Despite the Internet, nothing beats a map

Brushing aside record gas prices, many millions of Americans will be hitting the highways over the coming months.

		Internet Map Resources Driving directions www.mapquest.com www.aaamaps.com www.randmcnally.com maps.google.com maps.yahoo.com www.mapblast.com. www.mapsonus.com www.freetrip.com www.multimap.com Commercial map sellers www.maplink.com www.omnimap.com Historic Maps www.roadmaps.org www.mapsofpa.com/ roadmaps.htm

Over the last century, the roadways built to support vehicular travel have altered the landscape, and continue to do so, even as questions of global warming cast clouds over the future of transportation. But there's no doubt about it, roads in this country came a long way in the 20th century.

In 1900 railroad networks crisscrossed the land, but there was virtually no system of inter-city roads. A decade earlier, bicyclists became the first significant group to advocate for better land routes and maps between cities, but automobile owners quickly came to dominate the discussion.

In 1908, Henry Ford launched the Model T, and by 1912 more than a million Tin Lizzie owners were looking for some place to drive. Map makers across the country responded to that need.

When wagon routes between cities began to be paved, they were not named or numbered.

Driving directions were transmitted by instructions rather than a map. Adventurous long-distance motorists traveled with Automobile Blue Books, which were essentially a detailed list of directions that literally described every bend and bump in the road.

The country's first car road map is generally credited to the Chicago Times-Herald newspaper, which printed a route map in 1895 for a race it sponsored from Chicago to Waukegan, Ill.

The American Automobile Association, founded in 1902, printed its first map, a hand-drawn street plan of Staten Island, N.Y. that same year.

In 1911, AAA published its "Trail to Sunset," a booklet of consecutive map strips detailing a driving route from New York to Jacksonville. This was the forerunner of its ubiquitous TripTik, the highlighted, flip book map folders which provided hundreds of millions of members over the decades with detailed directions.

That same year, the Pennsylvania legislature passed the Sproul Road Act, which became an impetus for developing route systems in the Commonwealth.

The following year, AAA issued its first transcontinental map in sheet map form, which sold for 25 cents. Then commercial publishers quickly caught on to the rage for road maps.

Rand McNally began printing auto guides as early as 1912, and its first flat road maps began to appear shortly afterward. In 1917, it introduced its auto trail guides series, booklets of detailed driving directions accompanied by fold out maps.

Then auto and oil companies and tire manufacturers quickly recognized that colorful, ad-decked road maps could be great promotional items. Gulf Oil issued its first free road map in 1914.

Over coming decades, these companies competed fiercely to create the most elaborate and colorful maps. Their cover art chronicled 70 years of American geographic expansion and cultural evolution. By the time Exxon issued the last free map in the mid-1980s, oil companies had given away more than 5 billion of them. In recent decades, these old road maps have become coveted collectibles.

At any rate, during World War I a number of named long-distance routes such as the Lincoln Highway, Dixie Highway and Old Spanish Trail were developed and marked with color-coded poles to provide motorists with on-site directions.

Gradually, these state routes began to merge into rudimentary highway systems, and maps began to be published by various states to help drivers navigate. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation issued its first road map in 1925.

In 1926, the first federal road route marking system was established, and the business of mapping of the nation got rolling.

In 1932, AAA trademarked its TripTik maps. Although the roadways they described evolved rapidly, these customized, detailed routing maps changed surprisingly little throughout the years.

The system of Interstate highways really started to blossom in 1956, when President Eisenhower signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. By the time the last traffic light was removed from Interstate 90 in Wallace, Idaho in 1991 -- which was generally regarded as the completion of the original concept -- $114 billion had been spent building the system.

The next route mapping revolution came in the mid-'90s, when MapQuest.com began offering free, detailed driving instructions over the Internet. Since then, other similar services have been launched, but MapQuest claims over half of the market.

In 2001, AAA introduced its own version of online mapping, and although many club members still prefer the old handmarked flip chart books, about 90 percent now use the computer versions. These include construction delay information and other options such as gas price updates and accommodations recommendations. They are free to anyone, not just AAA members.

More recent advancements permit people to download directions from several of these systems directly to their cell phones and PDAs, which makes it really handy for use en route, and dashboard Geographic Information Systems have been introduced.

All of the modern and remarkable electronic mapping systems notwithstanding, driving pros still like to keep a current copy of a printed map or atlas in their glove box. There's nothing quite like an old-fashioned map for sparking fascination and wanderlust.

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