Just like millions of vacationers, Alonzo E. Taylor and his two sons one summer jumped into the car in Philadelphia for an extended visit with friends out west in Pomona.
But this was no week-long jaunt along smooth interstates lined with drive-throughs, souvenir shops and motels with swimming pools.
In fact, it was so unusual that it was followed city-by-city in the newspages of the Pomona Progress.
This trip, in June and July 1914, was at a time when American roads, especially those west of the Mississippi, were still little more than dirt tracks. For travelers, accommodations were often the tent and supplies you brought along.
Taylor was a regular summer visitor to Pomona, taking the train to California for an extended stay up in the Big Bear Valley with friend Mark H. Potter of Pomona.
In 1914, the call of the wild had apparently overwhelmed Taylor, a professor in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. He bought a new automobile and headed off on what turned out to be one mud-filled adventure after another.
He wasn’t the first to drive across the country. That happened in 1903, according to most accounts. Horatio Nelson Jackson and his brother Sewall Crocker, on a $50 bet, took two bruising months to drive from San Francisco to New York.
The first women to cross the continent made it in the summer of 1909, led by Alice Ramsey, who lived the latter part of her life in the Covina Hills.
On June 9, 1914, Taylor’s 40-horsepower Hudson Light Six set off and needed only four days to get from Philadelphia to Chicago. Despite heavy rains and lots of Iowa mud, they reached Omaha in three days, according to the Progress.
At Cheyenne, Wyo., the car had its only major breakdown — a ignition system problem that caused an 11-day stopover while parts were ordered. Meanwhile, Taylor and his sons made the best of it spending the time fishing on the Laramie River, according to the Progress.
The trek resumed through Salt Lake City and Reno, then over the Sierras into the Central Valley. Finally the Hudson pulled into Pomona at 1:55 p.m. on July 18, 39 days after heading out, completing 3,850 miles.
Taylor said they had only five flats — quite an achievement given the technology of the day. Of course, they patched the tires themselves.
He admitted he didn’t fully appreciate what he was going to face in the West on the trip.
“I thought I knew what mud was but I never saw such mud,” he told the Progress on July 20.
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Barely a year later, the Inland Valley had a rather interesting train robbery.
And while it paled compared to the exploits of Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall Gang, the incident still shook up a few people.
Just before midnight on June 3, 1915, a westbound Pacific Electric train stopped near Lone Hill west of San Dimas to allow the conductor to change the switch.
Suddenly two masked men appeared, ordered the seven passengers and two crewmen off the train and relieved them of about $200 in jewelry, cash and watches.
“The robbery was conducted in old-fashioned stage coach robbery style,” reported the Progress the next day.
The pair ordered the passengers and crew back onto the train. A few minutes later when the train reached Covina it met a San Bernardino-bound train whose passengers got a graphic picture of the holdup.
“The passengers who had been held up had their pockets turned wrong side out and were dangling watch chains without watches attached,” reported the Progress.
Eastbound passenger Fred Brown of Pomona “was immediately attacked by a violent fit of hold-up fever. He was wearing a sparkler (a diamond ring) on one finger.”
Brown jammed his ring into his sock, “and other passengers placed their values in the first natural bank without delay” — though it’s hard to tell exactly what that meant.
Conductor W.C. Joyner of San Bernardino chose to hide his money in a pickle dish inexplicably on the train that night.
So secured, the eastbound train passengers reached Pomona and San Bernardino without any further drama.
The next day, justice triumphed as the two bad guys — Martin Selbach and Thomas Blinn – were captured. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies had followed their trail for several miles before finding them near the San Gabriel River in Azusa.