"The motor power is steam, with a pressure of 160 pounds indicating about twelve horsepower, and can go on good roads at 40 miles per hour speed," reported the July 3 edition of The Calgary Albertan. The problem was the roads of the day. They were rutted and rock strewn, etched into the wilderness and across the backbone of a rugged, hopeful land.

Often barely navigable by horse and buggy, they proved to be devastating for these newfangled mechanical contraptions that bounced along atop skinny little wagon-like tires. Even so, a mobility revolution was about to be dragged kicking and screaming onto the frontier.

The early motor vehicles, like the 1902 Holsman, were more carriage than car, with wagon wheels, single-cylinder engines and tiller steering. Although they were pioneered by free-thinking inventors, automobiles evolved out of carriage technology and the early assembly-line approach to manufacturing.

By 1905, when the Province of Alberta was constituted, the Canadian automobile industry was sufficiently established to build reliable cars more cheaply than they could be made as one-offs by enterprising entrepreneurs.

The first automobile to arrive in Edmonton was a 1903 Ford Model A, which Joseph Henry Morris purchased in Winnipeg and brought back with him on the train. Morris drove the "two cylinder autocar" around town on the evening of May 25th, 1904, creating, as the Edmonton Bulletin put it, "quite an excitement on Jasper Avenue, especially among the horses and small boys."

In his 2001 book Roads to Our Future, The History of the Alberta Motor Association, Robert William Sandford writes that the first cars were not taken seriously and most people considered driving as little more than sport, akin to "tennis, golf, dancing, dining and wild riding across the hills." That soon began to change.

One of the first matters to be considered by Alberta's newly formed legislature was cars, how to control them and turn them into a source of revenue. Alberta's Automobile Act, passed in 1906, required vehicle permits and operator licences which cost $3, a hefty sum for the day.

Though they were given numbers, drivers were not given plates; those they had to create for themselves. The Act also set speed limits of 10 miles per hour in towns and 20 mph in the country (except when passing horse-drawn vehicles, when the speed limit was 10 mph). Motorists were expected to take all reasonable precautions and could be held liable for damages caused by spooked horses.

That year, the first long-distance auto trip was made over the entire rugged Edmonton-Calgary Trail in a 29-horsepower Ford. The Edmonton Bulletin reported in its March 2, 1906 edition, "The party left Edmonton on Saturday morning at ten and arrived in Calgary at seven on Sunday evening, staying in Red Deer over Saturday night. From Lacombe to Red Deer, 20 miles, the car made the trip in 34 minutes. During the trip, 20 gallons of gasoline were used and one gallon of lubricating oil."

As the horseless carriage began to find early adopters, new vehicle registrations in the province increased, slowly at first and then very rapidly, rising from 41 in 1906 to more than 1,000 in 1911 and 29,000 in 1918. These early vehicles included Russell-Knight, Winton, Hupmobile, McLaughlin, Overland, Curved Dash Oldsmobiles and, beginning in 1908, the Ford Model T.

Over the next 19 years, Henry Ford sold more than 15 million of his "Tin Lizzies," and in Alberta they were the most dominant car on the road by 1912. The cost of a Model T in Edmonton was $1,025 in 1911, $590 in 1915 and $545 in 1917, thanks to Henry Ford's ever-more efficient production line.

The Model T was the most significant because it brought affordable mobility into the reach of citizens. Henry Ford had a real instinct for transportation for the masses and, in the case of Fordson tractors, working tools for the masses. In the 1910s, the Drumheller coal mines were said to depend on the three M's: men, mules and Model T's.

Even so, the upscale market continued to grow and prosper, and in the ‘Roaring ‘20s,' manufacturers like Packard, Pierce-Arrow and Peerless were driving sales with innovation, sophistication and opulence on wheels. Other favoured nameplates of the day included names that still dominate: Chevrolet, Buick, Dodge, Chrysler, Cadillac and Pontiac.

In 1922, the Alberta government introduced something else that is still with us: gasoline tax. Knowing a cash cow when it saw one, the province instituted a two cent a gallon levy. That year, Alberta drivers paid $715,000 into the provincial treasury for the privilege of driving.

More than 100 years after Billy Cochrane first drove his steamer Locomobile, the car survives and is held at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. It's a remnant of the pioneer days of motoring in Alberta, a precious snapshot of the beginnings of a mobility revolution that has stretched over more than a century and shapes our lives to this day.

Echoes of the road travelled can still be found at places like the Reynolds-Alberta Museum, with its extensive collection of vintage vehicles, aircraft, tractors and industrial machines, stretching the breadth of the 20th century. The museum is on Highway 13 on the outskirts of Wetaskiwin.

Next week: The Journey through the Great Depression and beyond.