"Coast to Coast by Automobile engagingly explores the challenges met and overcome by the first motorists to drive across America. Because automobiles were viewed with considerable interest and also considerable skepticism in this period, the extensive publicity that these trips generated played an important role in establishing the practicability, reliability, and widespread appeal of automobiles in early twentieth-century America.

The author describes the first ten years of such pioneering trips, beginning in 1899 with the first attempt and concluding in 1908 when Jacob M. Murdock accomplished the unheard-of feat of driving his family from Los Angeles to New York City."--BOOK JACKET.