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Henry Ford, who had inaugurated the first automobile assembly line in 1913, created a furor in the industry when he began to pay his employees $5 a day.
Ten years later, the automobile was well on its way from being a rich man’s toy, to being a national necessity.
At that time, though, only the very rich could afford to own a car as opposed to today, when there can be as many cars in a household as there are people living there.
It wasn’t long before Santa Maria was holding an annual street race, drawing in such great local racing names as Huyck, Omer and, of course, Deane Laughlin, who brought the first automobile into the valley in June of 1903.
As the race drivers tore up and down the haystack-lined streets of Broadway, Stowell, Nance (now Bradley) and Main Street, Winston Wickenden, who watched the race from the porch of his parent’s house across the street from the high school, told me he thought it was interesting that none of the stripped-down speeding cars (that the drivers had built themselves), had windshields.
Most Santa Maria residents viewed the noisy and offensive fumes-filled race as unsightly, and didn’t appreciate their main streets being tied up with this dangerous spectacle. However, since it brought many tourists into the city, they mainly suffered in silence.
Since the laws on the books in one town weren’t necessarily the same as in neighboring towns, the enforcement of any laws, at all, was mostly a case of hit and miss.
The time came, however, for the state to eliminate the hodgepodge of conflicting laws, have uniform registration fees and, in order to preserve the existing roads, create truck weight limits.
Owning an automobile brought a sense of freedom, of being able to go where one wanted to go, on roads that were improving little by little, year after year. As drivers were learning about their responsibilities connected with the “new toy,” the state was taking an interest in the construction and maintenance of the roads.
Since the first paved road in California, which had been built in 1912, started to crumble long before the bonds had been paid off, standards to which contractors would have to adhere were a necessity, as were regulated road widths. One of the benefits of regulated road widths was that two cars could pass each other.
Meanwhile, the local motorcycle police squad, a forerunner of today’s California Highway Patrol, took responsibility for enforcing the laws as they existed at that time. Those early-day vigilantes-on-wheels would hide behind billboards and keep an eye out for cars equipped with that new invention, the rearview mirror, feeling that drivers of any car sporting such a contraption must surely be speeding.
The 1912 Vehicle Act created such low speeds that drivers were known to complain that they could have reached their destination faster by walking.
The law required that motorists, then and now, must travel at speeds safe for the conditions so as not to endanger the life, limb or property of any person. However, at no time was the speed to exceed 35 mph.
The first gasoline tax of 2 cents per gallon was set, with one cent going to the counties and one cent to the state for road and highway maintenance.
G. Allan Hancock, who served as president of the Auto Club in 1908 and 1909, began a campaign of road signing. By 1915, 7,000 miles of Southern California roads carried the club’s warning signs — “Slow – Pedestrian Crossing,” “Bumps in the Road,” “Caution – Depression” and “Notice – This is not a Through Street.”
The familiar bronze “Good Road” signs were posted on roads from San Diego to Porterville.
Originally referred to as a “horseless carriage, the automobile presented many challenges for the state, and the first 50 years of automobile legislation were focused on creating laws, rules and guidelines to help ensure that all California laws authorized all cities and counties to issue licenses for bicycles, tricycles, automobiles, horse carriages and similar wheeled vehicles.
By 1905, it became clear that California should issue a statewide vehicles registration system, so the task was given to the Secretary of State, who handled vehicle registration from 1905 until 1915, at which time Senator Birdsall enacted the official Vehicle Act of 1915 and created an official DMV.
By that year vehicle registrations had climbed to 191,000 in the state of California.
The California Vehicle Act of 1914 created laws governing all things related to driving and vehicles. Year by year, new laws were enacted and existing laws were amended to manage the growing number of vehicles hitting California roads each year.
The California Vehicle code still establishes the rules of the road and states the penalty for not obeying those laws.
In 1931, the powers and duties of the DMV were transferred to the Division of Motor Vehicles, which was actually part of the Department of Finance. It was then that the government realized that the DMV could produce decent revenue.
The first license plates, made of porcelain and painted red brick with white lettering, were issued in 1914. Through the years the plates changed their colors and style. Many were on display at Mussell Fort, the little western town located on Tepusquet Canyon Road and built by Elwin Mussell in 1952. Mussell served as mayor of Santa Maria from 1974 to 1980.
Long before it graduated from being a national plaything to a national necessity, the automobile, with enough power to startle a horse, was often referred to by the general public as “an infernal nuisance.”
Shirley Contreras lives in Orcutt and writes for the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society. She can be contacted at 623-8193 or at shirleycontreras2@yahoo.com. Her book, “The Good Years,” a selection of stories she’s written for the Santa Maria Times since 1991, is on sale at the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society, 616 S. Broadway.
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