How We Found Our Way Before GPS (Free Maps, TripTiks, and Mom)

The map came out of the glove box, and it never went back in the same way.

Unfolded, it covered half the dashboard and most of the passenger. Mom (usually Mom) traced the route with a finger, called out exits, and argued with the driver about whether the last turn had been the right one. In the back seat, we wanted to know how much longer.

That's how a lot of us crossed the country.

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The Tools

Free gas station maps. For roughly 50 years, from about 1925 to 1975, printed highway and street maps were given out free at almost every gas station in the United States, according to a history by geographer Phillip D. Phillips. Oil companies like Chevron, Shell, Phillips, and Sinclair printed them by the millions, hoping you'd stop at their stations along the way.

The AAA TripTik. The first modern TripTiks, spiral-bound books of strip maps, came out in 1937, and AAA started mass-producing them in 1938.

Oil company travel bureaus. Some oil companies went further. In the 1930s, Conoco's Touraide service built free, personalized trip books for customers, according to the Osher Map Library. One made in 1939 ran to nearly 200 pages.

A pen, a napkin, and a friendly local. For the last few miles, nothing beat written directions.

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Step by Step

**Plan at the kitchen table.** Spread the state map out, find the big highways, and decide on a route.
**Get a TripTik if you were a member.** At a AAA office, an agent drew your route with a highlighter on a series of numbered strip maps and walked you through it. They'd mark construction, rest stops, and places worth a stop.
**Pick up maps along the way.** Crossing a state line? The next gas station had the new state map for free.
**Assign a navigator.** Someone rode shotgun with the map and called out turns before you needed them.
**Ask when lost.** Pull into a gas station and ask. Attendants gave directions all day long.
**Write it down for the end.** "Left at the water tower, second house past the church." Directions to Grandma's lived on a scrap of paper in the visor.

The Tricks People Knew

Odd-numbered interstates generally run north and south, and even-numbered ones run east and west, a tip a lot of us learned in the back seat. Mileage tables on the map told you how far it was between towns. And experienced navigators folded the map to show only the section they needed, which helped, at least until the first gust of wind.

Why the Free Maps Disappeared

The free map didn't survive the 1970s. The New York Times reported in 1977 that the major oil companies had stopped handing out detailed maps freely as their costs rose and gas prices climbed. Some switched to simpler one-page maps, some charged stations, and some dropped local maps completely. The Times also noted that schoolkids had been taking them by the handful to cover their books.

What Was Actually Better

You saw the whole picture. A big map showed you the towns you'd pass, the rivers, the state parks you might stop at. Planning the trip was half the fun, and a good navigator knew the route by heart by the second day.

What We Don't Miss

Arguments at the exit. Wrong turns in the dark. Trying to read tiny print by the dome light. And the moment you realized the map was ten years old and the highway you wanted didn't exist on it.

Then Came the Printouts, Then GPS

In the late 1990s, a lot of us printed directions from the internet and clipped them to the dash. Then GPS units arrived, and finally phones that talk you through every turn.

But paper never fully went away. AAA still offers paper maps and TripTiks at many branch offices, as a backup for when the cell signal disappears.

Who was the navigator on your family road trips, and did you ever get really lost?

Sources

Phillip D. Phillips, "Gas Station Road Maps: Passports to Imagination and Adventure," Springer, 2024
"Did You Know? Paper Maps and AAA TripTiks Are Still Here," AAA Northeast, Aug. 2024
"Road Maps: The American Way," Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine
"Free Road Maps No Longer So Free," *The New York Times*, Oct. 5, 1977