HOLSMAN First Car In Bend Oregon

The local newspaper of Bend, Oregon, The Bend Bulletin, on the 25^th of October 1907, carried the following article:

H.C. Ellis is running around town these days with a new HOLSMAN automobile that the Pioneer Telegraph & Telephone Co., has just purchased for use over its territory.  The machine resembles very closely a common buggy only it is truly horseless.  It carries a 1 horsepower gasoline engine and weighs 1,100 pounds.  Mr. Ellis says the machine is giving perfect satisfaction.  He went out to the Dales and drove it into Bend, a distance of 135 miles, in 23 hours, with five hours out for one night’s stop.  The machine climbed McPherson Hill and Grizzly Mountain with never a falter and carried up to two passengers and 150 pounds of baggage.  The Telephone Company has the exclusive agency for the HOLSMAN machines throughout Central Oregon.

In 1955 this same paper carried the following article concerning the same subject:

Bend’s first automobile, purchased in Chicago, shipped by express to The Dales and brought here under its own power from the Columbia River over rutted wagon roads, still operates under its own power.

In 1906, (1907) the Duschutes Telephone Co., of which H.C. Ellis was manager, found it difficult to obtain horses in the area and decided to buy a horseless carriage.  The car was ordered from Chicago.  It was a HOLSMAN, a two-cylinder affair with high wheels.  This type was purchased because of high centers in roads in the Bend, Prineville, and La Pine areas served by the company.  Some of the high centers were caused by lava rocks.  Others were stumps of treas.  The only use made of Central Oregon roads in those days was by freight wagons, stage coaches and hacks or buggies.

Ellis found it impossible to get fuel in The Dales to bring the new car to Bend.  Finally, after a wait of several days, a supply was obtained from Goldendale, across the Columbia River on the Washington side.  Some of this supply was shipped up the line, where it could be picked up in transit.  The fuel was in five-gallon cans, two to a case.

The brand new HOLSMAN caused considerable excitement in The Dales that day in 1906 (1907), when it chugged up the Columbia to a crossing of the Deschutes River at Freebridge.  At that time, there was only one other car in The Dales, a Reo owned by Dr. J.A. Reuter, a one cylinder vehicle.  From Freebridge, the HOLSMAN headed for the little known village of Bend, moved up Rattlesnake Canyon to Moro at the pace of a buggy team.  There was a temporary delay at Moro while more canned gas was taken aboard.  Finally, the car reached Cow Canyon, at night.

The car moved slowly down the rugged canyon, with the driver picking the “trail” by the dim illumination of the primitive headlights.  As the grade narrowed, fenders on one side of t he car was ripped, and in going through the narrow cut, fenders on the opposite side were torn.  By the time the car reached the bottom of the grade, its fenders were in scraps, were taken off at the pioneer Heisler stage station, on Trout Creek, and remained there as relics for years.  They were still in evidence at the site of the old station in the early 1920’s.  

The car was used by Judge Ellis and members of his crew for seven years, in line maintenance work.  Gas for the car was freighted in from Shaniko by E.A. Sather, who operated a store there.  Incidentally, gas in those days cost 75 cents a gallon in Bend, and $1.00 in Roseland, the present LaPine area.

  This car now reposes in the Duschutes Historical Center, 129 N.W. Idaho Avenue, Bend, Oregon 97701[3]