Motorcyclist risked his life on the ‘Great Serum Ride’ of 1929
Nov 6, 2019, 8:51 AM | Updated: Nov 7, 2019, 8:38 am
It was 90 years ago this week, when the call went out from Ellensburg for serum that could treat an injured gold miner who had gangrene. One man in Seattle answered the call and jumped on his motorcycle, and now, a group of local bikers are gathering this weekend to commemorate the “Great Serum Ride” of November 8, 1929.
This all started when a gold miner named Frank Sagar was injured in a mine collapse, perhaps at the Swauk Mine (the records aren’t clear) near Liberty, Washington on November 4, 1929. Liberty is a ghost town of sorts off of Highway 97 south of Blewett Pass. It’s well worth a stop if you’re driving by and have time to take a walk or drive around.
A full 12 hours elapsed between Sagar’s injury and his arrival at Ellensburg General Hospital, which was at least 22 miles away (the exact location of the mine collapse is not known). The argonaut’s left leg was fractured, and as people often did in those days, Sagar developed a serious and often deadly infection known as “gas gangrene.” Take my word for it, and do not do an image search on this phrase.
By the morning Friday, November 8, Dr. William A. Taylor at the Ellensburg hospital knew that Sagar needed life-saving treatment with a particular serum—three tubes of “poly anaerobic anti-toxin,” to be specific. They didn’t have it in Ellensburg, but they did have it at Rubenstein’s Pharmacy in Seattle, more than 100 miles and one mountain pass away.
Rubenstein’s was in the Cobb Building, which is still standing at 4th and University across from Rainier Tower. In 1929, right below the pharmacy was the studio for KOMO Radio, the same studio KIRO Radio would occupy from the late 1930s to the late 1940s.
Pharmacy founder Louis Rubenstein died in 1924; his widow Gertrude ran it until her death in 1952, and it was then bequeathed to the University of Washington. Proceeds from the sale of the pharmacy support the largest endowed scholarship at the UW School of Pharmacy, according to spokesperson Claire Forster. The pharmacy at Hall Health, the UW student clinic on campus, is named in honor of Louis Rubenstein.
At its original location in First and Cherry, and then at its second home in the Joshua Green Building on 4th and Pike, Rubenstein’s was Seattle’s first, and perhaps only, all-night pharmacy in the first half of the 20th century. It was also was known for its motorcycle service – for pickup of paper prescriptions as well as delivery of actual medicine – which it boasted about in newspaper ads as early as 1912.
And it’s a good thing that Rubenstein’s had a motorcycle and experienced riders, because on November 8 1929, it was too stormy and too foggy to fly the desperately needed serum from 4th and University to the county seat of Kittitas County.
The Great Serum Ride
It was around 12:30 p.m. on that stormy Friday when a messenger in his mid 20s named Cliff Amsbury jumped on his 1928 Harley Davidson with sidecar, and hit the road for Ellensburg carrying the precious cargo of three tubes of serum. His exact route is not known, but there was not yet a floating bridge across Lake Washington, which meant Amsbury likely went south to Dearborn, then east on Dearborn to Rainier, and then south on Rainier all the way to Renton, or maybe south on Rainier to Empire Way (nowadays known as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way) and on to Renton. There was not yet Interstate 90, but there was the Sunset Highway, a precursor to what became U.S. Highway 10, and then I-90.
From Renton, the Sunset Highway would’ve been Amsbury’s likely route to Issaquah, and then up and over Snoqualmie Pass.
Tom Samuelsen is one of the founders of the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling. He found the story of the “Great Serum Ride” while searching newspaper archives, and helped organize a commemorative ride and cemetery dedication set for this weekend.
“Crossing the pass in those days was a really big deal,” Samuelsen, 72, said by phone earlier this week from his home in Seattle’s Montlake neighborhood. “[The pass] was closed during the winter, and it did actually close three and a half weeks later from snow.”
Clifford Amsbury’s riding skills, fortitude, and lightning-quick speed impress Tom Samuelsen.
“It was quite a journey and event, and to make it in that short a time was astounding,” Samuelsen said. “A young guy in the prime of his life, to blast over there to save a dying miner. It’s really, really neat.”
The Sunset Highway followed the same basic route as I-90, but it was a much cruder road 90 years ago; it was curvier, more narrow, and not even paved in some places. Before he left Seattle, Amsbury was given a sheriff’s badge as a sort of free pass to speed and for permission to travel on any closed roads, and law enforcement in Seattle phoned ahead to alert officials in the hinterlands that a rider on an important mission was coming through.
Less than three hours later, if anyone was standing outside around 3:15 pm near Third and Poplar in Ellensburg, they would’ve heard that distinctive two-cylinder Harley Davidson thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump sound as Amsbury zoomed into view and screeched to a halt in front of the hospital. It’s tempting to imagine that he ran up the steps and handed the serum, perhaps directly, to Dr. Taylor.
Regardless, Amsbury had made it to Ellensburg in two hours and 45 minutes, which is, as Tom Samuelsen said, astounding. Amsbury had likely driven between 50 and 70 miles per hour on the 100-plus mile ride, and his 1929 journey ended up taking only about 45 minutes longer than a modern freeway driver in 2019.
His mission complete, Amsbury didn’t hang around. He headed right back toward Seattle, after maybe gassing up in town. Though he still had the sheriff’s badge in hand, there’s no record of what kind of time Amsbury made on the return trip.
The gangrene patient, Frank Sagar, responded to the serum. But by the following Wednesday, his leg had to be amputated. He showed improvement after this procedure, but, unfortunately, 53-year old Frank Sagar took a turn for the worse.
Sagar died around 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 20, and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery just west of Ellensburg, not far from the roadway that Clifford Amsbury had sped past with serum in hand.
The serum had helped, but Sagar was dead. And sadly, the all-consuming tragedy of this story wasn’t over yet.
Tragedy with a belated happy ending
That’s part of what Tom Samuelsen finds so appealing.
“It’s just a classic thing with a man, with humans, risking their life to save another, and then the tragedy of Clifford Amsbury dying such a short time later,” Samuelsen said. “I mean, everybody was hoping [for a better outcome], you know.”
As Samuelsen said, heroic motorcycle messenger Clifford Amsbury did die just two years later of an infection, and he left behind his 21-year-old widow.
Fortunately, the death of Sagar and then of Amsbury is not the end of the story.
Tom Samuelsen and the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling have partnered with the Kittitas County Historical Museum and a group called the Vintage Motorcycle Enthusiasts to commemorate Cliff Amsbury and Frank Sagar.
Neither man appears to have living relatives that anyone could track down, but the team learned that Frank Sagar is buried in an unmarked grave at Holy Cross Cemetery. This Saturday, the group will dedicate a gorgeous new granite marker for Sagar, and will celebrate his and Amsbury’s life with a lunch and toast at Cornerstone Pizza. The front doors of the pizza place were salvaged from the old Ellensburg General Hospital when it was torn down several years ago.
“So we’ll be walking through the same doors that Amsbury used when he delivered the serum,” Samuelsen said.
Tom’s fellow motorcycle museum volunteer and old friend Jack Mackey is helping organize the events on Saturday. Mackey says the history of motorcycling in the Pacific Northwest is distinctive from other parts of the country, and that there are so many stories yet to be told, including how motorcycles first caught on around here.
“The most popular spectator sport in Seattle in the late 1800s into the early 1900s was bicycle racing, and enormous crowds of people would turn out for those,” Mackey said. “And basically, that’s how the motorcycle was introduced to Seattle, as a ‘pace bike’ for [bicycle] races in a velodrome down near where the Paramount Theatre is now.”
Mackey says anyone and everyone is welcome to take part in a commemorative motorcycle ride that will leave from the Black Dog Café in Snoqualmie this Saturday morning at 10 a.m.; riders and others will gather for breakfast beginning at 9 a.m.
Participating motorcyclists will travel as many sections of the old Sunset Highway as possible – avoiding I-90 wherever they can – and the plan is to get to Ellensburg in time for the dedication ceremony for the new Frank Sagar monument at the Holy Cross Cemetery at 1:15 p.m.
Tom Samuelsen says that key to this whole effort is Sadie Thayer, director of the Kittitas County Historical Museum. Thayer got involved when an Ellensburg resident came to her in search of materials to help Samuelsen with his research.
Thayer says the “Great Serum Ride” reminds her of the diphtheria serum origins of the Iditarod Sled Race in Alaska. She also admires what Tom and Jack and the other motorcycle people have accomplished, turning what could be a passive interest in history into a contact sport.
“I’m just thrilled [Frank Sagar’s] getting remembered, and getting his place in history,” Thayer said by phone from the museum last week. “And the flip side of the coin is Clifford himself doesn’t have a headstone over at Acacia Memorial Park in Seattle, and it’ll be the next thing to get him a headstone.”
The group is raising money to pay for the Sagar monument that will be dedicated this weekend, and for a monument in the works for Clifford Amsbury. They’re about halfway to their goal of $4,000, and are accepting tax-deductible donations via GoFundMe.
If they raise the money in time, they might dedicate a monument to Cliff Amsbury as early as next year at Acacia Memorial Park in Lake City. And, like the Iditarod, this might become an annual event, with some kind of gathering and perhaps a Seattle-to-Ellensburg ride.
And what about authenticity? Do Saturday’s riders want stormy weather for their cross-Cascade dash to better simulate what Clifford Amsbury faced 90 years ago?
“No!” said Jack Mackey. “It’ll be bad enough because it’s November 9.”
