These guidebooks were vital to westward bound travelers as there was little other method of knowing the exact routes or ares that one would travel through. There is no luxury of GPS or tourist guides like we have today which exemplifies the importance of these early forms of automobile guides. These WPA guides for regions of the US cover multiple cities on multiple routes while detailing the regions and cities along such route. Schaffer’s book on these guides details how the guides went through multiple reworkings in order to provide the best detailed tour guide of these regions as possible. The wording and structure of the guides seem to make it targeted toward more wealthy people as tourism was not a big industry during this time period. 1
I learned much about the northern areas of Texas by doing this project. The guide provides details on many of the cities and towns that the routes pass through which give a good feel and scope of the area. These maps can tell us a lot about the history of the areas they cover as well as the rise of tourism in the US. These maps also give us an insight to the racial inequalities of the time as well. When making the project map, I noticed that many of the cited cited racial historical events such as native american lands and white expansion into such lands which shows just some of the racial tensions at the time. After comparing my map to the The Green Book one it revealed even more racial inequalities. The path in the American Guide Series was anything but ideal for black travelers. The Green Book path shows that the nearest hotel for colored people to the destination was literally across two state lines. Sarah Bond’s article on mapping racism also shows the same inequalities. She covered how the spatial mapping of racism at the time shows an extra layer to the treatment that these people felt. It also details the multiple kinds of maps that scholars have been working to show these inequalities. 2 . https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/496d63689e291ecc46a4a31be0418a47/texas-guide/index.html
- Shaffer, M. S., & Shaffer, M. S. (2002). See America first: tourism and national identity, 1880-1940 (pp. 203–220). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
- Bond, S. (2017, October 20). Mapping Racism And Assessing the Success of the Digital Humanities. Retrieved from https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/10/20/mapping-racism-and-assessing-the-success-of-the-digital-humanities/.
