Part 4: Named Roads
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 Advertisement, from Official Automobile Blue Book, vol. 4. Chicago: Automobile Blue Books Inc., 1915.    Road marker signs for the Dixie Highway and the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway. |
Highway
associations and companies, often in
conjunction with the “Good Roads” movement, began
to fill the highway posting void by naming and
marking the previously nameless
roads. Starting in 1912, highway associations, consortiums of local and
national business, issued promotional maps and began to mark named
roads such
as the Lincoln Highway ( New York - San Francisco), the Dixie Highway
(Miami – Sault Ste. Marie), and the West
Michigan Pike (Chicago – Mackinaw City). During this period, there were
at least 26 such named trails in Michigan. |
  Michigan and Chicago to Cleveland and Reverse. Akron, OH: B. F. Goodrich, 1916. |
Private
companies also began to
map and mark roads. In 1914, BF Goodrich started such a program and
claimed that it established 85,000 guidepost logos, such as the one
depicted on this 1916 Goodrich road map. |
 Rand McNally official 1921 auto trails map, district number 3: Southern Peninsula of Michigan, northern Indiana, northwestern Ohio. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1921.  Cover from Rand McNally Official Auto Road Map, Michigan, 1927 |
The most
ambitious national mapping and marking program was launched by Rand
McNally in 1917. Major routes were given numbers as well as names, and
routes were marked by number signs nailed or stenciled onto roadside
poles. The “auto [or blazed] trail” maps by Rand McNally, such as the
Michigan map depicted here, were issued in a limited number of regions
(eight in 1918), but gradually expanded to cover the entire country by
1924. |