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Hotchkiss, EffieEntry/Object ID
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Amid the suffragist movement and five years before the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Effie Hotchkiss broke the glass ceiling and became the first woman recorded to complete a transcontinental motorcycle ride in 1915 aboard a Harley-Davidson 3-speed twin. Joined by her cosmopolitan mother, Avis, she traveled from their home in Brooklyn, N.Y., to San Francisco and back.
News of the 9,000-mile journey traveled quickly, and Effie became a female icon for her endeavor. She was celebrated in the first issue of The Harley-Davidson Enthusiast magazine and in countless writeups in newspapers across the country.
Born on January 28, 1889, into a white-collar family, Effie began riding motorcycles when she was 16. She rode fast to keep up with the boys and even had run-ins with the local constabulary regarding her disrespect for speed limits.
When she became of working age, she took a position on Wall Street like the rest of her family. But the banking industry didn't suit her ambitions and she rebelled, especially after a doctor concerned about her health recommended that she should stop working, take pharmaceuticals and get bed rest, according to her autobiography. She recounted her dreams and despair that gave rise to her cross-country motorcycle trip in The Harley-Davidson Enthusiast.
"Like thousands of other girls in New York, I was weary — unnerved by the rush and clatter and monotony and tension. I worked in Wall Street, and each day I hated it worse than I had the day before. The whole blessed outdoors was what I wanted — someplace where I might forget there was a clock or a calendar. I am a product of the city. Noise, elevated trains, clanging trolley cars and all the rest are my earliest recollections. But I have always longed for green fields. And when the death of my father made it necessary for me to fall into the rut of business, which thousands of New York girls and boys are entering daily, I longed for them more than ever.”
Instead of heeding the doctor’s concerns, she used the inheritance left from her father and purchased a 1915 Harley-Davidson 3-speed twin and a Rogers sidecar for her robust mother and luggage.
Despite her friends trying to dissuade her from such a novel adventure for a young woman, she found support in her brother and sister-in-law.
On May 2, 1915, the 26-year-old Effie and her 52-year-old mother, Avis, set off on their journey. They carried camping gear, spare parts, tools, a jar of seawater from the Atlantic Ocean and a pistol. While Effie had become a competent mechanic and could handle most repairs on her own, she had never camped or slept out in the wilderness.
The roads encountered were, at best, hard-packed dirt and, at worst, foot-deep mud. When they didn’t camp, the duo rented lodgings. Through New York and into Chicago, they averaged 150 miles a day. From there, they wandered through Missouri and Kansas and into Colorado. While riding through New Mexico, Effie had a flat tire but ran out of spare inner tubes, so she twisted a blanket, stuffing it into the tire for a makeshift inner tube. She was startled by a rattlesnake in Nevada and drew her pistol to protect their campsite. And again, when confronted by a coyote, she drew her gun and took aim.
One man watched Effie travel through the dangerous San Marcos Pass north of Santa Barbara in 100-degree heat, claiming she was the bravest and most skilled girl “driver” he had ever met.
In San Francisco, the mother and daughter duo toured the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, experienced the first transcontinental phone call, and visited the city's Harley-Davidson dealer. Effie also stepped into the Pacific Ocean and poured out the jar containing the waters of the Atlantic. Before heading back east, Effie met her future husband Guy Osbourne Johnston in San Francisco when she ran over him as he stepped in front of her motorcycle.
In late August, the pair turned around and headed home via the new Lincoln Highway. The trip included a stop at the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee, where they received a huge welcome and a private tour of the plant. After five months, the dream adventure was finally completed in October, when Effie, with strength and health renewed, regrettably settled back into her clerical position with the banks.
“The whole trip is over. We covered altogether 9,000 miles. We were away five months. We saw the exposition. But now we are more discontented than ever with the restricted life of a city. Tomorrow I must resume doing time behind the prison walls of New York's office buildings. My heart is out in the plains,” she wrote in The Harley-Davidson Enthusiast.
But that was not the end of Effie's story. Four months after marrying her husband Guy, a rancher and farmer who gave her a shotgun as a wedding present, Effie and her mother moved out west to escape city life permanently. Over the next five decades, Effie took on many endeavors, from raising cattle to farming, operating and owning a gas station, dabbling in the wool business, and supporting her husband when he got into the lumber industry. She lived in Oregon and Washington and died in Idaho in 1966 at age 77.
Effie Hotchkiss was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2022.Relationships
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Hotchkiss, Effie