Photographs courtesy of the Detroit Public Library
View of motorists in Peerless car no. 49 traveling on rural dirt road during the 1907 Glidden Tour. Stamped on back: "Photo by N. Lazarnick, 29 West 42nd Street, New York." Handwritten on back: "Tours--Glidden Tour, 1907."
The 1907 Glidden Tour is replete with great stories. As I was reading accounts, this one is worth telling again.
From The Horseless Age, July 17, 1907, p.83.
"Madman After Tourists"
Among the many dangers that lay in the path of the Glidden tourists was an unexpected one in the form of a maniac, who sought to wreck the cars with the avowed intention of robbing the passengers and knocking them out with an iron crowbar with which he had armed himself.
The fellow had erected a barricade across the road at a place known as Sharpshooters Point, a dangerous curve 2 miles south of Hammond, Ill. The man who planned this attempt on the life of the tourists was Max Keiser, a blacksmith and social agitator, who had heard that the men in the cars were all millionaires and would have thousands of dollars on their persons as well as a fortune in rare jewels, and he had resolved to possess himself of those.
The barricade was skillfully constructed of trees and telephone posts, and there is little doubt that at least some of the cars would have been wrecked when they swung the curve at high speeds which marked the day's run.
S.E Betz, president of the F.S. Betz Manufacturing Company, of Hammond, fortunately had driven out to meet the tourists, and attempted to remove the barrier. Keiser, armed with an iron bar, was lying in wait in the fields nearby, and shed at them, driving them way. Mr. Betz...drove at full speed...where they enlisted the services of he police....They went after the man, who attacked them, but he was overcome after a struggle and taken to jail.
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