From the Dallas Morning News of 13 June 1999:
Bus·line entrepreneur's
plans never got on a roll
W. B. 'Ben' Chenoweth was a member of the pioneer Chenoweth family that settled in Dallas County in the early 1840s. He is credited with having estabIished (in 1907) the first intercity bus Iine in Texas, or maybe the United States.
The first bus line went from Colorado City to Snyder, but there were no roads to speak of. It didn't last very long, but W.B. Chenoweth was a true entrepreneur, so he didn't slow down just because his bus line stopped.
Mr. Chenoweth wrote a booklet, Foolin' With Gasoline, Electricity and Wind. It lists as his four greatest inventions: 1. The six-cylinder automobile, 1890 2. First successful flying machine, 1908 3. Big Ben farm tractor, 1918 4. Atmosphere-produced electricity, 1920.
He tried to get engineering circles interested in his six-cylinder engine, but he was ahead of his time. In 1899, the National Engineering Laboratory replied: "You must have been kicked on the head by a mule when you were a small boy which left you laboring under the hallucination, or delusion, that ice can be frozen an a red hot stove, by thinking of driving a self-propelled vehicle over a public road 25 miles-per-hour. In our opinion, it's an idle dream of a feebleminded person."
Mr. Chenoweth went looking for a company to build a six-cylinder gasoline engine to his specifications. Henry Ford, he reported, was the only manufacturer "who had given any idea to a six-cylinder engine" but Ford wanted $2,700 each to build two engines on five-passenger chassis. The Texan wrote "that was more money than was in circulatlon, as far as I was concerned."
He located the Borbein Auto Co. of St. Louis, which would lease its shop to him, and the Western Motor Co. of Logansport, Ind., which agreed to build two of his six-cylinder engines at a cost of $735 each. He ended up with two l4-passenger "stagecoaches," as they were then called.
The line between Colorado City and Snyder was financed by W.A Jones of Snyder. Unfortunately. a community near Snyder, through which the noisy vehicles passed, approved a resolution that the Chenoweth buses could not run through the community and invited Mr. Chenoweth to "take his contraptions elsewhere." A line was tried between Big Spring and Lamesa. It, too, failed.
Mr. Jones was left with the buses. His daughter said one was turned into a chicken coop and one was traded for a piano, which, she reported, "I played for many years." Ben Chenoweth died broke in 1958. His descendants are still part of the Dallas community.
A.C. Greene is on author and historian who lives in Salado.
Bus·line entrepreneur's
plans never got on a roll
W. B. 'Ben' Chenoweth was a member of the pioneer Chenoweth family that settled in Dallas County in the early 1840s. He is credited with having estabIished (in 1907) the first intercity bus Iine in Texas, or maybe the United States.
The first bus line went from Colorado City to Snyder, but there were no roads to speak of. It didn't last very long, but W.B. Chenoweth was a true entrepreneur, so he didn't slow down just because his bus line stopped.
Mr. Chenoweth wrote a booklet, Foolin' With Gasoline, Electricity and Wind. It lists as his four greatest inventions: 1. The six-cylinder automobile, 1890 2. First successful flying machine, 1908 3. Big Ben farm tractor, 1918 4. Atmosphere-produced electricity, 1920.
He tried to get engineering circles interested in his six-cylinder engine, but he was ahead of his time. In 1899, the National Engineering Laboratory replied: "You must have been kicked on the head by a mule when you were a small boy which left you laboring under the hallucination, or delusion, that ice can be frozen an a red hot stove, by thinking of driving a self-propelled vehicle over a public road 25 miles-per-hour. In our opinion, it's an idle dream of a feebleminded person."
Mr. Chenoweth went looking for a company to build a six-cylinder gasoline engine to his specifications. Henry Ford, he reported, was the only manufacturer "who had given any idea to a six-cylinder engine" but Ford wanted $2,700 each to build two engines on five-passenger chassis. The Texan wrote "that was more money than was in circulatlon, as far as I was concerned."
He located the Borbein Auto Co. of St. Louis, which would lease its shop to him, and the Western Motor Co. of Logansport, Ind., which agreed to build two of his six-cylinder engines at a cost of $735 each. He ended up with two l4-passenger "stagecoaches," as they were then called.
The line between Colorado City and Snyder was financed by W.A Jones of Snyder. Unfortunately. a community near Snyder, through which the noisy vehicles passed, approved a resolution that the Chenoweth buses could not run through the community and invited Mr. Chenoweth to "take his contraptions elsewhere." A line was tried between Big Spring and Lamesa. It, too, failed.
Mr. Jones was left with the buses. His daughter said one was turned into a chicken coop and one was traded for a piano, which, she reported, "I played for many years." Ben Chenoweth died broke in 1958. His descendants are still part of the Dallas community.
A.C. Greene is on author and historian who lives in Salado.
From the Dallas Morning News of 13 June 1999:
Bus·line entrepreneur's
plans never got on a roll
W. B. 'Ben' Chenoweth was a member of the pioneer Chenoweth family that settled in Dallas County in the early 1840s. He is credited with having estabIished (in 1907) the first intercity bus Iine in Texas, or maybe the United States.
The first bus line went from Colorado City to Snyder, but there were no roads to speak of. It didn't last very long, but W.B. Chenoweth was a true entrepreneur, so he didn't slow down just because his bus line stopped.
Mr. Chenoweth wrote a booklet, Foolin' With Gasoline, Electricity and Wind. It lists as his four greatest inventions: 1. The six-cylinder automobile, 1890 2. First successful flying machine, 1908 3. Big Ben farm tractor, 1918 4. Atmosphere-produced electricity, 1920.
He tried to get engineering circles interested in his six-cylinder engine, but he was ahead of his time. In 1899, the National Engineering Laboratory replied: "You must have been kicked on the head by a mule when you were a small boy which left you laboring under the hallucination, or delusion, that ice can be frozen an a red hot stove, by thinking of driving a self-propelled vehicle over a public road 25 miles-per-hour. In our opinion, it's an idle dream of a feebleminded person."
Mr. Chenoweth went looking for a company to build a six-cylinder gasoline engine to his specifications. Henry Ford, he reported, was the only manufacturer "who had given any idea to a six-cylinder engine" but Ford wanted $2,700 each to build two engines on five-passenger chassis. The Texan wrote "that was more money than was in circulatlon, as far as I was concerned."
He located the Borbein Auto Co. of St. Louis, which would lease its shop to him, and the Western Motor Co. of Logansport, Ind., which agreed to build two of his six-cylinder engines at a cost of $735 each. He ended up with two l4-passenger "stagecoaches," as they were then called.
The line between Colorado City and Snyder was financed by W.A Jones of Snyder. Unfortunately. a community near Snyder, through which the noisy vehicles passed, approved a resolution that the Chenoweth buses could not run through the community and invited Mr. Chenoweth to "take his contraptions elsewhere." A line was tried between Big Spring and Lamesa. It, too, failed.
Mr. Jones was left with the buses. His daughter said one was turned into a chicken coop and one was traded for a piano, which, she reported, "I played for many years." Ben Chenoweth died broke in 1958. His descendants are still part of the Dallas community.
A.C. Greene is on author and historian who lives in Salado.
Bus·line entrepreneur's
plans never got on a roll
W. B. 'Ben' Chenoweth was a member of the pioneer Chenoweth family that settled in Dallas County in the early 1840s. He is credited with having estabIished (in 1907) the first intercity bus Iine in Texas, or maybe the United States.
The first bus line went from Colorado City to Snyder, but there were no roads to speak of. It didn't last very long, but W.B. Chenoweth was a true entrepreneur, so he didn't slow down just because his bus line stopped.
Mr. Chenoweth wrote a booklet, Foolin' With Gasoline, Electricity and Wind. It lists as his four greatest inventions: 1. The six-cylinder automobile, 1890 2. First successful flying machine, 1908 3. Big Ben farm tractor, 1918 4. Atmosphere-produced electricity, 1920.
He tried to get engineering circles interested in his six-cylinder engine, but he was ahead of his time. In 1899, the National Engineering Laboratory replied: "You must have been kicked on the head by a mule when you were a small boy which left you laboring under the hallucination, or delusion, that ice can be frozen an a red hot stove, by thinking of driving a self-propelled vehicle over a public road 25 miles-per-hour. In our opinion, it's an idle dream of a feebleminded person."
Mr. Chenoweth went looking for a company to build a six-cylinder gasoline engine to his specifications. Henry Ford, he reported, was the only manufacturer "who had given any idea to a six-cylinder engine" but Ford wanted $2,700 each to build two engines on five-passenger chassis. The Texan wrote "that was more money than was in circulatlon, as far as I was concerned."
He located the Borbein Auto Co. of St. Louis, which would lease its shop to him, and the Western Motor Co. of Logansport, Ind., which agreed to build two of his six-cylinder engines at a cost of $735 each. He ended up with two l4-passenger "stagecoaches," as they were then called.
The line between Colorado City and Snyder was financed by W.A Jones of Snyder. Unfortunately. a community near Snyder, through which the noisy vehicles passed, approved a resolution that the Chenoweth buses could not run through the community and invited Mr. Chenoweth to "take his contraptions elsewhere." A line was tried between Big Spring and Lamesa. It, too, failed.
Mr. Jones was left with the buses. His daughter said one was turned into a chicken coop and one was traded for a piano, which, she reported, "I played for many years." Ben Chenoweth died broke in 1958. His descendants are still part of the Dallas community.
A.C. Greene is on author and historian who lives in Salado.
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