A century ago, paper road maps were free at gas stations. The popularity of road maps grew with the automobile industry. Cars were invented in the late 1800s and in 1901, The Official Automobile Blue Book was first published with step-by-step written instructions for drivers to navigate from town to town and information on where to find gas or other services. However, cars were an expensive luxury item for only the wealthiest until Henry Ford introduced the affordable Model T in 1908. As more Americans bought cars, more miles of highway were paved. Promotional road maps, printed by oil companies and distributed free at gas stations, first appeared in the 1910s. Road maps often featured advertising for local or state businesses to offset costs of printing.
Rand McNally began to publish their road atlas, a book of highway maps, in 1924. For decades, drivers depended on printed maps and road atlases to find their way on streets and highways. By the 1970s, the distribution of free maps by oil companies began to decline because they were no longer considered an effective promotional strategy.
GPS navigation systems caused printed maps to become even more scarce. These electronic devices receive information from global navigation satellite system (GNSS) to calculate the position of a vehicle and provide drivers with step by step visual and audio directions. In the 1990s, GPS navigation systems began to be available for use in cars. By 2000, GPS navigation technology was adapted to cell phones. Today, digital GPS navigation is common through built-in or dashboard GPS navigation devices or smart phone apps such as Google Maps, Waze, or MapQuest.
Today, paper road maps and atlases are considered antiques by most modern students. However, teaching students map skills using highway maps is engaging and encourages the development of spatial thinking and problem-solving. Spatial thinking is the ability to imagine or visualize the positions of objects, their shapes, and their spatial relations to one another. It includes assessing the meaning of the shape, size, orientation, and location of roads and buildings. The landforms and patterns of urban and rural landscapes and the built and natural environment become meaningful. Students think critically about where and why instead of blindly following a digital voice directing them to go left or right.
Try these classroom activities using road maps and atlases to teach spatial thinking, map reading skills, geography, history, and math.
First, ask students to draw and label a road map from the school to their home or local landmark without referencing a paper or online map. After students have drawn their maps, direct them to swap maps and evaluate the map of a peer. Could they follow the map and arrive at the destination? In my experience, these first attempts lack scale, the names of roads or streets, and most other information that makes a road map useful.
Next, pass out street maps of your community. A local tourist or government office may be able to provide community or city maps at free or at low cost. Direct students to find the location of the school and determine the route they typically follow to their home or a local landmark. Then, direct them to write instructions on how to drive from school to the specified location using road names and numbers. Also ask students to draw a better map and compare it with their first attempt.
Teach how local, state, and federal highways are numbered. Roads began to be identified using numbers instead of names in the 1920s. Today, major federal interstate routes are designated by one- or two-digit numbers. Odd-numbered highways run north and south, while even-numbered run east and west. For north-south routes, the lowest numbers begin in the west, while the lowest numbered east-west routes being in the south. Exits from interstate highways are named two different ways. Either consecutively, starting at most western or southern point or using the milepost system with the beginning milepost labeled as “0” and then each exit named after the closest milepost.
Highways with three or four digits often represent state or local roads. Many local streets and highways still only have names, rather than numbers.
Explore state maps and plan a trip. Rand McNally still publishes yearly updated road atlases featuring maps for every state for $20 or less. Tourist offices may provide state maps for free. Ask students to plan a road trip across the state or several states using only the road atlas or map. Demonstrate the “old school” way of determining distances by using the legend or city-to-city mileage charts. Ask students to calculate the mileage of their trip and the cost of gasoline. Explore the legends of printed road atlas and maps and discuss what can be learned about attractions, services, and roads. Choose tourist stops using printed maps.
Finally, map the same route using a digital/online tool such as Google Maps or MapQuest. Compare and contrast the experience of using paper maps with online map tools. Does a digital navigation system provide the same or different information? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Consider the natural landscape. Does one become more aware of rivers, mountains, and other natural formations using a paper map or following the audio directions of a GPS navigation system?
Examine the street and highway network of several major cities for similarities. Most cities have streets in a grid pattern intersected north to south and east to west by federal interstate highways with circular “by-pass” or beltway highways. Discuss how knowing this pattern of urban development could help one navigate without a map or GPS system. Does using GPS navigation help one discover common road patterns?
Investigate the implications of “getting lost” with and without maps or GPS navigation. What mistakes could a person make using a paper map? How can GPS navigation systems lead one astray? Do an internet search for examples of crazy GPS mistakes where drivers blindly followed the audio directions.
Analyze historical road maps and atlases to compare change over time in your state or community. The most dramatic changes were caused by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. With this act, construction began on federally funded, four-lane, limited-access highways. These new roads re-oriented the flow of traffic in and around towns and cities, caused the decline of the railroad system for the transportation of people and goods, and encouraged the growth of suburbs, tourism.
Many digitized museum and archive collections include road maps. The David Rumsey Map Collection and the Osher Map Library have large collections of maps of all kinds, including road maps. Use the search engine to narrow down to road and automobile maps.
Read more by this author about the history of travel and vacations:
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