“[Kelly] has been sloshing around in his editorial mudhole for over a year, butting his cranium against nearly everything and everybody in sight emitting copious quantities of splenetic nastiness,” opined the New Mexican. Then, using words in Kelly’s own letter calling on the newspaper to “be a little more careful in your personal allusions to me,” the New Mexican urged the angry editor to be “a little more careful” himself, “whether dealing with his brethren of the press or with an unprotected female bicycle agent”—Annie.
The Optic, however, sought to placate Kelly and reiterated doubts about Annie’s story, which it had published immediately after her departure from Las Vegas a couple of weeks earlier. Her declarations about Kelly, said the Optic, “had been spread all over town by Miss Londonderry and some of her new formed acquaintances. The Optic doubted its truth at the time, classing it with many of her traveler’s yarns. Since then this paper has become assured of its falsity. Mr. Kelly, it has been learned, is not a whizzer in Miss Londonderry’s sense of that term, nor does he invite strange women to take buggy rides with him. He was convinced of Miss Londonderry’s unreliability, as were a large majority of those who came in contact with her, and with a fearlessness and a plainness of speech which has won him a distinguished position in New Mexico journalism, he told his convictions to the world. Miss Londonderry, unable to answer his charges, attempts to smirch his character.”
Love her or hate her, Annie made great copy.
BETWEEN LAS CRUCES and Socorro, the Santa Fe tracks entered “ninety miles through the valley of death,” the Jornada del Muerto, or “Journey of the Dead Man.” This was the most rugged and desolate part of the famed Camino Real—the 1,800-mile highway established in the early 1600s between Mexico City and Santa Fe. The broad, flat valley had no water sources, no firewood, and no amenities for travelers. It baked in the summer sun and sizzled when massive summer thunderstorms punctuated by dazzling lightning strikes would suddenly dump several inches of water in violent downpours. Indeed, unusually heavy monsoonlike rains drenched the region in the summer of 1895, rains so heavy the main street of Silver City, a short distance north of Lordsburg and Deming, was washed away, leaving a massive ditch that remains today.
Exactly how Annie reached Socorro from Las Cruces isn’t known, but it is plausible she rode most if not all of the distance, for it took her nearly a week to get there. She arrived in Socorro on Sunday, July 14, and left the same day by train, arriving in Albuquerque later that afternoon. There, she registered at the San Felipe Hotel as “Annie Londonderry, Round the World on a Wheel.” The Albuquerque Morning Democrat was among those newspapers now focused on fixing Annie’s precise mileage and reported that upon reaching that city she had traveled exactly 17,432 miles. Again, the numbers weren’t consistent with previous reports, nor is it clear where the Morning Democrat obtained them, but it is probable that Annie provided the number, so precise that it had the ring of plausibility. Indeed, the figures were probably fairly accurate though she had not, of course, covered all those miles by bicycle.
Despite having taken the train from Socorro, Annie described the trip from El Paso as a harsh one: “I have gone hungry for days and slept out in graveyards, but that was nothing compared with my experience from El Paso here.”
As early as March, when she arrived in San Francisco, Annie was in the home stretch; the closer she got to home, the more she was asked, and began to talk about, what she would do when her journey ended. “I started on account of a bet made between two sugar kings,” she told a reporter from the Morning Democrat who met her at the hotel, “and if I make Boston by the stated time I get $30,000 and a name worth having. I intend writing a book and can easily place several editions. I started as a novice in every sense of the word. Even when on the road I had to borrow a chair to mount or get some good Samaritan to hold the machine.” Annie never would write the book. She also repeated the story about hunting “the royal Bengal tiger in the jungles of India” and said the skin now adorned her mother’s home in Boston, failing to mention that her mother had died several years earlier. “Since she has been on the road she has received upwards of 42,000 letters from admirers scattered all over the world,” reported the Morning Democrat. “The heroine is just past 22 years and weighs at present 136 pounds. She is somewhat tanned from exposure but looks the picture of health.”
“She is a charming, vivacious talker,” wrote a reporter for the Albuquerque Daily Citizen, whose journalist also talked with Annie at her hotel. “The broad rim of a jaunty white straw hat trimmed with black ribbon bent and shook itself in response to her animated movements of the head when speaking. The right leg was thrown over the left, the hands crossed at the knee and from under the bottom of a plain, black skirt a shapely foot was visible. She carries a pistol on her body, and the quick penetrating flash of her dark eyes shows that she would not hesitate a moment to use it if necessary.”
The Raton Reporter, a newspaper based some 220 miles north, reported that while in Albuquerque Annie earned $400, mostly from the sale of her photograph which she sold for 50 cents a piece. That Annie was only able to muster $52 in El Paso, where she had spent well over a week among people who embraced her enthusiastically, and $400 in Albuquerque, where she remained for a few days, again demonstrates how difficult it is to sort fact from fiction. Annie definitely did earn some coins when her Sterling was put on display in D. J. Abel’s store window, however. “It looks a little worse for the wear,” reported the Daily Citizen, “but is still in the ring. Like the rider it is thoroughly American…One half the so-called courageous sex of humanity would not attempt what this brave little Boston woman has accomplished.”
On July 16, the eve of her departure, Annie was feted at a grand ball by the Albuquerque wheelmen. “[I]f no accident happens she will prove to the world woman’s ability and woman’s endurance,” declared the Morning Democrat.
ANNIE’S NEXT destination was Santa Fe, some fifty-five miles to the northeast. She reached Cerillos on July 18 and arrived at the Claire Hotel in Santa Fe the following day, accompanied from nine miles out by members of the Capital City Cyclers Club. She lectured at the courthouse the next evening.
In Santa Fe, Annie again demonstrated her prowess as a cyclist. “Miss Londonderry…easily ran away from the [bicycle] club members in their dash over the city last evening,” reported the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican. Her stay was brief. At six A.M. the next morning, she pedaled toward Las Vegas, New Mexico, and spent the night at Glorieta, a short distance east of the tiny town of Lamy.
Her trip into Las Vegas was a wet and unpleasant one. She was “a rather forlorn looking object when she dismounted in front of T. Brash’s store yesterday afternoon,” said the Las Vegas Daily Optic. When she wasn’t walking, “the riding she did was on the railway bed, between the tracks, making her experience no little like that of the rider of an ox, who declared that he would rather have walked but for the grandeur of the thing.”
“Miss Londonderry had on a slouched hat,” the newspaper continued, “to which the rain had given all the slouch possible. The remainder of her attire consisted of a gray flannel jacket, without skirts, and large bloomer breeches of the same material. A skirt was wrapped around her shoulders for a shawl. Had she just been fished out of the Gallinas [River], she could not have been more damp, or a more perfect illustration of dampness.”
Despite the miserable conditions in which she arrived, Annie still managed to be charming. Like any good showwoman, despite the difficulty of the ride or the harshness of the conditions, when there were people around to impress, Annie always put on a good show. “[A]ll the water in New Mexico showers could not dampen her pleasant manners, her sprightly expression, or the elastic ease with which she sprang into the saddle and started for the Plaza hotel,” said the Optic.
LAS VEGAS WAS a bustling town of 2,300 souls, including prosperous Jewish immigrants from Germany. One such was Charles Ilfeld, who had come to New Mexico from Germany three decades b
efore as a teenager, owned a prominent department store in town and engaged Annie as a “saleslady” to draw customers to a special weekend sale. Whether Annie revealed herself as a Jew to Ilfeld is unknown; there isn’t a single reference to her Jewish heritage in the record of this incident and the name “Londonderry” certainly didn’t betray it.
Annie lingered a few days in Las Vegas, earning some money for her work at Ilfeld’s and basking in her celebrity. Her lecture, hosted by the Las Vegas Bicycle Club on July 26, was followed by a dance—admission was seventy-five cents—and a local music group, the Ramblers, played for her benefit. Annie was such a curiosity that a crowd of more than one hundred gathered at a local barbershop to watch her have her hair dressed. “Clearly,” said the Optic, “she is a drawing card.” And, just as clearly, in big towns and small, Annie’s fame was now well established.
THOUGH SHE WAS welcomed warmly in Las Vegas, and the Optic painted a flattering portrait of her upon her arrival, calling her “sharp as a tack and as bright as a new silver dollar,” the paper did an about face the day after she left town. The newspaper, now squarely in editor Alan Kelly’s camp, alleged she was close to a fraud.
Miss Annie Londonderry, jocularly referred to as Miss Bostonberry, who has been lionized in Las Vegas and at the hot springs, for some days, took her departure eastward on her wheel yesterday morning, being accompanied up the road as far as Watrous by a number of local cyclists…The start was made from the city about 7 o’clock. Her first stop was made on Sixth Street, opposite the New England restaurant, where she breakfasted.
About 8 o’clock, accompanied by eleven local cyclists she started up the railroad track, on her way to the “Hub,” where she expects to be the recipient of a few thousand dollars off the completion of her trip, and where the daring and bravery which she displayed on many occasions, as was related in her speeches, will be duly applauded…
Many have expressed doubts as to Miss Londonderry’s having made a trip around the world at all, from the fact that nothing had been seen of her trip in the great dailies. [This was not true. Many major newspapers had reported on Annie’s journey.] The Optic has been shown a copy of The Bearings, a weekly cycling periodical, published at Chicago, and very largely given to advertisements.
In the issue of May 10th, 1895 is a page given to Miss Londonderry and the wheel she rides, the opening sentence of which is: “Miss Londonderry, the first woman to ride around the world on a bicycle, is back: her mount was a gold and ivory Sterling.” From that on, the account is part Londonderry and part Sterling…
A map of her route is published, showing the trip incomplete from San Francisco to Chicago. The letter press says, “she should stop at Havre, Marseilles, Colombo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama, and then return to America.” These are all seaports, and the map of the trip follows this description, showing her to have sailed from Boston to Hong Kong, with the insignificant wheeling across France from Havre to Marseilles. From Hong Kong she wheeled the short distance to Shanghai, sailed thence to Nagasaki, sailed from there to Port Arthur, wheeled around Corea, sailed to Japan, which she crossed, and thence sailed to San Francisco, lacking 700 or 800 miles of being in the neighborhood of Siberia…
The Optic’s conclusion of the whole matter is that she is a plucky little woman making a trip to advertise the Sterling bicycle; that she has been around the world, wheeling but little and riding a good deal on trains and ships; and that, like many travelers, she has a vivid imagination, the incidents of travel growing in number and startlingness the further she gets from the scene of their supposed location.
The bicycle boys in particular, and the community in general, treated Miss Londonderry well, and the Optic is glad of it; for, no doubt, when she comes to exercise her inventive genius about us, the recollection of her pleasant treatment will cause the inventions to be of an agreeable character.
If Annie ever learned of this shot in the back, she never betrayed it, but she would have been grateful for the attention. Controversy served her purposes just as well as raves.
From Las Vegas, she traveled sixty-five miles north through Springer, Maxwell City, and arrived in Raton, New Mexico, near the Colorado border, on Tuesday, July 30 at around four P.M., escorted by a group of local cyclists who had ridden out to meet her. Annie checked in to the Gate City Hotel and lectured at the opera house in Raton that evening, describing a trip “full of adventure and at times attended with danger,” and later gave a bicycle-riding exhibition.
“Her account of the Japan-China war was a wonderful revelation of the cruelties that were practiced,” reported the Raton Range. Annie, by now, had also apparently become something of a military analyst. “She stated that Japan won, not because her soldiers could fight, but for the reason that the Chinese would not. The ordinary Chinese soldier carried an umbrella and fan, and would surrender on the first opportunity that presented itself.” The cyclist also told her audience in Raton that her trip through California was without incident, curiously leaving out the accident she suffered near Stockton, which she had earlier dramatized and exaggerated in San Jose as a life-threatening catastrophe. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to how she decided which stories to tell on any given occasion.
ANNIE LEFT RATON at 8:00 A.M. on Wednesday, July 31, escorted by a Mr. D. Leahy. It is only about twenty miles from there to Trinidad, Colorado, which she reached about 1:30 P.M. with yet another delegation of cyclists who had ridden ten miles to Morley, a tiny outpost just north of the New Mexico–Colorado state line, to meet her. To get to Morley, Annie crossed over the Raton Pass, which at 7,834 feet would have been a tough climb in thin air, though a toll road built in the mid-1860s facilitated the mountainous passage. The Santa Fe Railroad also ran through the pass. Did she cross the pass by train or bike? Although it’s impossible to say for sure, the presence of escorts makes it likely that she made this climb on her Sterling.
Once at Trinidad, Annie was escorted through streets “thronged with people to see the plucky young lady” to the Columbian Hotel. “[E]laborate preparations” were underway by the local wheelmen for “a grand ball” to be given in her honor at the Jaffa Opera House, where Annie was to lecture the following night. The charge for admission was twenty-five cents for ladies and fifty cents for men.
Despite the warm welcome, doubts from the local press about Annie’s journey followed her to Trinidad and increased after she left. On the same page that the Trinidad Daily News announced her arrival, it ran a separate item quoting the views of the Las Vegas Daily Optic that her undertaking was something much less than she claimed. On August 2, the day Annie departed to head for La Junta, the Trinidad Daily News reprinted an article about her that had appeared more than a year earlier, on July 3, 1894, in the New York World. When they read it, the residents of Trinidad learned for the first time that Annie was a married woman, that her real name was Kopchovsky, not Londonderry, and that she had three children at home in Boston. Many were likely shaking their heads in disbelief that the woman who had been in their midst was not at all who she appeared to be.
ON A DIRECT LINE, it is about seventy-five miles from Trinidad to Pueblo. But Annie traveled there via La Junta, almost twice as far. Why? The answer is quite simple: the Santa Fe tracks ran that way. Again, because no one else was present and she didn’t say, it is impossible to know how she reached these points. The mere presence of the railway, however, doesn’t necessarily mean she took the train. Following the tracks was one way to keep from getting lost in the vast expanses of the west. Annie took six days to reach Pueblo, spent one night there, then rode the forty-three miles to Colorado Springs on August 9. She was on hand the following morning at H. Weber’s bicycle store, to draw customers.
On August 11, Annie made Palmer Lake, a small town along the Santa Fe Railroad route about halfway between Colorado Springs and Denver, but not before a severe rainstorm had overtaken her. She arrived soaked, with a “broken machine,” though the nature of i
ts mechanical problem wasn’t described. From there, she sent two telegrams to the Denver Wheel Club saying she would wait out the storm in Palmer Lake, and would reach Denver, some fifty miles north, the next day.
Annie did arrive in Denver on the morning of August 12, having covered the distance from Palmer Lake in four hours. Members of the club met her at Littleton. “Miss Londonderry when she was seen by a News representative last night was found to be a young lady who looked as if she might be an athlete, with coal black eyes, and a face tanned brown as a nut,” reported the Denver Daily News. In Denver, Annie stayed at the Glenarm Hotel for nearly a week. Typically, when she lingered, it was to muster her energy and make plans for the trip ahead (as in San Francisco), because she was being celebrated (as in Marseilles and El Paso), or because there were good opportunities to earn a few dollars or soak in the glamour of a foreign capital (as in Paris). It appears she remained so long this time because she was ill. According to the Omaha World Herald, Annie had contracted pneumonia in Denver and was “confined to her bed for two weeks.” But, eight days later, she headed for Cheyenne, yet again by means uncertain.
From there, according to the Omaha World Leader, Annie “followed the Union Pacific tracks to [Omaha].” She didn’t exactly follow the Union Pacific tracks east as had been reported, however; she was on the train. According to the Cheyenne Daily Sun-Leader of August 20, “Miss Annie Londonderry, the lady cyclist who claims to have been around the world on a wheel, left the city before daylight this morning, taking the 2:30 train from here.” After her departure from Cheyenne, there isn’t a single report of Annie’s whereabouts until her arrival in Columbus, Nebraska, nearly four hundred miles east, just two days later.
Around the World on Two Wheels Page 15