Who gets to draw the map? The contentious creation of the American road/map system, 1917–1926

Abstract

Wittingly or not, Americans use a road/map system when they drive today. This system is a technological arrangement that coordinates routes, roadside signage, and maps for drivers. The American road/map system, for much of the twentieth century, was a government service, but the government’s control of the system occurred only after a struggle between for-profit entities, such as trail associations and map publishers, and engineers in the employ of the state. In vying for the right to designate routes, private and public interests were in effect battling over the market’s ability to provide for public welfare, the role of roads in American nationalism, and the nature of cartography itself. The public sector’s triumph in the contest over America’s highways was an unusual instance in American history in which a technological system’s ability to influence social politics was taken seriously, and it indicates the appeal of progressive reform at the time.

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