Arizona Legends and Lore

by Dorothy Daniels Anderson

  Europe suited Hattie and her daughter. There was so much to see and do. Hattie still continued to do freelance journalism work. At one point she interviewed German Kaiser Wilhelm in Berlin. Mother and daughter pursued the study of music, a continuing and abiding love of Hattie’s. They decided to settle in Germany.

  Living in Europe fascinated them. Hattie was particularly taken with the range and creativity of the architecture. Delighted with the incredible beauty of the cathedrals, palaces, and public buildings, her interest was more than the mere enjoyment of a tourist. She asked questions. She studied techniques. She even went so far as to learn the sewer system of Paris, considered by many to be the most up-to-date and innovative in the world.

  But, even in Europe her sense of principle was never far from the surface. One time her mother sent her a money order for Christmas. The German postal service indicated that there would be a delivery charge of ten cents. Hattie refused to pay. “If I pay that,” she said, “I won’t be getting all the money my mother sent me.” The postal authorities refused to relinquish the money order without the required charge. “Send it back then to Phoenix,” she replied with a shrug. The German postal bureaucracy were dumbfounded. They appealed to the Phoenix postmaster, then to her mother, who laughingly refused to supply the dime. In spite of many pleas to the contrary, Hattie remained adamant. “I refuse,” she repeated again and again. “It’s a matter of principle to me.”

  When World War I broke out in Europe, Hattie and Julia returned home and Hattie began to use her restless energy to improve her many property holdings. Looking around at her home city with the knowledge of the capitals of Europe behind her, Hattie recognized that Phoenix had the potential of becoming a mecca in the Southwest. Realizing that Phoenix was in need of a new city government complex, she offered the city and the county one of the blocks she owned on Central Avenue, valued at the time at $100,000.

  This was not a totally generous move on her part; she shrewdly knew that if the city accepted her offer, it would appreciably enhance the value of her surrounding properties. The city and county government did not have her vision of growth and refused her offer.

  Not easily discouraged, Hattie decided to improve her various properties by adding buildings which she hoped she could rent or sell. She felt certain that Central Avenue was destined to become the apex of Phoenix and the valley. Hattie could not resist the opportunity to utilize some of the architectural designs she had admired in Europe. Why not bring these innovations to Phoenix and give the city an international flair? She built some buildings that were round in design, some were built on stilt-like structures to allow for shaded people-passages underneath, others had trees growing through the midst of the building. She even conceived the idea of building an international-class hotel that would be twice the height of any Phoenix office building of the time.

  But Hattie had not reckoned with the conservative tastes of the folks living in Phoenix. Most had never seen or heard of such architectural innovations. They appeared strange and foreign in the eyes of many. Her daring was viewed as an embarrassment to people who feared being laughed at or criticized. The city, so anxious to attain acceptance among its peers, sought to copy the standard well-accepted styles of the day. Innovation might only bring derision.

  Her ideas were laughed at. People gossiped about her contemptuously. “Look at that fool woman. She should be staying at home, not getting herself involved in men’s business.” Money to complete her half-finished buildings became scarce. Bankers who had once promised her loans based on the value of her property reneged and no longer welcomed her into their inner offices. Then things went from bad to worse.

  After the war, Phoenix, with a certain lack of governmental foresight, discovered that it had fallen far behind in paving downtown streets. Business activity in the downtown sections of the town was being negatively affected. To catch up fast was the political charge of the moment. Property owners all over downtown Phoenix were heavily assessed to help pay for the new pavements. For someone with so much property in the center of town, Hattie’s assessments, in addition to her spiraling building expenses, proved too much to handle. In addition, her brother had recently died, leaving her the ice business which she felt was being taxed unfairly and not in keeping with its true worth. Everywhere she turned, problems confronted her.

  Hattie Mosher and the first bicycle in Phoenix. (Courtesy of the Arizona Historical Society, Central Division, Phoenix)

  She decided to seek legal redress for her problems. She went to court to protest. She was determined to prevail. Surely as a business owner and a property owner, she had some rights, some avenue of relief from arbitrary political dictates.

  Whether Hattie was given bad advice by her attorney or whether she chose to ignore the advice we don’t know. We do know that she took to studying the law, and she continued to bring to court case after case in hopes of winning her cause. She even attempted to achieve a political office in order to influence the governmental mind-set of the day. She ran unsuccessfully for city commissioner in 1920 and for the state Senate in 1922.

  Soon her fortune began to be eaten away by burgeoning legal fees. Liens were placed on her properties. Foreclosures began to occur for non-payment of taxes. For Hattie, who had always had ample money all of her life, this was a bewildering time. Still she continued to fight for her rights and her cause. “Fighting doesn’t pay,” she once wrote to her mother, “but it is the only way that I can get positive and authentic information. Otherwise all one hears is bureaucratic babbling.” At one point, Hattie was thrown in jail for not giving in. This resulted in headlines in newspapers throughout the state, “Arizona’s Wealthiest Woman Behind Bars.”

  This proud, aging woman found herself slipping slowly into poverty. When her daughter Julia died in childbirth, Hattie became even more of a loner and a recluse, living frugally in the basement of one of her remaining buildings. Over the decades, people grew used to seeing her eccentric figure dressed in faded Victorian finery walking the streets of downtown Phoenix with her bag for collecting scraps of food.

  But even that small bit of security was finally to be taken from her. She was evicted from her basement home when the building was sold to satisfy unpaid taxes. Bewildered, Hattie wondered if she would have to live on the streets. The new owner of her property found her a small room nearby. Somehow she continued to manage, determined still in her loneliness.

  When she was 80 years old, some burglars broke into her apartment, convinced that this little old eccentric but formerly wealthy lady must be hiding money. They severely beat her, trying to make her tell the whereabouts of a hidden hoard of wealth. All they found was a basket of overripe strawberries.

  Between the beating and a fall later that year, Hattie became too weak to care for herself. She was too fragile to undergo an operation. Blood transfusions and other efforts came too late. She died in November, 1945.

  Perhaps Hattie Lount Mosher was a woman before her time, perhaps she was too blindly stubborn to the realities surrounding her; no one knows for certain. But, she dared to break the unspoken rules of her time: women were to be seen, to be charming, to be submissive. She dared to be eccentric and say, “But, it’s a matter of principle.”

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Finnerty, Margaret, “Stubborn Hattie,” Scottsdale Progress Saturday Magazine, November 29, 1986, pages 3–5.

  Johnson, G. Wesley Jr., Phoenix, Valley of the Sun, Continental Heritage Press, Inc., Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1982.

  Letters from Hattie Mosher to her mother, Mrs. Julia Lount, August 21, 1905 to November 6, 1905. Arizona Historical Foundation. Small Collection, Box 1/1, Gift of Mr. Stewart, Carl Hayden Library, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.

  The Great Desert Automobile Race

  In 1989, Phoenix became the host city of a Grand Prix international automobile race. For weeks prior to the event, the media ballyhooed the upcoming contest. The fastest cars and the finest drivers were coming to town to compe
te for millions in prize money. Big time car racing had reached the Southwest. No one seemed to recollect that Phoenix had once before, in the dawn of automobile history, hosted a great automobile race.

  It was during the years from 1908 to 1914 that Phoenix joined with Los Angeles to sponsor a series of Great Desert Races. These automobile races were the brainchild of two men, John Purdy Bullard, the attorney general of the Territory of Arizona, and John W. Mitchell, general manager of a well-known Los Angeles hotel, the Hollenbeck. The purpose of these races was not only to bring attention to the two cities, but to graphically illustrate the need to fund the building of a road between them.

  Bullard and Mitchell, recognizing the need to generate publicity for a contest using such a comparatively new invention as the automobile, persuaded Dr. George Vickers, owner of the A rizona Republican newspaper, to co-sponsor the race. The course was to be approximately 500 miles long over some of the roughest desert and mountain terrain to be found anywhere. In places, the road was no more than a wagon track. Few accouterments of civilization were to be found anywhere along the route. There would be no back-up teams to supply every automotive need. There would be few places for spectators to watch. The only prizes would be two silver cups.

  During this time, a young man named Ralph Hamlin was trying to earn a living selling automobiles in Los Angeles. He had recently been able to persuade the manufacturers of the Franklin air-cooled car to give him the distributorship for Southern California. Hamlin hoped to sell many cars by convincing his customers about the advantages of an air-cooled car in the Southwest’s climate. All of his competitors were selling water-cooled cars. Despite its promise, the Franklin was a new, untested car and often his competitors would win a sale away from Hamlin by asking the prospective customer, “If air-cooled automobiles are so great, why is everyone else selling only water-cooled cars?”

  Hamlin had to come up with a strategy to overcome this selling liability. His plan was to enter every car race he could find and pit the Franklin against the pack to win. During a regular meeting of car distributors in California, Hamlin first heard of the impending Los Angeles-Phoenix Desert Race. Immediately interested in getting in on the action, Hamlin inquired how he could participate. His query brought hoots of derision from several men who had been discussing the contest. Then Captain Ryus, a White Steamer distributor, speaking to the assembled group with a contemptuous tone, stated that an air-cooled Franklin could not possibly get across a desert.

  Ryus’s challenging words only hardened Hamlin’s determination. When Hamlin attempted to sell the Franklin, constant badgering by the other distributors only fueled his resolve. There were already three cars entered in the race: a White Steamer, a Kissel Kar and an Elmore. Each automobile was to be driven by one of the finest sportsmen of the time.

  An underdog, Hamlin became the fourth contestant. In comparison to such driving greats of the day as Colonel Fenner and Bert Latham, Hamlin was totally unknown and rarely mentioned in the pre-racing publicity. With only determination and faith in his machine, Hamlin prepared for the big day.

  The race began at midnight. A big crowd cheered as each contestant left the front of the Hollenbeck Hotel a scheduled five minutes apart. Large crowds had gathered to line the roads through town. The excitement among the spectators seemed more than usual for racing enthusiasts. Perhaps people sensed that history was being made. This race would echo into the future as the harbinger of a new form of competition.

  For Hamlin, the race would provide him with a chance to prove the Franklin’s worth and to gain the respect of the other auto dealers. The trail, though well-defined, was rough and sandy, but he managed to make good time through Palm Springs and Indio. It was almost daylight when Hamlin and his mechanic, Guy Erwin, passed the northern edge of the Salton Sea to reach Banning. Having been the last to leave the starting line, Hamlin had not yet encountered any of the other cars.

  The route grew rough as they entered a steep canyon. It was then that Hamlin spotted his first competitor, the Kissel Kar, hopelessly stuck in the sand. He wondered if he should just pass on, but decided to stop his automobile. It took the power of both cars and the concerted effort of both crews to get the Kissel Kar out. “Hey, Ralph,” said Harris Hanshue, the mechanic of the Kissel Kar, “don’t you know that there’s a race going on?” Hamlin answered, “I may be in the same fix sometime, Harry; it’s not so good to be stuck 200 miles from nowhere.” In those few moments Hamlin made a lifetime friend and supporter.

  The course was filled with mishaps as the racers dodged ruts, rocks, sand and washes. By this time, Hamlin was puzzled as to where the other drivers were getting their water to keep their engines cooled. Then he noticed a large rag tied to a bush. Hidden under the bush was a five-gallon can of water. Smaller rags warned of bad bumps or obstructions in the road.

  At Blythe, Hamlin had only a short run to the river and the overnight control point where he would receive his final timed speed for the day. Here they would stay for the night and in the morning be ferried across the Colorado River. But darkness comes swiftly to the desert, and before they realized what was happening, they were hopelessly lost in the blackness of a desert night. Low on gas, they were forced to quit short of reaching the control point. They had to wait until morning to find the road to the Colorado. This meant that they had no chance of winning.

  But Hamlin felt that he could not allow the Franklin’s automotive ability to continue being challenged. A question still needed to be answered. Could an air-cooled car make it across the desert? Even though Hamlin knew they weren’t going to be able to win, he decided to go on to Phoenix to prove that the air-cooled Franklin automobile could indeed cross the Southwestern desert.

  On Monday, November 9, 1908, at 6:00 p.m., the whistle on top of the Phoenix Electric Light and Power Company building sounded a series of blasts. That was the signal to clear the traffic off Adams Street from the state capitol to the downtown area. All horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians were shunted to side streets. One of the racers had been sighted entering Phoenix. A crowd formed along Adams. Little boys climbed into trees for a better view. At 6:30 p.m. a voice shouted, “Here he comes!”

  Colonel Fenner’s White Steamer, barely discernible in a thick cloud of dust, drove into view, stopping in front of the offices of the Arizona Republican newspaper. The race was over. It had taken 30 hours and 20 minutes of actual running time. Approximately an hour later, the Kissel Kar came in to win second place in the race.

  All four automobiles made it through the race. Hamlin’s Franklin arrived last, coming in at 9:50 p.m. just about three hours after the winner. Hamlin had proved that an air-cooled car could go the distance.

  A finish was formally recreated on Thursday afternoon at the territorial fairgrounds. A packed crowd in the grandstands gave the racers a rousing ovation. The governor of the territory congratulated the contestants. That evening a banquet was held at the Adams Hotel to honor the teams. Afterwards, the racers retired to the Louvre Bar next door where they began a tradition that was to be continued after all future races. The prized silver trophy was filled and refilled with champagne until everyone had drunk their fill.

  Later, the automobiles were shipped back to Los Angeles and the teams returned by train. On the train back to Los Angeles, Ralph Hamlin, encouraged rather than disheartened, was already planning his strategy for the 1909 race.

  The same contestants entered the 1909 race. But now the line-up included ten cars with such names as Studebaker, Ford and Buick. Again the start-up was in front of the Hollenbeck Hotel, this time at 10:00 p.m. on November 6. Ralph Hamlin chose to drive a newer version of the Franklin, the H Model. He chose as his mechanic, Clayton Carris, a man experienced in desert travel. This time the route went south of the Salton Sea toward Yuma. Hamlin felt that he had a good start. Things were looking favorable for a competitive race and his spirits were high.

  At Brawley, in the excitement of making unexpectedly good speed, Ha
mlin drove too fast over a railroad crossing and smashed the Franklin’s differential housing. There was no hope of repair. Hamlin was out of the race. Of the ten cars that started, only four finished the 400-mile course. The winning car was a Buick, driving the distance in just over 19 hours and averaging speeds of up to 25 miles per hour.

  By now the Los Angeles-Phoenix Desert Races were becoming famous throughout the country and Hamlin could not walk away from the challenge. He was determined not to give up. When the 1910 race was scheduled, he was among the 14 entries. Not only did many of the prior contestants sign up, but because the race was generating so much interest, several manufacturers entered their cars for the first time. Among the starters were a Velie, a Rambler, an Ohio, a Maxwell and a Mercer. A train nicknamed the “Howdy Special” had even been chartered to allow spectators to follow the race, rendezvousing with the racers at the night control point and meeting them at the finish.

  This time Hamlin was a mere 32 minutes behind the winning Kissel Kar driven by Harvey Herrick. Progressing from finishing last in one race, to a wipe-out in another, and now coming in second, Hamlin recognized that he was beginning to be considered a serious racing contender and his Franklin an automobile to be reckoned with.

  By the 1911 race, betting on the automobiles by the racers and the spectators reached an all-time high. Ralph decided to bet on himself and the Franklin in order to try to cover the considerable expenses involved in participating. Once again, victory eluded him and he came in second behind Harvey Herrick driving a National.

  In 1912, Ralph Hamlin decided to take stock of the situation. He had come in second place twice. He had proven that an air-cooled car would survive the worst that a southwestern desert could offer. What were his options? He could give up competing, saying that he had proven enough about the Franklin. He was after all a salesman and technically he had shown that the Franklin was a good car. Or, he could quit fooling around and win the damn race!