Join award-winning journalist Eric Moskowitz in conversation with Jennifer Madden, Heritage Museums & Gardens’ Director of Collections & Exhibitions, to discuss his new book The Hardest, Longest Race: Henry Ford and the Cross-Country Contest That Changed America. The book details the riveting story of the first coast-to-coast automobile race in U.S. history that Ford cheated at to win in 1909 to promote the new Model T. Heritage is a fitting backdrop for the conversation, with an antique and classic automobile collection that includes four Model Ts and a 1909 White Steam Car Model M purchased for the White House by President Taft — who pressed a golden telegraph key on June 1, 1909 to start this very race.

America then was home to 250 automakers, a landscape of visionaries, schemers, and would-be barons of the new century. But when playboy millionaire M. Robert Guggenheim announced an audacious “Ocean to Ocean” contest from New York City to the Seattle World’s Fair, only three American companies were brassy enough to show up at the starting line: Acme, Ford, and Shawmut, a promising but star-crossed carmaker from Boston, trying to survive after a factory fire.

Oddsmakers favored the Acme and Itala, a pricy import also joining the race, while dismissing the pint-sized Ford — a homely little number called the Model T— and long-shot Shawmut. In fact, many didn’t believe any of the cars would reach Seattle at all, as they would need to forge a 4,106-mile course of mountain ranges, mud bogs, washed-out wagon bridges, and harrowing canyon trails, long before the era of asphalt highways, seatbelts, and service stations.

But Henry Ford was intent on proving that the Model T could go the distance and beat out the muscular luxury cars — and he didn’t plan to leave it to chance. Indeed, a little over three weeks after the race began, a Ford crossed the line hours ahead of the Shawmut.

Except that victory was a fraud.

Learn more about this story, including tales of the gritty, determined drivers who braved hostile terrain, mechanical failure, and, shockingly, sabotage, to take home the gold during this engaging discussion with the book’s author.

This program will be held indoors at the Heald Center inside the J.K. Lilly III Automobile Gallery and is free with admission or membership. No advance registration is required.

Books will be available for purchase at The Shop at Heritage and Eric will be available for signings after the program.

Interested in hearing more about early auto racing? Stay for the Gearhead Garage program from 5-6:30 pm featuring three remarkable early American sports cars in Heritage’s collection: the 1912 Mercer Raceabout, 1912 Oldsmobile Autocrat Roadster, and 1915 Stutz Bearcat. Click here for more information and pricing.

The Hardest, Longest Race: Henry Ford and the Cross-Country Contest That Changed America is a colorful tale of ambition and subterfuge, but it is also a love letter to America at the turn of the Twentieth Century. As a seeming people’s champion — a car for the masses — traverses the vast nation, author Eric Moskowitz brings to life the diverse populace and landscape that it would soon transform.

In a featured review, The Wall Street Journal hailed the book’s “brisk prose” while calling it “a vivid picture of America at the dawn of the automobile age.” Kirkus deemed it “a sweeping, suspenseful… story of American ingenuity and invention,” while The Christian Science Monitor highlighted it as a critic’s pick “for wherever summer takes you.”