Imagine setting out on a road trip in a 1929 Ford Model A Roadster, with the stated goal of traveling from Manhattan to Mexico and Central America, after only a week’s worth of preparation. This is exactly what brothers Arthur Lyon (age 25) and Joe Lyon, Jr, (age 21) did on March 23, 1930. They prepared for the trip by purchasing camping gear, studying maps, gathering information about the areas they planned to traverse, mounted in the car’s rear seat a 55-gallon oil drum equipped with a gas feed for extra fuel, and divided up the princely sum of $324 in cash to fund their sojourn.
The story is replete with their accounts of the challenges the young men faced on their epic journey, including encounters with government officials and other interesting characters. In Mexico, where they faced nearly impassible roads, they finally had the car fitted with extra railroad wheels so they could literally ride the rails. The brothers’ trip ended on May 17, 1930, after the car suffered mechanical problems and the brothers and car nearly met their fate in the form of an oncoming freight train. Arthur and Joe returned to the U.S. separately, in part by tramp steamer.
The amazing 1930 journey of the young Lyon brothers can be seen as the centerpiece of a larger story, of a pair of lives lived out not just as brothers but as partners in an emerging Automobile Age. To help understand the forces that shaped those lives, the brothers’ nephew, Larry Lyon, provides an introduction that chronicles the family’s rich history from a family-owned grist mill in southern Missouri to the small mining towns of Pearl, Idaho and National, Nevada, through their father’s innovative auto-repair business in McDermott, Nevada, the brothers’ founding of Nevada’s first bus company, their investment in oil and gas exploration, and many other business ventures.
