In the spring of 1903, on a whim and a fifty-dollar bet, Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson set off from San Francisco in a 20-horsepower Winton touring car hoping to become the first person to cross the United States in the new-fangled "horseless carriage." Most people doubted that the automobile had much of a future. Jackson's trip would prove them wrong.
They crossed the Hudson at Albany to a cheering crowd and met up with reporters and Mrs. Horatio Jackson in Peekskill. They drove into Manhattan at 4:30 in the morning.