Be honest, if we took away your iPhone, Google Maps or Garmin Nuvi and handed you a road map would you be able to navigate your way around the country, or find your way around town? Would that road trip to California still be as exciting?
Most of us know what a road map looks like, some may have had to use one years ago; but many of us grew up hearing that annoying voice from the GPS yelling at us saying Recalculating, Recalculating!
The first maps made for traveling by car was created towards the end of the 19th century. The maps were complete with guide books and information for sight-seeing and other places to see. These days the GPS is smart enough to do just that and more.
Recently we were having a conversation about road maps and I remember not only using but relying on paper maps on my daily route when I used to deliver parts for a local Ford dealership on Long Island. As a matter of fact, I used them for a few of the odd jobs I had that involved navigating through the city.
These days we suppose it is unheard of for a company to hand an employee a road map and tell them, “now go out there and do your job”.
With all that said we cannot help but reminisce about these old vintage maps, what they meant to us and to the traveling man before us.
They have a ton of history behind them and you can see for yourself just from a few of them that we added below:
If you want to start any sort of vintage automobile collection we highly recommend adding a few maps to that collection to make things interesting.
Map reading for most of us is a dead sport but we challenge you to grab a paper map one of these days and head out on a road trip, see where things take you.
We know we aren’t the only ones inspired to drive after this post, put the Garmin away and wing it with good old vintage paper.
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