ALTON - In an appearance on “Our Daily Show!” with CJ Nasello, Lacy McDonald spoke about her recent article on road safety in Alton in 1924.
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McDonald, who manages the Genealogy & Local History Library branch of The Hayner Public Library District, writes weekly history articles for RiverBender.com. In her article “100 Years Ago: ‘Howdy! Half the Road is Yours’: Alton Residents Learn Auto Safety Tips,” McDonald detailed a meeting of the Alton Automobile Club where residents spoke about how to safely operate motor vehicles, which were new to the Alton area.
“You weren’t enclosed in a car. You could hear the road rage. You can yell at the people coming towards you,” McDonald joked. “But they were dangerous. People were getting hurt or killed sometimes. That’s part of why, 100 years ago, they were having a safety meeting. The Alton Automobile Club was having a safety meeting at Riverview Park. So that’s what I was focused on for this article, but it was just kind of a means for me to talk about driving.”
In 1924, there were 3,600 automobiles and approximately 36,000 residents in the district, so there was one car on the road for every ten people. McDonald found this statistic especially interesting, and she estimates this number is much higher today.
As cars became more popular in the Riverbend region, residents were faced with the challenges of learning how to drive safely. They also had to share the roads — most of which were not cindered — with pedestrians, horses and buggies.
“I think they were working really hard to figure out how everybody could coexist. A lot of the focus was on pedestrian safety, on keeping track of everybody being safe, not being jerks,” McDonald explained. “One of the things that they were talking about at this meeting was this thing you were supposed to call out to drivers approaching in the other direction: ‘Howdy, half the road is yours!’ You just call that out to everybody that’s coming towards you. And this was not Alton or St. Louis-specific. I found this phrase in newspaper articles all over the country.”
Another major concern was the number of people who tried to beat trains through intersections. The club advised attendees not to try to outrun trains. McDonald noted that this was an even bigger problem in the 1920s than it is today because trains were “all over the place.”
During the Alton Automobile Club meeting, one of the speakers thanked the club’s director for his behind-the-scenes work to make the meeting successful. McDonald said it was refreshing to read about this recognition, especially because those who aren’t in the spotlight are often lost to history. This is partly why McDonald enjoys working with history; she learns about the people and experiences that made up daily life 100 years ago.
“I feel like there are so many people now and in history who are making things happen, who set up this safety meeting to try to keep Altonians safe, who are lost to history but were there, doing stuff behind the scenes, trying to help their community,” she said.
For more information about automobile safety in 1924, check out McDonald’s article on RiverBender.com. You can read more of McDonald’s writing here.
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