Michael Dowling about 1919, Renville County Dowling-for-Governor Club, Olivia

This photo of Michael Dowling, showing his prosthetic legs, was taken in 1920 by Lee Bros. Photography.
Photo by the Minnesota Historical Society.

Trailblazer Dowling ~ “Thank God I’m not a cripple”!

It was cold and raining that April day of 1921, but that was to be expected in spring in Minnesota. The weather didn’t matter to the hundreds who had come to stand silently outside of the house on Olivia’s DePue Avenue. What mattered was that a good man had died and they were there to pay their respects.

Michael Dowling had cast his net widely in his 55 years. He had become known in the worlds of politics, good roads, education, newspapers, banking, innumerable charities, wounded WWI veterans, and the Yellowstone Trail Association.

A true Renaissance Man, he.

Tragedy

In truth, he should have died 41 years earlier when, as a boy of 14, he got caught in a blizzard and froze both his legs and left arm and some fingers of the right hand.

In that rude farmhouse where he sought refuge, gangrene set in, forcing the doctor to saw off the affected limbs below the knees and elbow.

But he didn’t die.

Instead, he boldly asked for and received false limbs and a year at Carleton College and swore he would not be a ward of any county for the rest of his life.

His accomplishments would take pages to recite.

They are detailed in his papers held at the Minnesota State Historical Society.

We will mention only two aspects: politics, and good roads and the Yellowstone Trail Association.

He was a fearless Irish advocate in all the causes in which he believed, with a ringing voice and a ready wit. His life was an inspiring one; his mantra, “Thank God, I am not a cripple!”

Dowling’s Political Life

Politically, he was a Republican, becoming Speaker of the Minnesota Assembly, then secretary of the National Republican League and, thus, came to the attention of President McKinley.

The Spanish-American War (1898) was a war against Spain’s colonization of the Philippines which the U.S. joined. Later (1899-1901) the independent-minded Filipinos fought the American intrusion.

In 1900 Dowling went to the Philippines at the request of McKinley to investigate the school systems there and prepare a plan for schools which the U.S. Army could carry out. There was a whiff of suspicion about that mission, implying Dowling was to spy for the U.S. which he vigorously denied.

Dowling’s six months there resulted in 10 articles for the Minneapolis Journal and many letters home.

Barry Prichard, Dowling’s grandson, has produced a valuable book, Bolos, Bandits, and Bamboo Schools (Richards Pub. Gonvik, MN, 2009), which is a compilation of those writings and a good history lesson.

The Philippine experience also produced a comic opera based upon a true story of Dowling’s appearance before Sultan Sulu.

• The Sultan was not attending to Dowling’s discussion of schools, so Dowling slowly removed one of his false legs.
• That got only a glance from this “self-made king.”
• Dowling removed the other leg. This got a longer glance.
• Then off came the right arm and a twist of his neck as though to remove his head.

The Sultan finally laughed and attended Dowling’s discussion.

On the surface, his political career after his stint in the Minnesota Assembly may look like failure.
He did not win his run for the U.S. Senate seat, nor the Governor’s chair, nor a close run for Congress vs Andrew Volstead (author of the 18th amendment, Prohibition).

However, these forays led him to meet and work with people like himself, “movers and shakers” of the broader issues he cared about.

A Good Roads Man

As an auto dealer in Olivia, Minnesota, and owner of the first car sold in Renville County in 1902, Dowling had foreseen the role of the auto in the development of 20th century America. He knew the value of roads as an absolute economic and cultural necessity which the federal government was ignoring. For instance, in 1910, before the Yellowstone Trail Association was born, Dowling directed Renville County’s winning participation in two “Best Roads” competitions. The Minneapolis Tribune sponsored the events as a way to inspire localities to drag their roads, drain their ditches, and push for graveling. The reward was bragging rights and a trophy (see photo).

The Yellowstone Trail Association caught Dowling’s imagination. He determined to drive the Trail along the whole of its barely discernible 1913 route from Minnesota to the Yellowstone National Park. He wanted to be the first to “blaze” the route that the Association had drawn on a map, to advertise it, and prove it could be done. It then consisted of grassy wagon trails, farmers’ muddy section lines, and mountain grades, with only about 120 miles graveled. Predicting that such a trip would be “safe, easy to traverse, and affordable” was stretching optimism remarkably.

So he piled his wife and three daughters into his especially equipped (right hand wheel and electric starter) Oakland 660 and, with two other families along, led a three-car caravan to the Park. Fording streams, wading through mud, and fixing punctures occupied the party, but they did it! They returned to welcoming ovations in Olivia. Such travel was considered extremely dangerous.

Recalling that trip five years later, this great optimist quipped, “If a man with one arm, a wife and three daughters could make such a trip, anyone could.”

Although the Association would not be expanding its route to the east for a year or two, Dowling jumped the gun and “blazed” the idea of a trail to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1914. He took short cuts, but he did get the lay of the land.

He shipped his car through the Great Lakes to Buffalo, New York, and began looking for a space to locate the Trail on the popular Rochester-Albany-Boston corridor.

He was told that “there was no more room for colored markers on poles on that route.”

Indeed, eleven different trail colors festooned some poles already. He then traced a more southern route: southern New York to Hartford, Connecticut to Plymouth Rock. This was the route taken by the relay teams in the 1916 race from Plymouth Rock to Seattle.

Dowling’s grandson, Barry Prichard, published the detailed notes and pictures kept by his mother about those two historic trips in We Blazed the Trail (Richards Pub. Gonvik, MN, 2009). Buy this book in our  online “Shop” at www.yellowstonetrail.org.

During his tenure as Yellowstone Trail Association president (1917-1918), Dowling:

• oversaw the establishment of at least ten tourist bureaus which gave out information to Trail travelers;
• approved the incorporation of the association;
• saw the northern route through the east, which was refused to him in 1914, become a reality;
• spoke at all state and national Yellowstone Trail Association conventions.

The calamity, which would have diminished lesser men, brought out Dowling’s strength of character.

He led an incredible life, and was an integral part of creating and popularizing the Yellowstone Trail.

This remarkable man invigorated the Yellowstone Trail Association as no other had.
His very appearance inspired resolve among the membership as he repeated, “Thank God I’m not a cripple!”
The authors wish to thank Barry and Michael Prichard, Michael Dowling’s grandsons, for their assistance.

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Travel Diaries and Hoopla in the Press

B. J. Danielson wrote this diary (below) during his 1927 camping trip west in his Ford named Rocky.
His full diary exposed a man of humor and infinite patience.

Danielson Diary Entries:
July 1:
12:00 p.m. Bought Ford
4:30 p.m. Wish I hadn’t bought it

July 17:
4:30 a.m. We get up and repair tires. By 6 o’clock we are on our way
8:30 a.m. Sunday morning when we should be praising the Lord, we are praising a flat
12:00 noon St. Paul, Minn. It’s high time we were fixing a flat tire … again.

July 18:
5:30 p.m. There is a mule colt in the road ahead of us. No, beg your pardon, it’s a jackrabbit.

July 19:
9:00 a.m. Just crossed the Missouri River at Mobridge.
Rough detour on dirt road. These roads are like sponges in wet weather and rocks in dry.
8:30 p.m. We are driving in the face of a bad looking thunderstorm.
The prairie is fiery with lightening and we are trying to make it to the next town.
9:30 p.m. The storm has broken and we are marooned on the prairie.
     Both the wind and rain are terrific and our old bus is about ready to topple over.

We manage to skid along under the shelter of some hills
where we spend the night with the wind howling like a hungry coyote.

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For centuries, hand written accounts of people’s experiences were more than just words. Writing style, drawings, and blood, sweat and tears left on paper gave detailed insights into the writer. The same can be evident in a trip diary. Letter-writing and journalism seemed more popular and necessary one hundred years ago, so keeping a diary while traveling was probably more naturally done.

Today, cell phones can record a travel moment visually and audibly with just a click; a phone call can replace written description.

A Twitter communique of only a few characters can transmit the basics of who, what, where, when.

But……. to see what the traveler saw requires words, an attitude, and a mood of the diarist.

To the student of history, diaries are golden primary sources, written close to the action. One hundred years ago writing took time and a more active participation with words, possibly revealing more than intended by the writer. Long-distance travel was fairly new then, so trips that were made were sort of an understood benchmark in that family’s story, demanding a more full account. However, trip diaries did not always assure complete accuracy.

Some may have exaggerated the dangers due to fright at the moment. Some, because of frustration or anger, may have exaggerated the number of flats they had that day or the ferocity of rain. Waiting for three days for auto repair parts to arrive could surely make one frustrated. In their own words, long ago travelers on forgotten roads teach us about our culture.

The trip diaries kept along the Yellowstone Trail that we have come upon in our research showed us that trip “diaries” come in various forms. Some were kept literally day-by-day, some appeared as a series of post cards sent home, some abbreviated diaries appeared in newspaper articles submitted by returned travelers or were sought after by reporters. Some formed the bases of articles written as advice to potential travelers.

All of the diaries that we found referred to traveling to or from the west. No one seemed to have written about their travels east. Could it be that the roads were better there and, thus, not worth writing about? Picture post cards of historic sites seemed more important to verify one’s trip east than hardships on the road.

Whatever the form of the missive, the diaries we have seen seem to gel around a few themes. The leading topics were problems (with auto, road, or lack of map), descriptions of surprising events, or of the scenery.

Problems, Problems

Paul G. Hoffman, president of Studebaker Corporation, told about a “long” 60 mile trip from southwest Chicago to Hobart, Indiana, in “America on Wheels,” a chapter of Winifred Dixon’s Westward Hoboes (1921). He, his parents, grandpa and aunt were well equipped for the journey with extra spark plugs, inner tubes and casings, springs, tools, and lunch. They started on a Saturday morning, but never made it to Hobart.

Hoffman wrote:

I tried to shift from third to second gear to climb a hill and failed. When the car was out of gear there was no service brake. We started to roll backward. My aunt screamed, tossed out the lunch basket, and followed it herself in a flying leap. … we reached a fork in the road, and we had no maps. We went right. We should have gone left. It began to rain. Considerable time was lost in putting up the curtains. The road became a bog into which we sank. I cut brush to give the wheels traction. We got out of the first mudhole, in a short way we sank again.

They stayed at a friendly farmer’s home overnight, turning toward home the next morning having gone 45 miles. Grandpa seriously gashed his forehead on the radiator. Crankcase oil leaked out and the engine froze. The ladies got on a streetcar and went home.

The Ross family account of crossing Snoqualmie Pass before the Yellowstone Trail arrived included:

This required the car’s seven passengers to hoist the vehicle up the steepest grades by hand via a pulley system devised with 200 feet of rope and the sturdiest tree we could find.

In the Marmarth, North Dakota area, we read from Arthur Williams that:

… that was a dirt road. You shouldn’t travel it in the rain. Not even our old Model T could get through. That gumbo mud built up on our wheels and it was just like you had the brakes on.

The tale of gumbo was repeated countless times on and off the Yellowstone Trail. Tales of tipping over, meager camping facilities, negotiating hills backwards (to favor the gravity-fed gasoline supply), and treeless North Dakota and eastern Montana garnered the most ink along with road and auto troubles in diaries.

… And Yet They Endured

The Yellowstone Trail seemed damned about as much as it was praised in diaries. Allen Cooper, speaking about South Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation, said:

The road traveled was the Yellowstone Trail. None of it was paved; all of it was poorly marked.
In many places the only markings were smears of yellow paint on fence or telephone post.

And R. S. Spears wrote in Outing Magazine Vol 68, 1916 about his motorcycle trip to the Yellowstone Park and his problem of no Yellowstone Trail signs in Minneapolis:

I do not know of any more trying experience than seeking a road out of a city with such picturesque and winding streets as those of Minneapolis. With a map of both the Twin Cities before me, I am quite unable to discover my route. I saw no signs for the Yellowstone Trail and people could not give me understandable directions for finding it. I know I crossed the Mississippi twice! “Just keep a-goin” until I run into the Lakes, or Lake Ave. or something. Or “You can’t miss it. Not after you turn right, go around the lake then hit, let’s see four? blocks out. Then you’re all right.”
… Oh for some signs!

Conversely, we read from Mrs. Anna McKee of Minnesota about a 1920 trip through northern Illinois and Iowa:

I am proud of the Yellowstone Trail as it is the best highway I have traveled on. The Jefferson and Lincoln Highways are good roads but work on the latter trail necessitates constant detouring. We passed over hard surface roads for a distance of 40 miles in some instances.

And Edgar Wilcox, in Haggerty’s Car Culture 1923 announced that:

The Yellowstone Trail is well marked – a yellow square (about 16″ square) bearing two black circles between which are the words “Yellowstone Trail” and in the center a black arrow pointing to the Park. The sign came to be a faithful guide and friend to us in the hundreds of miles that we followed the trail to Spokane.

Troubles seemed to overshadow the descriptions of the beautiful scenery or the Yellowstone Trail, but yet they saw things. Descriptions allow us to see what travelers saw and endured.

Descriptions

An unknown (to us) writer recalled a trip in 1922 from Cheyenne, Wyoming, north through western Montana and Washington, then down to their new home in California. This diary mentioned Butte, Missoula and camping at a small town on the way to Spokane.

They were most likely on the Yellowstone Trail.

He wrote,…
“My mother wrote such an excellent account of the trip west in those times that I shall not cover it.
This is her wonderful account of our trip.”

The following is just a bit of her description.

Sat. eve drove thro’ mountains and mountains, around curve after curve & hairpin turns – one place where just as we reached the bottom of one hill it turned and went down in just the opposite direction & big cars all have to stop and back a little to make the turn. Fords and Maxwells can make it without. Of course there’s a sign before you get there telling you it’s coming & there’s a railing around it so you can’t jump off. And the figure 8’s and S’s we did cut. Such roads – but it’s certainly wonderful that they can make roads at all in such places.

Notes from an August, 1914, trip from Minnesota to the Yellowstone National Park were submitted to the Winona Republican-Herald upon the family’s return by E. M. McLaughlin:

From Huron, South Dakota, we went to Aberdeen. There we got on to the real trail to the park, called the Yellowstone Trail. It is marked with yellow posts and across the prairie with yellow stones. The roads are good in Minnesota and eastern South Dakota. In the western Dakotas and eastern Montana there are only grass trails with lots of stones and holes. Lots of new roads are being made across Dakota and Montana, so the trail takes temporary routes, sometimes fifty miles from a railway and fifteen to twenty from a house. The Little Missouri River has to be forded at Marmarth, but when we crossed, it was so swollen by rain that it could not be forded by teams to say nothing of autos, so we crossed on the railway bridge.

William C. Bettis had a different goal from most for keeping a diary in 1921. He was apparently a professional traveler who sold his travel booklets and who appeared on the lecture stage. Mrs. Bettis took notes, noting the good and the bad. A trip to the Pacific Coast carried the reader with them from Toledo to California. The booklet is heavy on description and advice, but there is little bad about the Yellowstone Trail, except to say that there are several detours due to road work. One exciting description of his trip, written as though to experienced travelers, follows:

There are a lot of experiences you would have had by this time also. For example, you may have been high up on a shelf road, one of those roads cut into the side of a mountain. You are away up among the clouds, a sheer mountain road towering over you on one side and a drop of hundreds of feet on the other. This road may be wide enough for just one car with nothing to prevent you from driving into the chasm. With both feet on the pedals and a death grip on the wheel you are swinging in and out around short, sharp curves, and suddenly you see a sign that reads PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD. No matter how experienced you are, this will send a shiver up your spine.

Unusual Tales

When something unexpected happened, the diarist was sure to include it.

Chances are that the surprises are what people remembered the longest. This tale hit the Antique Motor Cycle magazine, summer 1999, about something that happened back in 1922, as told to his son by Allen Cooper (again). It revealed a happening on the open road – stranded parties. Cooper was on his 61-inch Harley-Davidson.

We excerpt his tale here of stopping in western South Dakota as an example of kindness on the road 100 years ago:

• There were few habitations and fewer gas pumps in the stretch between the river and McIntosh.
• Miles out on this barren and deserted road a parked car showed up.
• Four men in work clothes flagged me down.
• Their old Chevrolet touring car bore Pennsylvania license plates.
• Their car had quit on them suddenly, “like we had turned off the switch.”
• They were laid off coal miners on their way to the Butte mines for work.
• It was plain they were on a close budget. None of them seemed to know anything about a car except how to drive it.
• The prospect of a big towing or repair bill could not have depressed them more.
• I asked to look at it.
• They readily agreed.
• It appeared that it was ignition failure.
• A wire had broken off right next to the battery.
• A few minutes’ work stripping off some insulation and clamping the bare wire under the cable clamp completed the circuit.
• I had never seen four happier fellows.
• They insisted they owed me something, but my reply was perhaps they could pass on the favor to someone in trouble.

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A diary kept by Montana’s Spencer “Bill” Lauson c.1921 suggests that long-distance travel wasn’t quite as we expect it to be today:

• My brother Dwight said I was welcome to ride with him and his family from Billings to Chicago.
• I looked out the door and saw that the reconditioned Studebaker was filled to the roof with baggage, with only a small space left for the family dog.
• In addition to the three members of my brother’s family, an oversized lady with her teenaged daughter planned to ride for the first 150 miles – all five of them jammed in the front seat.
• I didn’t fancy myself sitting on the fat lady’s lap.
• ‘I think you could sit on the front fender’ my brother casually suggested.
• If I were to save money on my travel, this would have to do.
• I carried no luggage – there wasn’t any room – except for a towel, soap and razor which I had hastily stuffed into my pockets.
• I had little idea how futile these cleanup efforts would be in the war against dust, grit and mud.
• Shortly after we passed the outskirts of Billings it began to rain.
• We were following the old Yellowstone Trail which would take us to Chicago.
• The road turned into a slippery gumbo, and the old Studebaker would slide and fishtale as it hit a stretch of the unpredictable mixture of clay and rain.
• I hung on to the fender with white knuckles, trying to dodge clumps of mud that were thrown from the car’s wheels.

The last unusual happenstance occurred in 1923 and was recalled by Lydia McKay.

• She and three other women were returning east to Brainerd, Minnesota, in a Star automobile after a 13-state tour.
• Two women occupants of another car were traveling west, beginning a tour.
• As was the custom then, McKay stopped to chat with the other woman driver.
• What a surprise! They were all from Brainerd and met purely by chance on the Yellowstone Trail in South Dakota.
• Pictures were taken of the surprising event, tales of broken tie rods and poor roads were told, and tires were kicked.
• Attesting to the generosity of people, McKay reported that at one point the foursome saw a rainstorm approaching on the prairie.
• They simply drove into a nearby farm and asked to spend the night on the farmer’s porch out of the rain.
• Consent was cheerfully given, followed by dinner and breakfast for the travelers.

Hoopla

Because long-distance travel was not usual, when a touring party reached town, frequently there was a big greeting awaiting them. There was the crowd greeting the Michael Dowling party of three cars as they arrived home from their 1913 Yellowstone Trail trailblazing trip. See Trail Tale: Dowling.

Some local newspapers seemed more intent upon recording the local greeting offered the travelers than upon the trip reported by the travelers.

Only a year before the Yellowstone Trail arrived, we see in the Minneapolis Tribune of Aug. 30, 1911, how an auto tour was received in Minnesota:

• Officials of the St. Cloud Automobile Club piloted the tour to Clear Lake where the pilot car stopped for tire troubles.
• At Anoka, R. A. Cooper and Dr. E. A. Lyman in the pilot car were met by a delegation of five automobiles from Minneapolis.
• Among those who welcomed the visitors were H. J. Clark, president of the Minneapolis Automobile Club and G. Roy Hill, secretary.
• A special car from the Minneapolis Tribune met the tourists first, giving them copies of the morning editions in which were full telegraphic accounts of the tour.
• Officials of the Veerac Motor Company piloted the tourists through the factory where the ladies were given roses and the men cigars.

After such a reception given the tour group in Anoka, we can only guess about the hoopla which awaited the group in Minneapolis. We have no information.

From Diaries into Books

Frank L. Wentworth turned his six year camping trip into a fascinating 436-page book, On the Road With Lizzie (his affectionately named Model T). Frank crossed the nation several times between 1924 and 1930, seemingly choosing the route as his mood and the weather dictated.

He moved about unhurriedly, spending weeks at single campsites, absorbing the environment and those who moved about him.

Wentworth thanks his three daughters for help in preparing the book.

Considering the amount of minute detail and the names of people he had met, he must have kept a careful diary which his daughters may have unraveled with him.

Another interesting book appeared in 2008.
Dorothy was just a girl when her father, Yellowstone Trail trailblazer Michael Dowling, took his family west in 1913.She kept a diary, complete with pictures.
Her son, Barry Prichard, and she turned that diary into the book, We Blazed the Trail.
The reader can get a good view of that exciting adventure along uncharted tracts of land through pictures and through the eyes of a 13-year-old.

Earnest N. Smith, writing in American Motorist, December, 1925, described his latest run from Vancouver, B.C. to Chicago, one of several transcontinental trips he had taken.

He concluded with this poignant paragraph:

“But best of all it … [the TRIP]
helped me see our country as I had never seen it before.
It had given me a schooling,… a patriotic education.”

There came to mind the sentiment of the ancient traveler of Rome who, returning after a long absence, said:

“I am a part of all that I have seen.
And all that I have seen is part of me.”