December 21, 1907
Los Angeles

Hey, enough you, with the cracks about the lady driver.  Let’s see you make a long tour over hairpin turn-filled mountain roads replete with sharp ascents and descents.  Such a journey requires skill and judgement, “and yet,” writes the Times, “woman drivers are giving as good account of themselves in this work as men.”  

During the dear Edwardian days, the more daring element among our fairer sex would, on such tours, more often than not content themselves with presiding at the wheel on smooth stretches, leaving the real driving to the patriarchy.  Snorting a hearty pshaw at convention, Minnie Roberts of Madera shipped her 1905 White steamer touring car to Los Angeles to have it rebuilt as a runabout.  Here they also painted the auto a bright red.  She came down to LA to see how her car was coming, and, on visiting her pals Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Ryus, announced she was going to drive the beast home herself.  Mr. Ryus loaned her a mechanic in case the car should break down, but otherwise, Minnie was at the wheel.

The two days, and 315 miles, were full of hills, fords, bends, sand, ruts, desert, canyons and thick woods—and few towns.  The Tejon pass summit, where they were caught in a brief but fierce rain, is 4280 feet; Mint Cañon has a 3850 foot summit.  Minnie and the mechanic donned leather-covered laprobes during the inclement weather, since Minnie “does not believe in” glass fronts or canvas tops.

Whence came Minnie’s love of hard driving and speed?  It seems the week previous, Minnie had been taken for a ride in her pal “Wild Bill” Ruess’ fifty-horse-power Pope-Toledo (“that he uses to scare the life out of would-be motorists”) which, when it reached fifty-five miles and hour and could get no more speed, Minnie asked sweetly of Wild Bill, “Is this all the fast you can go?”

 
(A 1905 White, above, indicating the proper placement of ladies within an automobile, an image I snatched from here.)

Nov. 28, 1907
Los Angeles

• Ocean Park banned serving alcohol to soldiers in uniform because drunk Civil War veterans from the soldiers home in Sawtelle

Nov. 4, 1907
Los Angeles

About a year ago, Eugene Rowe

Aug. 23, 1907
Los Angeles

William Renwick, recent graduate of Pomona College, was to attend Yale in the fall, and rather than more mundane modes of travel decided to head East by auto in what he hoped would be the first transcontinental motor tour to begin in Los Angeles. To ensure that he arrived on time, he left in his Olds machine July 23, accompanied by professor E.E. Chandler.

July 1, 1907 - Los Angeles

If you ever wondered if the Locomobile or Pope-Hartford got great gas mileage, the answer is no, as shown in the results of the 185-mile Lakeside Endurance Race. In cost and fuel efficiency, the 1907 automobiles were about the equivalent of a 2006 Ford Explorer (MSRP $31,650) or a Range Rover Sport (MSRP $56,085-$69,025). The car with the best gas mileage in the economy competition was the Pope-Hartford, 8[illeg] gallons (21.76 mpg), in the class of touring cars costing $1,501-$3,000 ($30,805.88-$61,570.71 USD 2005).

Next was a Tourist auto, 8[illeg] gallons (21.14 mpg), competing in the class of touring cars with a price of $1,500 or less.

Another Tourist won in the class for runabouts priced at $1,501-$3,000, 11 1/8 gallons (16.62 mpg).

The winner in the class of touring cars costing more than $3,000 was an American, 11 gallons (16.81 mpg).

The winner in the event for high-powered runabouts was a Simplex roadster, which covered 6 miles in 7:56 minutes, or a little over 47 mph.

Lmharnisch.com

Lmharnisch.blogspot.com

June 28, 1907 Los Angeles Give cars to a bunch of wealthy Los Angeles residents and what do they do? Race them, of course. Not on a track this time, but in an endurance test from Los Angeles to Lakeside. And yes, it's a bit warmish for an endurance race, especially once the drivers get further inland--100 degrees.

So far, all 62 cars that began the race arrived intact at Lake Elsinore. Note that the drivers didn't have the advantage of maps.google.com and went via Upland and Riverside.

For a while, it looked as if the machines were going to be stranded in Lake Elsinore because there was no gasoline, but a freight train arrived in time with two carloads of gas. One driver, George Kowonto, suffered heat prostration, The Times noted.

So far, most of the cars have fared well. Forty received perfect scores, while several had points deducted for problems with the coil or the carburetor. "There were a few complaints of road hogging, but not many," The Times said.

Lmharnisch.com

Lmharnisch.blogspot.com

June 23, 1907 - Los Angeles

The Auto Club of Southern California has begun posting white enamel signs with blue lettering along Foothill Boulevard between Los Angeles and Riverside. Spending about half a day, auto club President George Allen Hancock and Charles Fuller Gates, who is in charge of the county's signage, staked the route through Highland Park, South Pasadena and Pasadena, Lamanda Park, Baldwin's ranch, Monrovia, Azusa, Glendora, Claremont, Uplands, Cucamonga, Etiwanda, Stalder (34.0119/117.3125 to folks with GPS) to West Riverside.

To protect the signs, a $200 reward ($4,104.71 USD 2005) was offered for anyone caught vandalizing them. "For a while the motoring public did not understand these signs," The Times said, "but gradually their value dawned upon them and then the rest of the highway traveling public understood them too. After that, very few were destroyed. Now it is seldom that any are molested."

Lmharnisch.com

Lmharnisch.blogspot.com

May 27, 1907 - Death Valley, Calif.

George Freeman and his wife of Pasadena, accompanied by Charles Fuller Gates of Los Angeles, were motoring out to Death Valley in a Pierce-Arrow along the old road carved by the twenty-mule teams from the borax mines when they approached a driverless wagon hitched to a skittish horse. The auto party had taken the route from Johannesburg to Ballarat slowly, stopping to clear the road of large rocks in their path and pausing whenever they encountered a freight wagon to keep from frightening the horses and mules. Because there were only two watering holes on the road, the party had taken an ample supply of water for themselves and the car's radiator, and they shared some with the teams that they passed.

Mrs. Freeman noticed a spot far ahead on the horizon and eventually realized it was a horse and wagon without its driver. Gates got out of the car and walked several hundred yards up the road to capture the horse. The party assumed that the animal hadn't gone far in the heat because it wouldn't drink much, although a dog following the wagon was nearly dead of thirst and drank two quarts of water.

Gates wanted to drive the wagon back down the road in search of the owner, while Mr. Freeman preferred sending the driverless horse on its way with a note attached to the harness advising whoever found it to care for it, which is what they did.

Five miles farther, the party came across a large bush placed across the road next to an old prospector lying behind a greasewood bush.

"Like a wild man, he staggered to his feet. He could not talk, neither could he stand erect, but seldom does a man show so much joy in his face as did that old man. He seemed to be afraid the automobile would rush on and leave him there," The Times said.

"He staggered to the side of the car and fell over against it. His mouth was filled with the greasewood leaves that he had chewed up [in an attempt to get water] and he dug them out with his fingers..... The old man was motioning for water, making signs that were unmistakable."

While Mr. Freeman wanted to leave a canteen with the old man and head on, Gates prevailed on him to lift the man into the car, turn around and overtake the horse and wagon they had passed earlier.

On their way back in the Pierce-Arrow, prospector Frank McCabe, 71, was finally able to speak. His first words were: "This is the kind of a horse."

Lmharnisch.com

Lmharnisch.blogspot.com

What is it about Angelenos that as soon as you put them behind the wheel of a car, they want to see how fast it will go?

But it

As I began to write my grand opening about Los Angeles in 1907, I felt a ghostly hand pluck ever so gently at my sleeve.
“Promise me, dear boy, you’ll remember to say that women couldn’t vote in 1907.”
“Yes, of course.”
Now where was I? Ah yes. The street names are deceptively familiar: Broadway, Spring Street and Main. But stand up on Bunker Hill and look at the city below and you might pick out the Bradbury Building and the Alexandria Hotel. Maybe the Pan American building at Broadway and 3rd Street, kitty-corner from the Bradbury and currently undergoing loft conversion, and the Rosslyn Hotel on Main.
Nothing remains of the old City Hall on Broadway but the parking lot between the Los Angeles Times garage and Victor Clothing, otherwise known as the Hosfield Building, erected as an annex for city offices in 1914 and opened in 1915 as City Hall South.
There are no freeways in this alien city. No television, no radio (or “wireless” as it was previously known) and no movie theaters. There aren’t even any comic strips in The Times, let alone crossword puzzles. Luckily, the operatic repertoire hasn’t changed greatly; Angelenos in 1907 could hear “Carmen” and “La Traviata.”
The ghostly hand intruded again, a bit more forcefully.
“Dear boy, remember about women not being able to vote?”
“I’ll get to that.”
There are a few automobiles (or “machines” as they were called) sold by dealers who set up shop on South Main around 12th Street. Reo, Rambler, Jackson, Pope-Toledo, Stevens-Duryea and Overland. Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Packard are the only familiar names. But machines seem only a bit more common than Segways are today. There are no more than 30 cars listed for sale in The Times classified ads for March 14, 1907, far outnumbered by horses; buggies and wagons, streetcars and bicycles appear to be the main modes of transportation.

Sample ad:
POPE-TOLEDO 24-H.P. TOURING CAR
with touring car body, canopy top and run-
about body. This car has just been thoroughly
overhauled and is in first-class condition.
The BIGGEST bargain offered in
Los Angeles
$1,000 ($20,523.57 USD 2005)
Western Motor Car Company
415 S. Hill
Patent medicine, séances, licensed saloons and something called a blind pig. The pages of The Times are brimming with vintage malfeasance.  
“Ow! You don’t need to pinch me.”
“Dear boy, women’s suffrage?”
“Very well.”
Women in Los Angeles couldn’t vote until 1911, when a new law allowed them to cast ballots in the local elections. The 19th amendment, granting women’s suffrage, was ratified by California on Nov. 1, 1919, and proclaimed by the secretary of State on Aug. 26, 1920.  (Not passed by Mississippi until March 22, 1984? Are you serious?)
“I’ll even mention suffragette Rachel Foster Avery’s visit in August 1907. How’s that?”
“Thank you.”