Vermont, after his home state, bade his wife goodbye, and left San Francisco on May 23, carrying coats, rubber protective suits, sleeping bags, blankets, canteens, a water bag, an axe, a shovel, a telescope, tools, spare parts, a block and tackle, cans for extra gasoline and oil, a Kodak camera, a rifle, a shotgun, and pistols.
Heeding the failed attempt by automobile pioneer Alexander Winton to cross the deserts of Nevada and Utah, Jackson decided to take a more northerly route through the Sacramento Valley and along the Oregon Trail. This allowed them to avoid the higher passes in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains.
Journey
On May 23, 1903, the car was transported by ferry from San Francisco to Oakland and pointed eastward. But only into the journey, the car blew a tire. Jackson and Crocker replaced it with the only spare they had, in fact, the only right-sized spare tire they could find in all of San Francisco.On the first night of the journey they discovered that the side lanterns were too dim. On the second night, they stopped early in Sacramento and replaced them with a large spotlight mounted on the front of the Vermont. The duo was also assisted in Sacramento by bicyclists who offered them road maps. Jackson was unable to buy a new tire, but purchased some used inner tubes.
Going northwards out of Sacramento, the noise of the car covered the fact that the duo's cooking gear was falling off. They were also given a misdirection by a woman so that she could send them to the spot where her family could see an automobile.
The rough trek towards Oregon required them to haul the car across deep streams with the block and tackle. Somewhere along this route, Jackson lost a pair of his glasses. Items continued to be lost, including another pair of Jackson's glasses. They were also forced to pay a $4 toll by a land-owner in order to cross his property on a "bad, rocky, mountain road" as Jackson described it. When their tires blew out they were required to wind rope around the wheels. Jackson did manage to find a telegraph office and wired back to San Francisco for replacement tires to be transported to them along the journey.
Reaching Alturas, California, Jackson and Crocker stopped to wait for the tires. They offered locals rides in the car in exchange for a "wild west show". When the tires failed to materialize, however, they continued on after a three-day wait.
On June 6, the car broke down, and they had to be towed to a nearby ranch by a cowboy on horseback. Crocker made repairs, but a fuel leak caused them to lose all of their available gasoline, and Jackson rented a bicycle for Crocker to travel to Burns, Oregon, for fuel. After suffering a flat tire on the bicycle, he returned with of fuel, and they returned to Burns to fill up.
On June 9, outside of Vale, Oregon, the Vermont ran out of oil. Jackson walked back to the last town to get oil, only to discover eventually that they had been stopped only a short distance outside of Vale. The next day they arrived in Ontario, Oregon, where supplies waited for them.
Somewhere near Caldwell, Idaho, Jackson and Crocker obtained a dog, a bulldog named Bud. Jackson had wanted a dog companion since Sacramento. Newspapers at the time gave a variety of stories of how Bud was acquired, including that he was stolen; in a letter to his wife, Nelson said a man sold him the dog for $15. It turned out that the dusty alkali flats the travelers encountered would bother Bud's eyes so much that Jackson eventually fitted him with a pair of goggles. At one point, Bud drank bad water and became ill, but survived.
At this point, the trio became celebrities. The press came out at every stop to take their picture and conduct interviews. At Mountain Home, Idaho, citizens warned them that the Oregon Trail was not good further east, so Jackson and Crocker veered off their original course along the southern edge of the Sawtooth Mountains. At Hailey, Idaho, Crocker wired the Winton Company for more parts.
On June 16, somewhere in Idaho, Jackson's coat, containing most of the travelers' money, fell off and was not found. At their next stop, Jackson had to wire his wife to send them money to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Between June 20 and 21, all three of them got lost in Wyoming, and went without food for 36 hours before finding a sheepherder who gave them a meal of roast lamb and boiled corn. Before reaching Cheyenne, however, the car's wheel bearings gave out, and Crocker had to talk a farmer into letting them have the wheel bearings of his mowing machine.
The travelers eventually reached Omaha, Nebraska, on July 12. From there on, they were able to use a few paved roads, and their trip was much easier. In Chicago, Jackson was met by his cousin, Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn, and he was able to have a visit with family and friends. The only mishap happened just east of Buffalo, New York, when the Vermont ran into a hidden obstacle in the road and Jackson, Crocker, and Bud were thrown from the car. They arrived in New York City on July 26, 1903, 63 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes after commencing their journey in San Francisco, in the first automobile to successfully transit the North American continent. Their trip expended over of gasoline.After leaving New York City, Jackson joined his wife and drove home to Vermont. About from home, his car, once again, broke down. His two brothers, each driving his own automobile, came to help him get going again. Shortly after returning to the road, both of the brothers' vehicles broke down, and Jackson towed them both home with the Vermont. Upon reaching the threshold of Jackson's garage, the Vermont's drive chain snapped. It was one of the few original parts never replaced during the entire journey.
Business career
Jackson continued to reside in Burlington, Vermont, with his wife Bertha and Bud the dog. He was active in several businesses, including a granite manufacturing company co-owned with his brother S. Hollister Jackson.In 1903, Dr. Jackson visited Mexico and secured options on several silver mining properties in Santa Eulalia, in the state of Chihuahua. He brought the opportunity to San Francisco, where a company was organized to acquire and develop the properties. This was the same trip that he would then drive back across the country from. In 1904, Dr. Jackson was appointed Managing Director and spent a significant portion of the next six years in Mexico overseeing operations. In 1910, he negotiated the sale of the "Buena Tierra" mine to the Exploration Company of England and Mexico.
World War I
A longtime member of the Vermont National Guard when World War I broke out, Jackson was considered too old for active service, but he contacted the former President Theodore Roosevelt, a good friend with whom he often vacationed in his New York summer home, and through his influence Jackson was placed on active duty as a captain in the Medical Corps. While attached to the 313th Infantry, 79th Division as a surgeon, Jackson sustained a gunshot wound in the right forearm near Montfaucon during the Meuse–Argonne Offensive.His Commanding officer wrote: "Your service as a Medical officer could not have been surpassed, and your great assistance in, at all times going about over the field and encouraging the men to go forward under fire in order that we could keep up the drive to the front we had started to, and the example you set to your men by your absolute disregard of your personal safety was such as to be of great assistance to the whole regiment as an offensive unit. You had trained your Sanitary personnel of the regiment to such a state that they funtioned perfectly. They not only looked after the wounded of your own regiment but many of those from other regiments who came into your lines, Your medical officers became inspired by your example and they, too, did heroic work."