Today, in the era of GPS and satellite navigation systems, when
Close attention to the highway cross sections reveals a detailed
those foldable maps that not long ago would accompany us on all
representation of an American street, which includes the one- or
our trips are losing their functionality and starting to be seen as
two-way directions, the fast and slow lanes, areas for trees and
museum or archive artifacts, it is surprising to learn that not long
people (sidewalks) and the distance from the road to the houses and
ago most of our roads did not exist or were almost impassable.
even churches (in the lower right corner). As a result, as another text
Late in the nineteenth century many places were still isolated,
promises, “The Nation will eventually have for the use of all the
merely a dot on a map. That favored their inhabitants’ idea of
people the greatest highway system.”
being in the center of the world.
If road maps expose not only the social but also the political and
In the United States road and highway construction was
military interest of reaching for the edges, the economic value is
encouraged by the highway associations that flourished in the 1910s
highlighted in the very curious map titled “The Man of Commerce”
and 1920s and pursued the “Good Roads Everywhere” movement.
(plate 42). There are only two known copies of this work, made
The National Highway Association map (plate 41) issued by the
by A. F. McKay and engraved by Rand McNally in 1889. An
National Highways Association, the Automobile Club of America,
anatomical diagram of the human body lies on the map of North
and the Society of American Military Engineers in 1928 shows the
America to show, as a text explains, “the resemblance between the
whole United States covered in thick red lines, a project to connect
arteries of commerce as represented by railroads, and the arterial
the entire country, from San Diego (California) to Houlton (Maine),
system of man; also, the resemblance between the great vital organs
from Blaine (Washington) to Miami (Florida)—thus reaching
and the commercial system of the great lakes.” The map’s metaphor
to all the edges—because, as a text in the map reads, “National
makes “West Superior, Wisconsin, the head of Lake Superior … the
Highways … stimulate the entire political, social and recreational
heart of this wonderful man, the center of this great railroad and
activities of our Nation.” This map displays Senator Coleman du
commercial system.” The reason the map emphasizes this region
Pont’s “principles of road building,” showing not only a tentative
of the United States is because it was published by the Land &
suggestion for road construction, but also, in the margins of the
River Improvement Company of Superior, Wisconsin, as a way of
map, depicting cross sections of how roads should be built, with
convincing other companies that their fair hamlet deserved to be a
between one and four lanes, “as traffic and military needs of the
national center of manufacturing