Could you imagine going on a road trip in the 1930s to somewhere hundreds of miles away using only a paper road map to navigate? Although most maps show the way to a destination, some do much more than that. The map The American Road: 21,000,000 Passenger Cars by Clarence Peter Helck is a great example of this. This map isn’t a map of directions but is a map that highlights the evolution of automobiles and roads.
This map is an interesting piece because of all of the things shown off in it. The map consists of many different records and accomplishments. These consist of a white box with the written accomplishment, over a drawn-out representation of what the accomplishment was. For example, one of these boxes says “779,275 cars visited the 21 national parks in 1930. To Old Faithful in 1931 were driven Model T’s” which was pictured on the map right next to the famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park, Old Faithful. With this information, you may be wondering, how did all of these people navigate to these national parks. And to that, the answer would be road maps.
With road maps being the only way to navigate the country at the time, they were crucial to many Americans. Another landmark on the map consists of a white box next to a huge factory that said “Henry Ford provides 200 acres of parking space for 75,000 cars owned by his workers”. This huge accomplishment by Ford shows his invention of the assembly line at work. He was producing mass amounts of cars. With the major increase in the production of automobiles, this made maps that much more important.
Not only did maps become more important, but the roads and highway systems became much more important as well. In the article American Road Maps and Guides by Walter W. Ristow, Ristow emphasizes how the importance of roads was equivalent to the importance of maps. One of the automobile enthusiasts during the beginning of the automobile evolution said, “Road maps are not very helpful, as they are usually made for wheelmen. A road may be good for bicycles, as they need only a narrow strip, but an automobile must have wide wagon roads.” With this, they then went on to make organizations that campaigned for better roads and maps. At first, it started off small, with the road system increasing in small increments at a time, but it led to the whole system we know today. Additionally, the maps got even better so the navigation was easier for those using them.
All in all, both Ristow’s article and Helck’s map emphasize the role of roads and maps in shaping American identity. Helck’s map captures moments of national pride in automotive progress by showing off some of the achievements during that time, while Ristow highlights how maps created a new identity centered on traveling and exploration by showing the evolution of roads and highways.
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