Heather Cole — The True Story of The Woman Hobo: Separating Fact from Fiction in a 1908 Travelogue

Heather Cole

In 1908, a pair of newlyweds find themselves unemployed, ill and living in a vermin-infested flophouse in Chicago, where they had fled after the San Francisco earthquake. The young bride trades their last belongings for a green tandem bicycle and persuades her husband to ride 2,000 miles back to their hometown in sunny California. She keeps a journal about their trip and the people who help (or hinder) them along the way. In 1917, The Adventures of a Woman Hobo by Ethel Lynn was published by George H. Doran Company. It is an engaging, amusing and sometimes heart-wrenching memoir about the couple’s cross-country trip by tandem bicycle, horse-drawn wagon, and train boxcar. Evidence suggests that it is also largely fabricated. Join historian and writer Heather Cole as she shares both highlights from Ethel Lynn’s book and her own adventures uncovering the truth behind the fascinating story of “The Woman Hobo.”