Help me find out more about photographic route atlases

October 30, 2012 6:33 AM

I'd like to know more about a type of photographic route guide used in the early 20th century, definitely in the US if not elsewhere. They're a series of photographs of junctions with an arrow drawn over them. Librarians, map lovers, can you help me?

I came across these photographic route atlases in this blog post about BERG's horizonless projection map. They link to the University of Southern Maine's Osher Map Library, which has an image (but talks about Route 66 instead!), and to the Owls Head Transportation Museum, which doesn't appear to have information online on the subject.

I'm writing a research proposal that uses this form of navigating the built environment as a reference, and though it's not vital, I'd love to have more than just two photos behind my understanding of them. (I've been in love with them for years and even made one, so it would be very satisfying personally too.) I am in Ireland, with institutional database access.

Any idea what exactly they're called? Can you point me to any further references, online or off? Thank you!

posted by carbide to Grab Bag (2 answers total)

Best answer: Rand McNally published "Photo-Auto" guides in the early 1900s. The David Rumsey map collection has some online. Search with that phrase ("photo auto"). Google searches with the same phrase pull up a lot.
Worldcat lists a few - Gardener S. Chapin seems to be an author of many of them.
posted by gyusan at 1:02 PM on October 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: gyusan, thank you!
posted by carbide at 1:29 PM on October 30, 2012