Spaudling Manufacturing Company Grinnell Iowa

 

(Des Moines Tribune. March 6, 1914)

“You’ve seen the kind of corn and pigs I raise. Well, the auto I make is just as good.”

 

It’s not the pitch you’d expect from an auto manufacturer, but Henry Spaulding wasn’t your typical businessman. He came to Iowa in 1876 with his own ideas about business.

 

His ads didn’t contain any fancy talk about engineering. Just a fat Iowa farmer smoking a cigar, holding a Spaulding automobile like he’d grown the thing behind the barn.

 

The ad had some nerve to it.

 

The Spaulding was built in Grinnell, Iowa, and the company wasn’t shy about saying so. It was an Iowa car, made for Iowa people and Iowa roads.

 

Those roads weren’t much to brag about. They turned to mud in the spring and dust in the summer. Ruts grabbed the wheels. Bridges looked temporary because most of them were. Sometimes the road just wandered off and left you sitting in a field.

 

Spaulding built a car for that.

REO Automobile Co in Des Moines Iowa

 

(The Des Moines Register. August 27, 1905)

Ransom Olds built a successful car company,  got pushed out of Oldsmobile in 1904, and started another. He named it REO, after his initials: Ransom Eli Olds.

The first REOs hit the road in 1905. A little runabout cost $650. A bigger, 16-horsepower model sold for $1,250. You got skinny tires, a gasoline engine and no guarantee there’d be a road to drive it on. Still, REO sold 864 cars that first year and 2,458 in 1906.

Then came the payoff. REO outsold Oldsmobile and became one of America's biggest carmakers.

This ad from the REO Automobile Co. in Des Moines shows a variety of the vehicles available. The dealership was at 200 Walnut Street in Des Moines. J. R. Campbell was the sales agent for the state of Iowa.

Advertisement Holsman-Stevens Auto Company Des Moines

(Des Moines Register. June 23, 1918)

Interesting advertisement for the King Auto from Holsman-Stevens Auto Company in Des Moines. It has a tie in to the races at the Des Moines Speedway. It give a good look at how automobiles had changed from 1894 to 1918.

Early Racing At The Boone Dirt Race Track

 

(Des Moines Register. June 22, 1916)

This is the start of a history of early dirt track racing in Iowa. It’s rough, incomplete, but it gives some good information on the dirt track in Boone.

It contains the scoop on three races. One in 1910, and two in 1916. The purses in 1916 were huge for the time. As much as $35,000 in today’s dollars.

There were other tracks at the Des Moines fairgrounds and in Sioux City. I hope to have more on them later. If you have info to share, please leave it in the comments.

Dirt track racing in Boone goes back to at least 1910.

 

The place was North Side Driving Park, near what is now 22nd and Linn streets. It was a half-mile dirt oval connected to the Boone Driving Park and Fair Association. Horses and harness racers used the grounds before automobiles came along. Like a lot of fairground tracks in those days, it didn’t take long before somebody decided to see how fast a car could get around it.

 

By the summer of 1910, they were racing for real.

 

And people showed up.

 

The Evening Times-Republican reported on August 10, 1910, that around 10,000 spectators had watched automobile and motorcycle races in Boone the previous afternoon. Boone itself had only a little over 10,000 people.

Boone Iowa Race Track

(The Des Moines Register. July 2, 1916)

A scene at the Boone race track. A. Striergel is driving a Stafford car, with a Duesenberg close behind. 

Track manage, Joe Lowrey, said he had fourteen drivers signed up for the season, and was expecting several more to join in. Prizes were $1100 and $750 for one event alone.

The track has been in operation since 1910, and several dirt track records had been set there.
 

Barney Oldsfield Sold A Lot Of Iowans On Peerless Automobiles

 

(Omaha Daily Bee. August 21, 1904)

Barney Oldfield didn’t just race cars. He scared the hell out of people with them.

 

In the early 1900s, most Americans were getting used to automobiles. Oldfield was tearing around dirt tracks at speeds that seemed insane. 

 

His daredevil antics made him America’s first racing superstar. Crowds came just to see what he’d do next—and maybe to see whether he’d survive another day at the track.

 

In 1904, Oldfield became a spokesperson for Peerless, a Cleveland automobile maker. His racing machine, the Green Dragon, was a stripped-down monster built for speed.

 

And Oldfield knew how to sell a show.

 

He raced at fairgrounds and horse tracks, challenging other drivers. Chasing speed records. Newspapers followed him everywhere. Peerless quickly figured out that having the country’s most famous driver behind the wheel was pretty good advertising.

 

That’s exactly what this ad was selling.

 

It promised spectators a chance to see a Peerless driven by “the world’s most fearless driver—Barney Oldfield.” You weren’t just going to see a car race. You were going to see Barney Oldfield.

 

The Green Dragon made Peerless famous. And Barney Oldfield made automobile racing a spectacle Americans couldn’t stop watching.

 

This advertisement was published in Omaha, but targeted at Iowa and Nebraska drivers. It sold cars. Lots of them.

 

Riddell Automobile Co. Des Moines - Iowa's First Automobile Dealer

 

(Des Moines Register. June 16, 1901)

W. J. Riddell picked a hell of a time to get into the automobile business.

In 1900, he was selling bicycles at Eighth and Locust in Des Moines. His shop carried Cleveland and Crescent bicycles. A good one cost around $30. Riddell advertised his place as the “Oldest and Largest Exclusive Bicycle Store in the City.”

It was a solid business. People knew what bicycles were. They knew how they worked and where they could ride them.

Then along came the automobile.

The early cars were loud, expensive, and unreliable. Iowa had few decent roads. Gasoline could be difficult to find. Mechanics who knew what they were doing were even harder to find. A horse could usually get you home. An automobile might leave you sitting in the mud.

Riddell wanted in.

In 1903, the Des Moines city directory listed him under both bicycles and automobiles. Soon the bicycle dealer at Eighth and Locust was running the Riddell Automobile Co.

Iowa Nearly Destroyed America's First Cross-country Highway

(Denison Review. May 19, 1915)

The first time America built a road across the country, Iowa nearly swallowed it whole.

Cars got buried in mud. Bridges collapsed. Drivers slept beside the road. Men with horses and shovels fought rain, dust, heat, and freezing weather to carve a highway through the middle of Iowa. Some never made it home.

Today, you can fly across Iowa on Interstate 80 without thinking twice. Air conditioning blasting. Cruise control on. Coffee in the cupholder.

The Lincoln Highway opened in 1913. The idea sounded ridiculous at the time — one road running across the country from New York to California. Most Americans had never traveled farther than the next town over. Many Iowa farmers still trusted horses more than automobiles.

When the highway opened, people started talking about driving across the country.

Bernhard & Turner Auto Company Advertisement

 This advertisement for the Rauch & Lang Worm Drive Automobile was published in the Des Moines Register, circa 1912-1915. Bernhard & Turner Auto Company ws located at 508-10-12 Seventh Street in Des Moines.

First Automobile in Des Moines W. W. Sears

 

(Des Moines Register. July 15, 1906)

The first automobile in Des Moines landed in W. W. Sears’ lap, almost by mistake.

Debeltrand Grocery meant to raffle it off. Then they went broke.

Sears grabbed the car and drove it to the fairgrounds. Bad idea—if he wanted to stay unnoticed. Every stop turned into a crowd. People swarmed it. Stared. Asked questions. Couldn’t believe it moved without horses.

He cruised the streets daily, drawing bigger crowds each time.

Not long after that, J.O. Wells, W.E. Hamilton, Webster Bishop, and a handful of others jumped in and formed the Des Moines Automobile Club. Thirteen members. Most didn’t own a car yet—but they planned on getting one.

The club didn’t last a year, but that didn’t matter. The automobile wasn’t going anywhere.

(Unfortunately, the paper didn’t give a date on  when Sears acquired the automobile. My best guess would be 1900. The paper noted several claims against the company for unpaid debts)

Klemme Auto Company Advertisement Davenport 1911

 

The Davenport Democrat and Leader. February 5, 1911.

Here's another great advertisement featuring early automobiles from 1911. Do you think every car they built was a convertible? or did they just look good in the ad?

Klemme Auto Company was located on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa, and carried Buick and Oldsmobile vehicles. 

Velie Motors Corporation Advertisement 1917

 

The Daily Times. May 31, 1917.

This advertisement for the Velie Motors Corporation really caught my eye. It has a great picture of the manufacturing plant, across the river from Davenport in Moline, Illinois, and look at the lines on that car.. It's a classic. At $1185, it would cost just over $30,000 in today's money.

And you can be sure the cars were hand-crafted. They produced just fifteen cars a day. That's 450 cars a month if they worked seven days a week, or roughly 5,000 cars per year.

Advertisement Clemens Automobile Company Des Moines, Iowa

 

This advertisement for the 1915 Overland Model 80 automobile was published in the Des Moines Register, August 23, 1914. It was available from the Clemens Automobile Company, located at Fourth and Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa.

Brown-Williams Auto Co. Advertisement Des Moines 1909

This advertisement for the Brown-Williams Auto Co. appeared in the Des Moines Register on January 17, 1909. The dealership was located at 512 Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa.

 

Cadillac Advertisement Davenport Auto Show

Check out this sexy new Cadillac convertible that was featured at the 1912 Auto Show in Davenport, Iowa. This advertisement for the Iowa Auto and Tire Company was published in The Cedar Rapids Gazette. February 24, 1912.

1912 Velie Motor Vehicle Co. Advertisement

 

This advertisement for the Velie Motor Vehicle Co., Moline, Illinois, was published in The Daily Times on February 24, 1912.

1905 Olds Motor Works Advertisement Davenport Iowa

 

If you lived in Davenport in 1905, the Oldsmobile Touring Car might have been the automobile for you. This advertisement for Mason's Carriage Works was published in The Daily Times on April 8, 1905.

Des Moines Iowa Automobile Advertisements 1909

Iowa residents had a large assortment of automobiles to choose from in 1909. Like today, you could select a gas or electric model, and in some cases steam driven. 

Here are two advertisements from Des Moines Automobile dealers taken from the Des Moines Register. November 28, 1909.

Thomas Flyer - Model H, sold by Moyer Auto Co,