In 1905, Henry Ford went down the shore.

He visited America's oldest seaside resort, the town of Cape May, for the purpose of auto racing.

If you're at all familiar with Cape May, with its menagerie of Victorian homes,

and at least at that time prim Victorian sensibilities,

auto racing in Cape May are incongruous with one another.

Yet the Cape May Auto Club sponsored beach races on a stretch of

sand called Poverty Beach. The idea of racing one of his cars as the waves of the Atlantic crashed along the shore held incredible appeal

for Henry Ford. Whom did he race? Why none other than Louis Chevrolet, who was a bit of an

upstart as he hadn't yet started selling his own line of cars.

Joining the two auto giants were A.L. Campbell and Walter Christie, race enthusiasts from New Jersey.

On August 25, 1905, these four gathered at Poverty Beach with 20,000 onlookers,

waiting to see who would claim the title of champion, although everyone guessed it would be Ford.

He'd retrofitted his model K car into what he called a beach skimmer

and even had a pit crew in the event anything went awry.

And everything went arrived. And everything went arrived.

Ford's beach skimmer hit the skids when a rogue wave nearly swept it into the sea.

This gave Louis Chevrolet, who drove a FII, an early leap, but he too was a victim of the beach when he ran into a soft spot of sand and lost the headway he'd gained on Ford and the other racers.

Although I've often heard this story told on the streets of

Cape May with Chevrolet as the victor, he'd actually came in second. A.L. Campbell

won the race that day. A. bragging rights was over in 38 seconds.

And Campbell sure did earn his bragging rights that day. To say he beat automotive giant Henry Ford,

well that was a true claim to fame. In this episode we're heading to what I like to call the most beautiful place on earth.

...