Question: Would you take a motorcycle trip across the United States from New York to San Francisco?
Yes? Okay, how about doing it on a 1915 Harley Davidson…with your mum?
That’s exactly the adventure 28 year-old Effie Hotchkiss and her mother, Avis, undertook in 1915, leaving Brooklyn on Effie’s new 11hp Model 11-F with a sidecar. Asked if she had any concerns, Avis replied, “I do not fear breakdowns for Effie, being a most careful driver, is a good mechanic and does her own repairing with her own tools.”
They rode to Albany across the Hudson Valley, then travelled to Buffalo, and on to Chicago, averaging 150 miles a day. The two lady riders, as they were called, attracted lots of attention from curious onlookers wherever they stopped.
They took two months to reach San Francisco, staying in rented rooms, travelling light with some clothes, tools and a gun. As they crossed into California enduring temperatures in excess of 48 Celcius (120 degrees Fahrenheit), the women came within feet of a rattlesnake (which Effie dispatched), and came face-to-face with a coyote, which met the same fate as the rattlesnake.
The Hotchkisses also recounted how they ran out of spare inner tubes while in New Mexico, so took a blanket from their supplies, cut it down to inner tube length, rolled it and stuffed it into the tyre. Clearly there was no stopping these ladies.
When they reached their final destination, they were photographed pouring out a jar of Atlantic sea water they had carried from New York, into the Pacific at Ocean Beach, San Francisco.
Their return journey included crossing the deserts of Nevada and Utah. Effie and Avis finally returned to their home in Brooklyn in October of 1915, having traveled approximately 9,000 miles, covering more than one-third of the United States, over five months.
