NEW IPO Logo - by Charles Larry Home Search Browse About IPO Staff Links

In the 1920s a new type of state map gained popularity. By the end of the decade, state highway maps had become the major graphic image for the American states and were issued by the millions each year. Many automobile road maps were distributed free of charge at service stations to advertise a particular brand of gas. Most states also began publishing a state highway map each year to keep motorists up-to-date on the pavement of roads, how they were numbered, and the best routes from one location to another. The annual state highway map also aided businesses across the state as it promoted local attractions. Travel by automobile became a big business.

Many of the very early highway maps, often not drawn to give full state coverage, were sold by publishers who marked automobile trails with signs along the roads. The Lincoln Highway was a coast-to-coast route, while the Illinois Corn Belt Route was confined to one state.

Map 27 pictures the roads in transition, just after Illinois adopted a highway numbering system and just before the federal numbering code came into use. A major state-funded paving program was in full swing in 1925, and the small chart at the lower right indicates that this map, dated July 1,1925, was revised the following September 1 to record the latest paving efforts.

Reading the Map

The base for this sheet is a county map of the state, with each county's name, boundaries, and county seat shown. Other major towns and cities are listed if served by a state highway. The purpose of the state highway system was to connect all the county seats with paved roads and to link up with the roads of the surrounding states. These "linking highways" soon became the federal system designated by U.S. numbers placed in a shield to differentiate them from the state routes.

It should come as no surprise that State Highway Number 1 in Illinois connected Chicago on Lake Michigan with the southern

72


73


most crossing of the Ohio River. Route 2 paralleled the third prime meridian of the Government Land Office, proceeding due north from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Route 3 took a more direct route than the Great River to connect Galena and the old French settlements on the American Bottom.

The major point of the map, however, was not to trace historic routes but to announce the latest pavement improvements. The legend at the lower left distinguishes between six types of road surface and then divides these into temporary and final routes.

Working with the Map

A close inspection of the map will show the importance of counties and county seats in the formation of the Illinois highway system. In this sense the state roads provided a much better geographical distribution of transportation facilities than the water or rail systems. One county in Illinois was not crossed by a state highway. Calhoun County, between the lower Illinois and Mississippi rivers, also never received a railroad and has never had a traffic light. Speaking of things absent, note that this state highway map does not include the Illinois River except where it incidentally appears as a county boundary. The Mississippi River, Ohio River, and Lake Michigan appear as boundaries, but those water features are not named.

Several major nodes show up in the Illinois highway system. Chicago, at the top right, attracted the largest number of state roads. Note how Peoria, Springfield, St. Louis, and several other locations were well served by the paved roads.

Teaching the Map

The state highway system, unlike the streets in most towns and cities, freed itself from the dictates of the Land Office survey. Local roads in rural areas tend to follow section and township lines to this day, but paved automobile highways usually set out on direct routes. In several places on this map, the old roads that turned on right angles were being used as temporary highways (shown in white) while the paved final routes appear as solid lines running on a diagonal, "as the crow flies." A good example of a future "gas and time saving" convenience is found in Knox County northwest of Peoria.

This early example of an Illinois state highway map invites comparison with a current version. If several older examples from years in between can be located, the maps can be lined up in chronological order and students can look for changes over time: the emergence of the federal and interstate systems, how pictures appeared on the cover of the folders, and the appearance of additional information to accompany the main map. If old highway literature can be located (brochures for motels, advertisements for roadside attractions, travel kits, and the like), a bulletin board or display case of high interest can be developed.

74


The H. N. Lund Coal Company in Chicago sponsored a "Mileage Map of the Best Roads of Illinois" about 1926, the same time as the official state highway map in the last focus map. In addition to highlighting the paved roads and numbering them according to the state system, the coal company's version provided distances between towns and then named the auto trails that crossed Illinois. A chart next to the state map pictured the signs, which were attached to utility poles along the way. This list is reprinted on the left-hand side of Map 28.

These named trails were replaced several years later by the numbered system of U. S. highways. The most famous such route in Illinois, Route 66, extended from the shore of Lake Michigan to Los Angeles. In Illinois the celebrated highway went from Chicago to Joliet, through Bloomington and Springfield, to St. Louis. Route 66 largely followed the old Mississippi Valley Highway, marked from Chicago to Springfield and the Lone Star Highway which started in Springfield and led to St. Louis.

The second panel traces Route 66 through Illinois in the 1930s at the time when it was becoming one of the best-known highways in the nation. This particular graphic was one of four insets that accompanied an "Auto Trails Map of Central United States" issued by the McKinley Bridge in St. Louis. As a toll bridge, the McKinley depended on a constant flow of traffic to pay its bills. The advertising on the map pointed out that this "optional U. S. 66" saved five miles, avoided the traffic congestion of downtown St. Louis, and was much safer than the main route through town.

Reading the Map

A glance at the thirty-five named highway routes in Illinois used before the numbering of U.S. system will indicate how complicated the old "auto trails" program had become. It challenged motorists to remember a variety of symbols, and it certainly would make a confusing map if these symbols were used on the map. Numbering the U.S. routes and placing them in a "federal shield" to distinguish the U.S. setup from state markers simplified things a great deal. So did the growing use of strip maps like the one issued by the McKinley Bridge.

A strip map follows one particular route and cuts out the details on either side. In this case we can follow Route 66 from town to town. Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River are the only features that run across the whole strip. A popular song about the "Main Street of America" referred to that "ribbon of highway" that stretched across the prairies and plains. Maps like this were also called ribbon maps because they were long and thin. The maps of the "Proposed Route for the Illinois and Michigan Canal" (Map 18) and of the Illinois Waterway (Map 20) are two good examples of ribbon maps issued in sections.

75


Working with the Map

The two panels on this sheet relate to one another because the former designation for the direct route between Chicago and Springfield was the Mississippi Valley Highway. Its marker, "MVH" could be drawn next to the "66" on this leg of the route. A lone star could likewise be added to the Springfield-St. Louis segment.

One characteristic of strip maps is that they often straighten out the route. Transposing the data from the strip map to a modern highway, or to the 1925 state map (Map 25) might be an enlightening activity. To get started, align the directional arrow in the middle of the strip map to due north on the road map. Then note the arrows that point off the ribbon suggesting routes to nearby cities and towns.

Teaching the Map

Maps record change. The same road was designated by a trail marker in the 1920s and received a U.S. number in the 1930s. Decades later, the designation Route 66 was retired in favor of Interstate 55. Help students see that all maps record changes in society, culture, and on the ground itself. Has your family received a road map from your local coal company recently? The social, cultural, and historical dimensions of old maps can be further discussed by referring to the image from the McKinley Bridge folder. The design of the bridge, the steamboat, the separation of car and track traffic, the rate of toll, and the narrow design of the bridge are details that might spark some comments or questions.

There has been a great revival of interest in Route 66 in recent years. A variety of books and memorabilia are available at tourist sites along the old route, now designated as Historic Route 66.

76


77


The automobile suburbs that emerged in the 1920s led to a new order for American life. These new towns pointed the way to a culture based on the automobile that flowered in the decades following World War II. The Great Depression of the 1930s and global conflict in the next decade delayed the full flowering of an automobile society by almost a whole generation. But this map, dated 1928, pointed the way to the new metropolis that set the standard of living in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1928 almost all of the suburbs shaded on this map were situated on railroad lines that radiated out from Chicago's central business district. The spokes-and-hub-pattern of the early highways repeated the wheel image of Chicago's railroads. Most major highways, like the railroad tracks, converged in the downtown area. But the dotted lines on this map, routes in the proposal stage, attempted to turn the spokes and hub image into a web design. Only a few of the proposed new highways headed for the Loop; most of them connected suburbs with each other. In the process, the rural lands between the railroad-highway spokes would fill up with new suburban developments.

By the end of the twentieth century the entire compass of this map is filled with houses with garages, streets lined with driveways, shopping centers ringed with parking lots, and highways of four, six, and even eight lanes. Many areas of the old city and its early streetcar suburbs were also being refashioned into an automobile landscape. Catching a glimpse of this emerging new metropolis on this inset from the "Official Map Showing State Highways of Illinois ... July 1,1928" is to read the map with historical eyes.

Reading the Map

There are really three maps here. The first shows the old city of railroads and streetcars. Only a few streetcar routes reached beyond the city limits. There the commuter rail lines took over, connecting small suburbs that were strung, like beads, along the tracks. The spaces in between were mostly farms and fields.

The second map shows the early paved highways taking the place of the rails, sometimes following the same routes to the city center and duplicating the railroad pattern. Note how the route making a broad arc at the western and southern edges of the map largely follows the tracks of the Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern Railroad.

The third map, made up of the proposed highways with dotted lines, hints at the new automobile communities that later filled up the blank spaces between the suburban rail lines. The large-scale map of the metropolitan area on a contemporary Illinois highway map shows this region filled up with young suburbs.

Working with the Map

When this map was compiled, farsighted individuals could picture high-speed, limited access superhighways, but no examples yet existed in the United States to provide a template of the future automobile society. Although it will take some time, using a modern map to add the interstate routes to this old document will add immeasurably to its value. It would be an interesting way to introduce a document over seventy-five years old to the future.

78


Comparing the 1928 map to a modern highway map will also show how many new suburbs sprang up to fill up the gaps in the hub-and-spokes pattern. Bolingbrook, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, and Gurnee are hardly present on this map. But three or four decades later, they represented the wave of the future. Placing these automobile suburbs on this map and relating them to the interstate highways will help us understand suburbia and the automobile culture.

Teaching the Map

The "glimpse of the future" quality of this 1928 map suggests a comparison with the metropolitan insets on later highway maps. One example each from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s will help students see the metropolitan region filling up with suburbs and automobiles. Assembling a collection of these old highway maps will make a valuable addition to any teacher's file of curriculum materials.

By the 1980s, one third of the people of Illinois lived in Chicago and the old streetcar suburbs, another third in "suburbia" (the surrounding counties), and the last third inhabited "downstate," all the land beyond route U.S. 30 and the Fox River. Looking ahead to Maps 33 and 38, both dealing with population distribution, might prove useful.

A challenge to teachers when using this particular map is to encourage students to picture the suburbanization of American life and perceive the role of the automobile in propelling this development. Once they have grasped the basic idea, they should be encouraged to apply it to both the older city and to rural areas. How did cars change life on the farm and in the small town? What impact did interstate highways have on urban neighborhoods and Chicago's Loop? How might maps reflect these changes?

79


80


When one thinks of the economic dimension of state maps, such things as natural resources and productive industries come to mind (see Map 30), but the economy involves the consumption of goods and services as well as their production. How consumers gain access to products and producers is always an important aspect of economic life. This map, from a book compiled by the Industrial Development Committee of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, divides the state into major trading centers as they existed in 1929.

Although that book— Illinois: Resources, Development, Possibilities—was not published until 1930, it reflects the optimistic viewpoint of the pre-Depression years. A separate page mapped "The Multiple Trading Center Market of Chicago" and the surrounding metropolitan region, but our focus here is on the trading regions established by various downstate centers.

To put the map in context, one must visualize the impact of the widespread ownership of automobiles and of the accessibility to local commercial centers offered by the new highways. Shopping became a weekly activity for most households in the state. The family automobile transported shoppers to their favorite stores, and the vehicle usually returned home full of newly purchased goods. The map, in a general way, tries to show the destinations of choice for shoppers making a major purchase like a new suit of clothes, a kitchen table, or a gift for a special occasion. For these items, and for special services as well, shoppers would travel an hour or more in each direction. In the emerging consumer society, shopping was serious business. For many Main Streets, Saturday night, like other shopping times, was a lively time.

Reading the Map

Remember that this is a generalized map, often using county boundaries as the divide between one shopping region and the next. It represents general tendencies rather than the specific behavior of individual families. It is best to start reading the map by noting the major commercial towns in any area as determined by data on total sales. In many cases two or more commercial centers in a region were linked, sometimes on equal terms and, in other cases, arranged in a hierarchy.

Big cities like St. Louis or Chicago acted as magnets, pulling in shoppers from the surrounding area. In rural areas, smaller cities exerted even more distant drawing power because alternatives were lacking. Note the attraction, for example, of Peoria, Mt. Vernon, and Cairo in 1929. The latter reached out to three neighboring states to attract customers.

The note at the lower right points out that each of the trading areas has a primary market that is the dominant retail center in the area. Secondary market towns are tied to it, often by banking and wholesaling arrangements. The third component of the trading area is the rural territory. In 1929 farmers often constituted the major block of customers in many counties of the state.

Working with the Map

The state boundary lines become less important on a map of this nature. Sometimes the primary market for a region in Illinois is located out of state. Shade these areas pink. At other times, the reverse is true, and market centers in Illinois tended to attract shoppers from Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and even Tennessee. Color these areas green.

In geographical extent, the largest trading region in Illinois centered on St. Louis. Color this area red. Most of the people in Illinois, however, lived in the Chicago trading area, which had multiple commercial centers. Color this region blue. Use yellow to highlight the remaining primary market towns in Illinois.

Teaching the Map

Teachers will want to clarify the nature and purpose of this map. Why would the Illinois Chamber of Commerce want to include such a map in their book? How would businesspeople use the map? Two factors make this map a good indicator of a state's economic well-being: The first is a desire on the part of its inhabitants to consume goods and services. The second, equal in importance, is an infrastructure that brings goods and consumers together. An understanding of these concerns will not only facilitate an understanding of the map, but will also prepare students for effective citizenship.

By the way, cartographers sometimes refer to the line on a map marking the boundary of a marketing area as a "desire line." The concepts of a market shed, its desire lines, and a marketing frontier might open up new insights for students studying our consumer culture.

81


82


The Chicago & Southern Air Lines connected Chicago with Springfield, St. Louis, Memphis, Jackson (Mississippi), and New Orleans. Roughly paralleling the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, this air route offered "splendid coast to coast connections," linking the shores of Lake Michigan with beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, according to its Airway Map and Air Log. A strip map showing the route appeared in two sections, the first of which is reproduced here in two parts. Note that it covers most of Illinois, from Chicago and Rockford south to Cairo.

The brochure's text painted a picture behind the map: "From the brisk pace of Chicago's Michigan Boulevard to a stroll at twilight through New Orleans' Vieux Carre, from the turmoil of steel mills and stockyards to the enchantment of the tropics, the short span of seven hours." The propeller-driven aircraft with six windows on each side flew at a low altitude so that passengers could readily observe the panorama below unfolding "its colorful and changing story of climate and enterprise, of custom and tradition." As the airplane landed at each airport along the way, it entered new worlds of commerce and culture.

The airline brochure also included a map of all forty-eight states showing how the Chicago & Southern fit into a national system of air routes (see below). Each segment connected cities with major airports. Each state had at least one transportation center, and it was the custom, in those days, to try to provide a stop in each state along the route. Thus, the Chicago & Southern made five stops in five states after leaving Chicago. In part, these frequent landings were needed for fuel. A close look at the map will show that the Chicago-New Orleans crossed a tiny part of Arkansas without landing in that state.

Reading the Map

Although state boundaries were important reference points on airline maps, the routes connected cities "the way the crow flies." These straight lines often paid little attention to state boundaries, which are sometimes hard to find on our strip map. Therefore, start reading this map by tracing the boundaries of Illinois, The directional sign east of St. Louis will orient the map and help students relate it to a current highway map.

The strip shows that all of the cities and towns on the map were connected by paved highways or railroad tracks or both. These other transportation systems would also be used by almost all the passengers on the airplanes both before and after their flights. The text accompanying the map emphasizes the convenient railroad connections available in New Orleans.

The bold lines on the map, printed in

83


red on the original, trace the designated air route. The number of miles between landings is also provided. Various navigation aids and other points of information for air travelers are explained in the key at the bottom of the map. All of these also appear in a light shade of red overprinting. It might require some careful looking to locate these lighted beacons, radio beacons, and intermediate landing fields, which could be used in an emergency.

One interesting detail on the map is the highlighting of the land that reached 1100 feet above sea level, the highest elevations on the map. This information was undoubtedly meant to assure prospective travelers that the journey would be safer because it was not necessary to fly over any mountains on "The Valley Level Route" as advertised on the map's cover.

Working with the Map

Coloring the map according to the original will help students find the air-travel details and make the map come to life as a dynamic statement of air age geography. Start with blue for Lake Michigan, then yellow for the major cities: Chicago, Springfield, St. Louis, and Memphis. Rockford, Elgin, Joliet, Peoria, Bloomington, Decatur, Alton, Granite City, East St. Louis, and Belleville are also honored with yellow coloring on the original.

The air route, the accompanying mileage, and the directional symbol are all colored in bold red on the 1940 map. A lighter shade was used for the other navigational aids and intermediate landing fields. The extent of the radio range for each air route is colored pink. These safety lanes fan out from the Chicago area. Note how, in this case, a map makes "invisible" things visibible.

Teaching the Map

Relating this map to a contemporary highway map will help students review some basic facts of Illinois geography. Connecting it to a map of the entire nation will also be helpful, a point realized by the designers of the brochure when they provided such an accompanying map. Teachers might also want to secure an up-to-date route map for United Air Lines, which later absorbed the Chicago & Southern company.

The 1940 brochure emphasized that the planes carried mail and express packages as well as passengers. With that in mind, students might be asked to phrase an appropriate slogan for the company. "The Valley Level Route" appears on the front cover of the map folder, but very large type is used for the heading on the back cover: "Uniting the Central Empire."

84


85


This illustration by Samuel Nisenson appeared in Grace L. Kohl's book for children, Your America, published by the World Publishing Company in 1941. A revised edition, with the same map, followed in 1948. Pictorial maps of states in this format are quite common, but this example is very simple because it is addressed to young children. Note its direct approach and lack of detail.

All maps, by definition, present the spatial arrangements rather than the actual qualities or values of the phenomena they treat. The cartographer can hint about the actual values— the size of the population, for example—by placing Chicago in large, bold type and Carthage in much smaller letters, but it would be very difficult to indicate that the big city has over a thousand times the number of people as the Hancock County seat. Pictorial maps exaggerate this characteristic: they indicate in a general way where certain things are located, but they do not usually inform the reader about the relative importance of the things pictured.

Precise location is another problem inherent in pictorial maps. Thus, the corn indicated in two places on this map could be found in significant quantities in all 102 counties of Illinois. But the pictures add a great deal of interest to maps, often raising questions as the reader begins to take them seriously. "I am a state of many activities," the text declared, "having extensive industrial, agricultural, mining, and transportation interests." We certainly get the general idea of this message by glancing at the map, but the specific aspects of the presentation are often difficult to locate and put into context.

Reading the Map

This is a very simple map to read. The state boundaries, except for the Wisconsin border, are emphasized by double lines and shadings. Surrounding states are also labeled and bounded. An elaborate directional sign, common to all the maps in the book, anchors the Illinois sheet. The only other geographical detail on the page, apart from the pictorial elements, is Lake Michigan.

Readers of the map are thus quickly directed to the pictures, which fill up Illinois. Each one is named to add clarity, but only Chicago and Springfield are given fairly precise locations. The individual pictures are often of interest, but the desire to keep them simple restricts their ability to convey information. Although the facing page of text emphasized that Chicago is one of the world's greatest railway centers, noted for its mills and factories, none of these elements was pictured in the urban sketch.

Working with the Map

The best way to begin working with the map is to relate it to Map 23, a similar pictorial montage, and, more particularly, to Map 30, the "Marketing Map of Illinois" in 1929. The latter also carried an economic theme: consumption in the 1929 example and economic resources here. Indeed, a consideration of the nature of economic resources turns this simple map into a device to convey some fundamental understandings.

Begin by setting up some categories into which a state's economic resources may be divided. Start with minerals— assets taken out of the ground and turned into useful products or fuels. Label the next category "agricultural resources," largely the result of favorable soils and climate. A third column, industrial resources, indicates people working with tools and machines to turn raw materials into marketable items. Services, the fourth column, would include management, research, marketing, education, government, and other parts of the economy that facilitate the extraction of raw materials, the manufacturing of goods, and the consumption of finished products. Working with the map, students could put each of the pictorial elements, including Chicago's office towers and Springfield's capital building, into one of these columns or categories.

Teaching the Map

If students were asked to prepare a similar map for a book to be published next year, what are twenty items they would include on such a map? How would they be pictured? Where should each appear? As students make suggestions, perhaps they should prepare a rough sample copy of the map along with a chart showing the different categories represented in something entitled "Economic Resources in Illinois Today." Comparing the student-general maps with the 1941 example will certainly show some changes. Elgin's watch factory no longer exists. Wool production in northwestern Illinois, the stockyards in Chicago, and the extraction of petroleum in western Illinois would be problematic on a contemporary pictorial map.

86


87


|Home| |Search| |Back to Periodicals Available| |Table of Contents| |Back to Illinois History Teacher 2004|
Illinois Periodicals Online (IPO) is a digital imaging project at the Northern Illinois University Libraries funded by the Illinois State Library