Dorothy Hosmer: Pioneer women

There are so many stories about pioneer women that we know yet, those women that sowed the seeds of equality for new generations. Fortunately, there are many ways to discover these hidden gems by navigating the internet. 

One of the things that I more enjoy is riding a bike; since I was a little girl, with my father and brother, until my adulthood, using a bike as transportation to commute to work or ride across the city. 

Another thing that I enjoy is traveling alone, this is one of de most rewarding experiences I have lived, and I widely recommend it. But even in 2022 is weird to see a woman traveling alone.

So can you imagine a girl traveling alone on a bike in Europe in 1936? Her name is Dorothy Hosmer. I knew about her in a National Geographic magazine, and immediately I got excited. I wanted to learn more about her.

Dorothy was born in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. In 1936 she traveled to Europe, intending to spend a few months and then continue to India and the Far East. But she quickly changed her mind.

"Eight days of the lazy life on board ship did more than putting an ocean between the boat and New York. It instilled in me the conviction that traveling was something you had to take as it came along if you wanted to get anything out of it. Hence on the evening before landing, I threw my itinerary to the winds and decided to cycle from Geneva to Trieste.

That spur-of-the-moment decision led me from one adventure to another in my zig-zag route across the face of Europe. Fortunately, it was a process of gradual education, so that by the time I reached the Balkans and understood the attitude toward girls without chaperones, I had become better able to cope with the inevitable misunderstandings."

In 1937, she traveled to Kraków, Poland, and a few weeks later, she got a bike and continued her travels south-eastwards to Zakopane on the border with Czechoslovakia. Her ultimate goal was the Black Sea. Then by bicycle, train, river transport, horse, and bike to the Romanian border. By late October 1937, she reached Bucharest and, with the fast-approaching Winter, resolved to delay the rest of her cycle tour till the Spring of 1938.

In 1937, Dorothy wrote an unsolicited letter to National Geographic asking if they would be interested in publishing her travel writing and photographs. They accepted, though there was some editorial resistance to seeing a young woman riding a bike touring Europe alone.

National Geographic published 4 of her articles: 'An American girl cycles across Rumania' (November 1938), 'Pedaling Through Poland' (June 1939), 'Caviar Fishermen of Romania, from Valcov, "Little Venice" of the Danube Delta, bearded Russian exiles go down to the sea' (March 1940), and 'Rhodes & Italy's Aegean Islands' (April 1941).

In her photos, you can appreciate her interest in the daily activities of people living in the places she visited. That's beautiful.

 In 2011, family members donated more than 6,000 of Hosmer's photos and negatives to the Sweeney Art Gallery at USC; also, National Geographic included her pictures in the "Women Photographers Project" however, there is not much information about her work.

Anyway, I'm glad to have known her story. I would love to see all the pictures she took in her travels and read her chronicles.