Your first road atlas

[bandit957]

I think the first road atlas I remember was an old Rand McNally that belonged to my grandfather. I think it was the 1967 edition. It had a dark green vinyl cover.

It disappeared in the mid-'90s. I think he threw it out, but maybe we'll be lucky and find this same copy on Ebay someday. (It had crayon scribbles on the first page.)

[Laura]

1984 Gousha North America Road Atlas. Received as a gift from my Uncle that Christmas (the atlas catapulted my interest in roads)!. I lost the original (stupidly gave it away), but found the same copy on Ebay a few years ago and bought it again.

The exact same copy??? How did you manage to find the exact same copy?

You never know. On my recent road trip, in Spring Valley, MN, my family was talking to a man (in his 60's?) at breakfast who was telling us how excited he was that he found his first car fully restored at a car show. He was talking to the current owner and said how he (and then his sister) used to own a car just like that but they sold it to a guy named Bob Schmob 30-40 years ago, and the current owner said "I bought this car from Bob Schmob!"

My first road atlas was a Rand McNally 1994. However, I was much more into the old 1980's ADC atlas we had for Harford, Baltimore City and County, and Anne Arundel Counties in Maryland, which are the atlases I used to teach myself how to read at age 3 in 1990.

[roadman]

My first road atlas was a 1950 Rand McNally I discovered in my parent's credenza at the age of four.  Although horribly outdated by then (1965), I was thoroughly fascinated by it.  Recently found a similar copy (but in much better shape than I remember the old one being) on eBay.

IIRC, that was the only road atlas my parents ever bought.  They tended to rely more on gas station road maps when they traveled (these were the days when oil companies gave away maps for free).  Unfortunately, the big box of road maps we had was thrown out when we sold my parent's house in 1990 .

Despite frequently traveling up and down the East Coast from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, my parents didn't join AAA until about 1976 - this was after a breakdown in which my sister (an AAA member) was traveling with us.  I recall that, in preparing for one trip shortly thereafter, my parents got maps and a TripTik.  Comparing the TripTik routing against the road maps. my father and I proceeded to plot a better route than AAA recommended.

[Mapmikey]

Brand new 1977 Rand McN for my 8th birthday.

I still remembering tracing the routings of all the US routes trying to figure out where they went...

Mapmikey

[1995hoo]

....

IIRC, that was the only road atlas my parents ever bought.  They tended to rely more on gas station road maps when they traveled (these were the days when oil companies gave away maps for free).  Unfortunately, the big box of road maps we had was thrown out when we sold my parent's house in 1990 .

Despite frequently traveling up and down the East Coast from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, my parents didn't join AAA until about 1976 - this was after a breakdown in which my sister (an AAA member) was traveling with us.  I recall that, in preparing for one trip shortly thereafter, my parents got maps and a TripTik.  Comparing the TripTik routing against the road maps. my father and I proceeded to plot a better route than AAA recommended.

I feel your pain. I had a box of old maps in the bottom of my bedroom closet when I was in high school, one of which showed the I-270 Spur in Maryland as I-470 and another that showed the proposed routings of I-95 through the District of Columbia and the George Washington Parkway outside the Capital Beltway. Went off to college and never saw the maps again; I suspect my mother threw them out when cleaning up my old room to turn it into a home office.

My mom used to get a Triptik when we were going on vacation until my father told her to quit it. He didn't like them because they don't give you the bigger picture of an area and don't help a lot with finding an alternate route if there's traffic or if you're simply bored with the Interstate.

Commenting on this reminds me of the last time I was in New York with my parents, four years ago for a family reunion. I hitched a ride up with them and took the Acela back home. While there, we went to Peter Luger's for dinner and my father decided to head back to the hotel in Sheepshead Bay through the streets rather than on the highway.....but, even though he grew up in Flatbush, he was blanking on the route. I wound up navigating with their Hagstrom atlas (they do not have a sat-nav and none of us had a smartphone yet). Tell you what, the Hagstrom maps are fun to look at when you're not in the car, but they're far from ideal for navigating on the fly.

[Alex]

1984 Gousha North America Road Atlas. Received as a gift from my Uncle that Christmas (the atlas catapulted my interest in roads)!. I lost the original (stupidly gave it away), but found the same copy on Ebay a few years ago and bought it again.

The exact same copy??? How did you manage to find the exact same copy?

Meh you got me. It had the same cover that the original had and I almost immediately recognized it when I saw it on Ebay. My original was so used the first 10 or so pages were gone, including the cover.

That happened to my 1985 Rmcn too, which I still have.

[1995hoo]

1984 Gousha North America Road Atlas. Received as a gift from my Uncle that Christmas (the atlas catapulted my interest in roads)!. I lost the original (stupidly gave it away), but found the same copy on Ebay a few years ago and bought it again.

The exact same copy??? How did you manage to find the exact same copy?

Meh you got me. It had the same cover that the original had and I almost immediately recognized it when I saw it on Ebay. My original was so used the first 10 or so pages were gone, including the cover.

That happened to my 1985 Rmcn too, which I still have.

Heh. Your comment makes me think of a Mad Magazine cartoon in which the woman accuses her husband of taking someone else's umbrella at a restaurant. He says, "No, this is mine. I recognize its weight in my hand and the feel and shape of the handle. [Next panel:] Plus, this one is in a lot better shape."

[Duke87]

A Hagstrom map of Fairfield County, CT. Was old, my parents bought a new one. I got to keep the old one. I don't still have it, it was scribbled all over and fell apart from being tossed around by an excited child years ago.

Indeed, while I still do have most of the maps I collected in my youth, none of them are in any sort of decent condition since every last one of them was drawn all over with me adding fictitious new roads and stuff.

[formulanone]

A Delorme's Florida Gazetteer (1989 edition) back in 1995. My first nationwide map was a 1996 Rand McNally Road Atlas, bought a few months later.

When I was younger, I collected a few leftover Dolph's Maps of Florida, counties, and some cities, but I think they're all long gone now.

[bugo]

Has anybody NEVER owned a road atlas? It's possible some of the newer generation grew up with online mapping and didn't use paper maps at all.

[Roadrunner75]

Has anybody NEVER owned a road atlas? It's possible some of the newer generation grew up with online mapping and didn't use paper maps at all.

It won't happen in my house.  I've made sure my 5 year old has his own atlas (Rand McNally kid's version) in the car, and he looks at it a lot, "navigating" our trips.  The regular version is also an arm's length away in the back seat (or from the toilet at home, for that matter), for when he's ready to step it up.  He also knows where Daddy keeps the map collection, passing on the map drawer tradition.  He's gonna know where he's going.

[bandit957]

Not sure why they have a children's version. I guess they remove all the dirty parts or something.

In my day, all we had was the grownup version, and that was good enough.

[bandit957]

Also, I know I have the 1987 AAA Road Atlas, and I think the notes at the beginning encourage folks to use the road atlas to teach their kids the 50 states.

[Roadrunner75]

Not sure why they have a children's version. I guess they remove all the dirty parts or something.

In my day, all we had was the grownup version, and that was good enough.

It's a little smaller and easier for him to hold, and I think it has stuff for him to color, etc. opposite each state map.  The grownup version is always at his disposal as well. 

[Zeffy]

Has anybody NEVER owned a road atlas? It's possible some of the newer generation grew up with online mapping and didn't use paper maps at all.

Me.    I want one so fucking badly though. I was too concentrated on video games and whatnot for Christmas to ask for that too, and with the advent of Google Maps I kinda was just like...meh.

[Roadrunner75]

Has anybody NEVER owned a road atlas? It's possible some of the newer generation grew up with online mapping and didn't use paper maps at all.

Me.    I want one so fucking badly though. I was too concentrated on video games and whatnot for Christmas to ask for that too, and with the advent of Google Maps I kinda was just like...meh.

No Maps!?  Seize him! 
You, sir, need at the very least a Rand McNally or possibly two for home (bathroom reading) and on the road.  Supplement this with county maps for your area, and some state maps too (free PA state map highly recommended, not sure if NJ still gives them out).  Maybe for Christmas the forum will write to Santa to visit Zeffy with an atlas.

[Zeffy]

No Maps!?  Seize him! 
You, sir, need at the very least a Rand McNally or possibly two for home (bathroom reading) and on the road.  Supplement this with county maps for your area, and some state maps too (free PA state map highly recommended, not sure if NJ still gives them out).  Maybe for Christmas the forum will write to Santa to visit Zeffy with an atlas.

Well, for NJ maps, I do have one I snagged from visitnj.org. I am building more of a map collection though, but I can't seem to find any for New York State (already have the City), among others. Here's what the map from visitnj.org looks like:


Note: The map shows the whole state of New Jersey, I just zoomed in on Trenton

Unfortunately, there's no way in hell I would be able to print that without losing 99% of the ink in my printer.

[1995hoo]

Has anybody NEVER owned a road atlas? It's possible some of the newer generation grew up with online mapping and didn't use paper maps at all.

Me.    I want one so fucking badly though. I was too concentrated on video games and whatnot for Christmas to ask for that too, and with the advent of Google Maps I kinda was just like...meh.

No offense, but if you want one, why don't you go to a bookstore or somewhere and buy one? I was at Barnes & Noble a month or so ago and they had a number of road atlases available in the section where the travel books (Moon Handbooks, Fodor's, etc.) are shelved.

I personally prefer the spiral-bound version even though having the pages broken at the middle is mildly annoying. A spiral-bound version will lie flat better and is easier to open to "half-size" by flipping the cover and pages around without having to crack the spine severely.

Looking at Zeffy's post with the map of Trenton prompts me to think of something: Does anyone know why some atlases–AAA ones always did this–have the roads "narrow," for lack of a better term, when they pass through a city? An example would be the section of the New Jersey Turnpike seen in green on the map Zeffy posted. On a AAA map, that green road would narrow down to a much tighter spacing as it passes through the yellow area and then widen back out on the other end. I might have thought the idea would be that narrower lines allow for fitting more detail into an urban area except that the AAA maps I grew up with didn't usually have that much more detail in said areas (instead, they often had LESS detail and you referred to an inset if you wanted more).

I hope Kurumi doesn't mind my borrowing this image from his site. Notice the segments of H-1 and H-201 passing through the yellow area:



(The map Zeffy posted reminds me a lot of a AAA map. I still have a bit of a soft spot for those because they're the most familiar ones to me, even though the atlas I use to highlight places I've been is a Rand McNally.)

[vdeane]

New York doesn't have an official official state map, but the MapWorks state map is the unofficial official state map, which is just fine, because MapWorks is awesome.  In fact, their maps are so awesome that the Eastern NY atlas American Maps published (which is now out of print) using their data is worth over $400 on Amazon.

Regarding the kids atlas, I think its meant more as a roadtrip distraction than anything else, hence the coloring pages etc.

IMO Rand McNally is overrated.  Judging by the threads here, they might just have as many errors as Google.

[Brandon]

Not sure why they have a children's version. I guess they remove all the dirty parts or something.

In my day, all we had was the grownup version, and that was good enough.

They remove Blueball, Intercourse, Climax, and Hell from the map, and make Florida look like less of a limp penis.

[Roadrunner75]

Regarding the kids atlas, I think its meant more as a roadtrip distraction than anything else, hence the coloring pages etc.
IMO Rand McNally is overrated.  Judging by the threads here, they might just have as many errors as Google.

Rand McNally is indeed overrated, and has lots of errors.  It just happens to be sold everywhere, and it's cheap (at Walmart and Target at least), so I can walk out with a bunch and put them anywhere a map might be needed.  Agreed also that the kid version is a roadtrip distraction, and a good one too.  Whatever works on a roadtrip, and if he's looking at maps, all the better.

[Mapmikey]

Looking at Zeffy's post with the map of Trenton prompts me to think of something: Does anyone know why some atlases–AAA ones always did this–have the roads "narrow," for lack of a better term, when they pass through a city?

This concept goes back a ways... 1935 VDOT County maps do this with the incorporated cities...(some of the 1932 county maps do as well but not all of them)

I cannot come up with a non-road geek reason to do this.  The road geek benefit with the VDOT maps is that it makes it easier to see if primary routes made small turns with the city limits.

Mapmikey

[Alex]

Looking at Zeffy's post with the map of Trenton prompts me to think of something: Does anyone know why some atlases–AAA ones always did this–have the roads "narrow," for lack of a better term, when they pass through a city? An example would be the section of the New Jersey Turnpike seen in green on the map Zeffy posted. On a AAA map, that green road would narrow down to a much tighter spacing as it passes through the yellow area and then widen back out on the other end. I might have thought the idea would be that narrower lines allow for fitting more detail into an urban area except that the AAA maps I grew up with didn't usually have that much more detail in said areas (instead, they often had LESS detail and you referred to an inset if you wanted more).

Gousha cartography regularly did this. It was to improve legibility in built up areas.



Earlier additions included some ICBoxes, but later atlases, especially those in the 80's, omitted those.

[theline]

Not sure why they have a children's version. I guess they remove all the dirty parts or something.

In my day, all we had was the grownup version, and that was good enough.

They remove Blueball, Intercourse, Climax, and Hell from the map, and make Florida look like less of a limp penis.

So what makes them think that Florida as an erect penis is more kid-friendly? 

[Laura]

Not sure why they have a children's version. I guess they remove all the dirty parts or something.

In my day, all we had was the grownup version, and that was good enough.

They remove Blueball, Intercourse, Climax, and Hell from the map, and make Florida look like less of a limp penis.

So what makes them think that Florida as an erect penis is more kid-friendly? 

Haha, well it is Florida...but semi-seriously, they just make it a little less flaccid

I had a Rand McNally kids atlas, and it was seriously my favorite book. I didn't mention it because it wasn't my first atlas, but a present In addition to maps (which were less detailed - I guess to make them easier to read), they had "state facts" for each state and DC (state motto, state flower, etc.) as well as activities (like coloring, connect the dots, etc.). I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere.


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