During his successful campaign for the State Senate in 1910, Roosevelt had toured the district in a car, still not common in the area, the first candidate to do so. He became more interested in the possibilities of automobile touring ten years later, when paralysis resulting from polio cost him the effective use of his legs, frequently taking his friends on such trips around the region. During them, he began pondering the idea of a north–south parkway through the eastern Hudson Valley.