Old Maps on the internet

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Was alerted to this via the Roadmap Collectors Assoc. facebook page from someone's blog about "Awful Library Books."



Oversized version of map: http://awfullibrarybooks.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/highwaymap.jpg

[Zmapper]

Cool! What year was that map from? It is pre-Interstate system, obviously.

[The High Plains Traveler]

What ever happened to that superhighway from Miami to Key West that this map shows as "In operation or under construction"?

[huskeroadgeek]

Cool! What year was that map from? It is pre-Interstate system, obviously.

Based on the fact that the Turner Turnpike from Oklahoma City to Tulsa is shown as built but the Will Rogers Turnpike is not(and neither is the Kansas Turnpike) the date is sometime between 1953 and 1956. Most of these routes proposed I believe were planned as toll roads, although most of them were built as free roads when the interstate system came into being.

[vtk]

The positional accuracy is lacking in that map.  Knoxville is shown far northeast of where it should be; the WV Turnpike and what I assume became I-79 north of there are shown too far west.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Cool! What year was that map from? It is pre-Interstate system, obviously.

The blog post that map came from said 1954.

[kkt]

Hmm.  Pretty sure that by 1954 most of US-99 was constructed as a 4-lane expressway at least in California.  And US-40 at least from San Francisco to Sacramento. Maybe this mapmaker just never went west of the Rockies.

[agentsteel53]

Hmm.  Pretty sure that by 1954 most of US-99 was constructed as a 4-lane expressway at least in California.  And US-40 at least from San Francisco to Sacramento. Maybe this mapmaker just never went west of the Rockies.

only very few segments of US-99 and US-40 were limited-access by 1954.  but you are right, the quantity is more than zero. 

LA should have a lot of activity on that map, and it shows none.  indeed, maybe the author fell off the Denver-Boulder Turnpike?

[formulanone]

Being that it's Scholastic Magazine, it's probably a false map that hints at reality, but used as some sort sort of quiz or problem-solving puzzle. It doesn't really seem to be anything official, although it does seem to trace out a few principal interstate routes.