The Red Flag Horseless Carriage Tour started in England in 1896, but an offshoot of that tour has come to Iowa. The original tour traveled from London to Brighton, England and, since Iowa has a New London and a Brighton that are only about 36 miles apart, car aficionados have participated in the tour in Iowa since 2011.

“The whole story is prior to 1896, if you had a light locomotive, which cars were called light locomotives then, the speed limit was four miles per hour and you were required to have a man with a red flag walk in front of it to warn people that a car was coming,” said Mark Hempen, Vice President of the Red Flag Tour. “Automotives were a brand-new thing; people didn’t know how to drive them, the brakes were bad, they were dangerous, people had been killed and the motors spooked the horses.”

Then, in 1896, the red flag law was repealed, and the speed limit was changed to 14 miles per hour.

“In order to celebrate that, depending on which story you hear, they either burned the red flag ceremoniously or they ripped up a red flag ceremoniously,” Hempen said. “In 1896 they stated a tour from London, England to Brighton, England to celebrate the emancipation of the red flag man. They do that tour to this day.”

This year’s Iowa tour included a stop at Hal Colliver’s property in West Chester, where he has amassed a huge collection of antique gas pumps and signs. Colliver has lived on his property for over 70 years and said he started collecting because “one sign just led to another.”

Over 40 old vehicles, many of them over 100 years old, rolled into Colliver’s place on Thursday, Sept. 23 after having lunch at the United Presbyterian Church in Washington and touring State Theatre, the oldest continually operating theatre in the world.

Hempen said that despite not owning an old car himself, he became involved in the Red Flag tour because he thought it was an opportunity to bring new people to Southeast Iowa.

“I was really excited about the opportunity of new people coming to our area and seeing what life is like here,” Hempen said. “While we might not always have the shiniest, flashiest brand-new things, Southeast Iowa does offer an awful lot of kindness and generosity and good food and unique things for people to see.”

Jaron Rosien, mayor of Washington, came out to visit the Red Flag tour drivers, welcoming them to the county.

Lee Oster and Evelyn Desmet drove down from Howard Lake, Minnesota, about a seven-and-a-half-hour drive in their 1926 Ford Coupe to participate in the tour. They said they enjoyed seeing Colliver’s unique collection of traveling memorabilia, as well as all the other parts of the tour.

“We really like the food — they feed us really well,” Oster said. “We enjoy seeing a lot of sights you’d never see anywhere else.”

As for Colliver, he said he was “very proud to have all these fine people here,” and wished all the Red Flag tourers safe travels.