1909 E-M-F Pathfinder automobile on muddy road

View of four men in 1909 E-M-F Pathfinder car on muddy road. Printed on back: "Roads such as these, encoutered by the Pathfinder car for the 1909 Glidden Tour, stimulated the descriptive powers of the cheerful voyagers. They roared out of Detroit at breakneck speeds of 40 and 45 miles an hour over rutted but comparativley solid roads. These were soon left behind, and what followed can best be told in the words of their own reports: Michigan, 'soft, shifting sand'; Wisconsin, 'sticky clay and quicksand'; Minnesota, 'gluey gumbo'; Iowa, 'mushawa'; Nebraska and Kansas, just plain 'mud.' Laying the route for the tour took the team to Denver and back to Kansas City, in 38 days at an average of 8.8 miles per gallon. The pathfinder car itself had been introduced to the public in the summer of 1908 as 'the classiest thing on wheels at its price.' It was a collaboration of three men, B.F. Everett, William E. Metzger and W.E. Flanders, whose initials gave the car its name -- the E-M-F. In 1909 control passed to another manufacturer, which continued production of the E-M-F until mid-1912. 1909 E-M-F Pathfinder car for the 1909 Glidden Tour. Later that year control of the firm passed on to the Studebaker Company. This picture was taken in the mid-west where "gumbo" came up to the hub caps. It took this car 38 days to lay the route from Detroit to Denver and back to Kansas City, with an average of 8.8 miles per gallon. More details in Automobile Facts, December, 1954." Handwritten on back: "E-M-F, 1909."