Garfield Wood

Garfield ‘Gar’ Arthur Wood (December 4, 1880 – June 19, 1971) was an American inventor, entrepreneur, motorboat builder and racer who held the world water speed record on several occasions. He was the first man to travel over 100 miles per hour on water.

Gar Wood was born 4 December 1880 in Mapleton, Iowa into a family of 13 children. His father was a ferryboat operator on Lake Osakis, Minnesota, and Gar worked on boats from an early age. In 1911 at 31, he invented a hydraulic lift for unloading coal from rail trucks.

He established the Wood Hoist Co. in Detroit, Michigan and soon became a successful businessman. Later he changed the company name to Garwood Industries, which built racing boats, but also capitalized on experience with coal unloaders to successfully produce and market GarWood truck, bus and coach bodies. He had a home in Algonac, Michigan, the same city as Christopher Smith, founder of Chris-Craft boats.

In 1916, Wood purchased a motorboat for racing called Miss Detroit. Wood set a new world record speed for a boat of 74.870 miles per hour (120.492 km/h) in 1920 on the Detroit River, using a new boat called Miss America. In the following twelve years, Wood built nine more Miss Americas and broke the record five times, raising it to 124.860 miles per hour (200.943 km/h) in 1932 on the St. Clair River.

In 1921, Wood raced one of his boats against the Havana Special train, 1,250 miles (2,010 km) up the Atlantic coast from Miami to New York City. Wood made the trip in 47 hours and 23 minutes and beat the train by 12 minutes. In 1925, he raced the Twentieth Century Limited train up the Hudson River between Albany and New York and won by 22 minutes.

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