By Jacqueline T. Lynch
November 26, 2024
Thanksgiving is known for parades and football games, and family feasting. A car race is not usually what we think of on that day, but it was a novelty on Thanksgiving 1895.
The Duryea brothers — Charles and Frank, brought the fledgling automobile industry to Chicopee, but a few years before that, the Duryeas found national fame in the first ever automobile race held in the United States.
Cars were so new they were not even called cars… horseless carriage was the most popular of many names for this strange new invention. The Duryeas, originally from Illinois, came to the area in 1890 to work on a bicycle design for the Ames Manufacturing Company. Bicycles were all the rage then, but the Duryeas took their ideas farther and built the first gas-powered motor vehicle in the U.S., driving it for the first time in 1893. Two years later, they created the Duryea Motor Wagon Company (again, not cars) on Taylor Street in Springfield. It was slow going in this new industry, especially when the cars were made by hand. To raise capital and raise their public profile, they entered the brand-new auto race in Chicago in 1895. It was sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald newspaper, and it was held on November 28th. That year, the 28th fell on Thanksgiving Day, just as it does this year.
It was a pretty lousy day for a race. An unexpected blizzard occurred and left six inches of snow in its wake. The temperature hovered around 30 degrees. Though the photo above is not the same model Frank Duryea drove in the race, you can see that the cars at that time had no roofs, no enclosed cabin, and especially, no heat.
And the bicycle tires on which the horse carriage was mounted did not offer the best traction on snow.
Moreover, the roads were mostly unpaved on the race route, and the plowing also left something to be desired (the plows were horsedrawn). If it weren’t for the ice, which at least provided a hard surface, the cars might not have left the grip of mud. A dozen contestants arrived for the race, but half of the cars were not up to the conditions and were not considered roadworthy, so only six cars started the race. They were all manner of cars… steam-powered, a couple electric vehicles, cars built with a sleigh atop two bicycles…it was a riot of imagination.
None of the cars had brakes.
Frank Duryea drove only the second model of car he’d ever built. The race was just over 54 miles long, along the lakeshore from Chicago to Evanston. All the six cars had mechanical problems, even a few collisions with horse-drawn conveyances and sleighs along the way. Frank Duryea himself had to get out once, run into a tinsmith’s shop to straighten the car’s steering arm when he had one of those collisions with a carriage.
It took over ten hours in freezing weather to finish the race, but Frank Duryea won. He averaged 5 miles an hour, and was reported to have used only three and a half gallons of gasoline.
Duryea won the prize of $2,000, quite a sum for 1895. With the money, and the fame, he returned to Springfield and in the next year hand-built 13 more cars, becoming the largest automobile manufacturing company in the country.
Six years down the road, in 1901, in partnership with the Stevens Arms Company, the Stevens-Duryea auto plant opened in Chicopee Falls.
Our Thanksgiving here in town this year is not expected to dump six inches of snow on us, but if you’re getting in the car to go “over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house” for Thanksgiving dinner, give a thought to the Duryea brothers and another Thanksgiving, and another car, long ago.
The Chicopee Historical Society wishes you a very Happy Thanksgiving!
NOTE: photo public domain.
Sources:
Encyclopedia of Chicago “The Times-Herald Race of 1895” online
The Vintagent online
Springfield 375 Years by Wayne Phaneuf (Springfield, MA: The Republican, 2011), pp. 38-39.
The Community Preservation Act (CPA)
From the CPA website: “CPA is a state law passed in 2000 that allows Massachusetts communities to conduct a referendum to add a small surcharge on local property taxes. When combined with matching funds from the statewide Community Preservation Trust Fund, this dedicated fund is used to build and rehabilitate parks, playgrounds, and recreational fields, protect open space, support local affordable housing development, and preserve historic buildings and resources.”
To learn more, have a look at the CPA website.
www.communitypreservation.org
Please contact us if you’d like to help in the operation of the Chicopee Historical Society. Our efforts to research and preserve the history of Chicopee will require more help from the community if they are to continue.
Please contact us at TheChicopeeHistoricalSociety@gmail.com, or through our Facebook page, or our website here.
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