Horatio's Drive: America's First Road

Subtitled "America's First Road Trip," Horatio's Drive captures the remarkable odyssey of Horatio Nelson Jackson, a doctor from Vermont who—accompanied by a former professional bicyclist and a bulldog named Bud—helmed the first trip from coast to coast in a car. In 1903, after making a $50 bet he could drive to New York City in 90 days, Nelson set off from San Francisco in a used Winton two-seater than he bought for $3000 and proceeded to cross a country where most roads, if they existed at all, were still made of dirt. Pulling together newspaper articles, period movies, and Jackson's own photographs and passionate love letters to his wife, famed documentarian Ken Burns crafts a love letter of his own to the automobile and the ways it has shaped American life. Horatio's Drive is both educational and completely entertaining.