Suited to a T | Timeless New England
Though the novelty of “horseless carriages” had largely worn off by 1914, the sight of Virgil White motoring through Newport, New Hampshire, that February caught the attention of the media. Under a published photo of White’s unusual conveyance, parked on a snowy roadway and filled with bundled-up passengers, was this wry description: “It appears to […]
Among the early autos transformed with the Snowmobile Company’s conversion kits was this 1926 Ford Model T, used by members of the Second Rawson-MacMillan Subarctic Expedition in Labrador, Canada.
Photo Credit : courtesy of the Peary-Macmillan arctic Museum, Bowdoin College
Photo Credit : courtesy of the Peary-Macmillan arctic Museum, Bowdoin College
Though the novelty of “horseless carriages” had largely worn off by 1914, the sight of Virgil White motoring through Newport, New Hampshire, that February caught the attention of the media. Under a published photo of White’s unusual conveyance, parked on a snowy roadway and filled with bundled-up passengers, was this wry description: “It appears to be of Ford descent, with a tractor and a pair of skis among its ancestors. Breeders, take notice.”
At a time when horse-drawn sleighs were still the top winter transport, White had found a way to make autos competitive. An Ossipee Ford dealer whose knack for tinkering belied his eighth-grade education, he swapped out the wheels on Ford’s ubiquitous Model T in favor of five-foot skis in front and caterpillar-style tracks in the back. He patented his design in 1917 as—what else?—the “Snowmobile.”
First marketed in 1922, the Snowmobile sold as a conversion kit for about $400 or as a complete vehicle for $750—which was a bit steep considering that Model T’s themselves cost less than $300. But this “Ford on snowshoes,” supposedly able to cruise through 30 inches of fresh snow at 18 mph, found early adopters among folks whose jobs regularly took them out into the worst weather: postal carriers, undertakers, firefighters, country doctors, and so on.
By the mid-1920s the company that White cofounded was making between 2,500 and 3,300 units annually at its West Ossipee plant. A Snowmobile led the 1926 funeral procession for Calvin Coolidge’s father in Vermont; another went to subarctic Canada with explorer Donald MacMillan in 1927.
All too soon, the Snowmobile Company’s fortunes would be buried by the rise of snowplows, with the West Ossipee plant closing in 1929. But Virgil White’s creations survive to this day, as seen when collectors give them a little exercise at the Model T Ford Snowmobile Club’s annual meet, usually held in New England. There, the vintage machines still sputter and clank across the winter landscape, as head-turning now as they were a century ago. —Jenn Johnson
