By Motor to the Golden Gate

In 1915, journalist Emily Post set out from New York to investigate whether it was possible to drive comfortably across the country to San Francisco in an automobile. This is a reprint of Post's only travel book, originally published by Colliers' Magazine seven years before she became famous for her book on etiquette. It describes her travels with her cousin Alice and her Harvard undergraduate son as they played the American tourists from Niagara Falls to cave dwellings near Santa Fe. A first-hand account of elite automotive travel before the process was democratized after World War I, it also shows the history of the southwest, particularly in the myths that made towns such as Santa Fe "authentic" tourist destinations, and provides contemporary comments on class and ethnicity.

The work's introduction includes a biographical sketch of Post and explains the context of her journey in the heroic age of motoring. It includes many original black-and-white photographs, sketch maps showing the route, and Post's meticulous daily lists of expenditure, a valuable historical document showing the price of everything from car repairs to tips. The work is accompanied by explanatory footnotes and an appendix giving the miles she traveled each day, noting the cities of departure and destination and the hotel for each night.

About the Author:
Award winning historian Jane Lancaster lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Synopsis

In 1915, journalist Emily Post set out from New York to investigate whether it was possible to drive comfortably across the country to San Francisco in an automobile. This is a reprint of Post's only travel book, originally published by Colliers' Magazine seven years before she became famous for her book on etiquette. It describes her travels with her cousin Alice and her Harvard undergraduate son as they played the American tourists from Niagara Falls to cave dwellings near Santa Fe. A first-hand account of elite automotive travel before the process was democratized after World War I, it also shows the history of the southwest, particularly in the myths that made towns such as Santa Fe "authentic" tourist destinations, and provides contemporary comments on class and ethnicity.

The work's introduction includes a biographical sketch of Post and explains the context of her journey in the heroic age of motoring. It includes many original black-and-white photographs, sketch maps showing the route, and Post's meticulous daily lists of expenditure, a valuable historical document showing the price of everything from car repairs to tips. The work is accompanied by explanatory footnotes and an appendix giving the miles she traveled each day, noting the cities of departure and destination and the hotel for each night.

About the Author:
Award winning historian Jane Lancaster lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

About the Author, Emily Post

Emily Post (October 27, 1872 – September 25, 1960) was an American author famous for writing on etiquette.

Post was born as Emily Price in Baltimore, Maryland, into privilege as the only daughter of architect Bruce Price and his wife Josephine Lee Price of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She was educated at home and attended Miss Graham's finishing school in New York, where her family had moved. She met a prominent banker named Edwin Main Post, her husband-to-be, at a ball in one of Fifth Avenue’s elegant mansions. Following a fashionable wedding and a honeymoon tour of the Continent (1892), Mrs. Post’s first home was in New York’s Washington Square. The couple had two sons, Edwin Main Post, Jr. (1893) and Bruce Price Post (1895). The couple divorced in 1905, because of her husband's affairs with chorus girls and fledgling actresses, which had made him the target of blackmail.

When her two sons were old enough to attend boarding school, she turned her attention to writing. She produced newspaper articles on architecture and interior design, as well as stories and serials for such magazines as Harper's, Scribner's, and The Century, as well as light novels, including Flight of the Moth (1904), Purple and Fine Linen (1906), Woven in the Tapestry (1908), The Title Market (1909), and The Eagle's Feather (1910).

She wrote in various styles, including humorous travel books, early in her career. In 1922 her book Etiquette (full title Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home) was a best seller, and updated versions continued to be popular for decades. After 1931, Post spoke on radio programs and wrote a column on good taste for the Bell Syndicate; it appeared daily in some 200 newspapers after 1932.

In 1946, she founded The Emily Post Institute which continues her work. She died in 1960 in her New York City apartment at the age of 87.