I like old maps.

I remember planning trips across the country. I had a collection of road atlases and gas station maps. I still have some of them in my car. You may find this pretty normal from me, but it is the construction of our railroads that brought us good maps.

Here in Colorado, many of our roads are based on Indian trails. It is common for others to follow valleys and streams because the railroads did. Before the building of the transcontinental railroad, most maps of the West were pretty terrible. The surveys of the West did not get really detailed until railroads had to figure out where to build. However, it was the coming of the Model T Ford that the demand for everyday good road maps started. Even as recent as the 1940s, some road maps were not all that accurate. In the early days they even issued books to describe where roads went. The roads often followed farm trails and fence lines.

The gas station maps took off in the 1930s. It is fun comparing some of these old maps. Some have towns that others do not. Do you know why? Some of the companies actually copied other companies’ maps. It became common for the bigger ones to put in roads that were not there, even towns that did not exist, just to catch some of those ‘copycat’ mapmakers. It must have been fun if you tried to find that odd town. I have friends who work in the Colorado Department of Transportation who track old roads. There are many in our area; perhaps you know of an old bridge out where you might not expect it.

GPS is not foolproof. They sometimes try to connect roads and streets that do not connect. Mountain roads are some of the likely candidates, but it even happens in towns. There is a common joke about somebody driving off a cliff because they were following their GPS map.