Horseless carriage caught on quickly

An exciting social event of the long Maine winter was the Portland Automobile and Power Boat Show. The second annual show was held in 1907, a century ago this week. If you were dreaming of sitting behind the wheel of a brand-new REO Runabout or perhaps a Pierce Great Arrow or a Locomobile next summer, now was the time to place an order.

While the horse and buggy still ruled the roads (along with electric trolley cars in towns), some statistical indicators gleaned from old newspapers show that the horseless carriage was gaining rapidly in popularity. By February 1907, there were approximately 1,400 autos registered in Maine. In the past year alone, 660 had been recorded. Of that number, 152 had been registered by residents of eastern and northern Maine, according to the Bangor Daily News on Feb. 27 during the week of the Portland auto show.

About 60 vehicles belonged to Bangor residents, and 37 of those had been registered since the previous February. The newer owners were relatively well-to-do individuals such as Ezra L. Sterns, a lumber company owner; Taber D. Bailey, a lawyer; Fred H. Clifford, an advertising man; John P. Frawley, a pharmacy owner; and Melville H. Andrews, a music store proprietor. A small number of women, such as Mrs. H.C. Eaton and Marie G. Dennett, were registered as well.

Some doctors bought autos to visit patients. But for the most part, they were still an impractical novelty, stored during the winter months well into mud season. Even in the summer, roads in many rural areas were barely navigable because of poor construction and bad rainstorms. The vehicles also were prone to breakdown without the provocation of rough roads. An automobile owner had best be a mechanic as well as an adventurer.

Yet despite their small numbers, automobiles already were providing new business opportunities for imaginative individuals. Treat & Freeland’s New Brick Garage opened at 23-25 Palm St. in Bangor in October 1906. Its staff would pick up your car, fix it, insure it, store it for the winter in a warm, dry place and return it to you in the spring. “Be good to your auto if you expect your auto to be good to you,” the company’s advertisements advised.

Feats of derring-do were regularly featured in the newspapers. In the summer of 1906, F. Carleton Dole’s exhibitions of “fast automobile driving” entertained crowds at Maplewood Park. He drove a Mark 46 Columbia four-cylinder machine stripped of tonneau and mudguards with 24-28 horsepower, said the Bangor Daily News on Aug. 30.

“The machine will be run as fast as it will go and owing to the short turns of the track will be attended with more or less danger,” the newspaper promised. Remember, back then the state speed limit was 8 mph in cities and towns and 15 mph elsewhere.

Long-distance feats were equally revered. “BANGOR TO PATTEN IN FOUR HOURS” announced a Bangor Daily News story on Sept. 6. W.H. Gannett of Augusta claimed to have kicked up “great clouds of yellow matter” that made his big Peerless touring car, roaring along at 25 mph, “resemble a comet flung close to earth.”

Meanwhile, just getting up a steep hill was worth recording. A photograph in the newspaper on Nov. 22 bore this caption: “Jackson Touring Car, with five people aboard, climbed State Street Hill Wednesday with ease at high speed.”

All this excitement helped set the stage for the second annual Portland Automobile and Power Boat Show at the city’s auditorium between Feb. 25 and March 2. The event was expected to be “a hummer from the word go” that would attract hundreds of people from the small towns and cities throughout the state, said a story on Feb. 23 reprinted from the Portland Advertiser. “The automobile fever is covering a wide area and Maine is doing her share to make the sport popular.”

Bangor auto dealers or “agents,” such as S.L. Crosby Co. on Exchange Street and H.J. Willard Co. on Broad Street, were advertising their wares to correspond with what could be seen at the show. For example, one could buy a Cadillac for $800 to $2,500 or a Peerless for $4,000 to $5,000. These were not prices the average clerk or farmer could afford although Henry Ford would be taking care of that problem in the next few years.

The Portland Auditorium was decorated extravagantly, reminiscent of “Southern suburbs” with “drooping palms” marking the outlines of each exhibitor’s space and a profusion of flowers – immense California poinsettias, roses, carnations – cascading from the dome and arches of the great drill shed. Wall and ceiling hangings embodying the “vivid red of the rising sun gradually blending into a marvelous vision of clinging vines with flowers” and magnificent paintings including “a frieze of cupids” had transformed the stark surroundings into “an enchanted fairyland.”

Thousands of electric light bulbs would make one imagine that one was in “the palace of a king” while giving the highly polished autos on display the appearance of “large, glittering sunbursts.” Fairyland aside, it all added up to “a beautiful business opportunity,” observed one shrewd Portland Evening Express writer two days before the show opened.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net

The REO Runabout was a hot new model in 1907.