The motorcycle adventure pioneers
There’s a first time for everything including riding across the American continent, circumnavigating the globe by bike, London to Cape Town by combination. Join us as we celebrate motorcycling’s adventure pioneers
The first women to cross the american continent on solo motorcycles The Van Buren sisters ride 5500 miles from New York to Mexico
⏢ America was about to enter World War 1, women weren’t allowed to vote and sisters Augusta and Adeline Van Buren wanted to serve their country as military despatch riders – a role strictly reserved for men. But that wasn’t good enough for the Buren sisters. They were determined to prove that women could serve just as well as men, so they rode their 1915 1000cc Indian motorcycles 5500 miles in 60 days from New York to Tijuana, Mexico. And it didn’t go down well.
They were arrested numerous times for wearing men’s clothing. The press went mad, national papers accused them of using the trip as an ‘excuse to escape their roles as housewives’ and ‘display their feminine contours in nifty leather uniforms’.
Not only did they have to do battle with the elements, they also had to deal with a complete lack of roads, thick muddy swamps and keep their high maintenance machinery ticking over. And then there were the police who kept trying to arrest them for having the temerity to be female and on a motorcycle.
Despite all of this they managed to ignore the misogyny and pushed on anyway. They triumphed over off-road routes, severe weather, getting lost in the desert and running out of water to become the first women to ride solo bikes across the continent, and the first women to reach the 14,109 feet summit of Pikes Peak by any motor vehicle.
Unfortunately, the sisters didn’t get their wish. The military refused their applications and motorcycle magazines only reported on the bikes, ignoring their efforts. But the sisters accomplished an extraordinary feat and inspired women across the world. True pioneers.