Someone may have kept the two bright sunshine-yellow and forest-green road guides as a way to remember their travel adventure. They’d gone to the Delaware Motor Club office in Wilmington, DE, on June 25, 1947, and an AAA agent had mapped out their trip in green marker in TripTik guides.
They – I assume it was a family for such a long drive – headed out from their Wilmington home at 7 a.m. on the Fourth of July to Hollywood, CA, using TripTik to show them the highways to follow, scenic stops along the way and histories of the states they would travel through.
The driver was likely the husband, who meticulously recorded in pencil the mileage from city to city, and costs for gas, oil, repairs and tolls. They were taking the trip at a time when car travel was starting to boom.
The war and rationing were over, and the thriving economy gave folks the ability to buy a car and home, and take trips. Also by then, many of the muddy roads that had been made for horses were paved with concrete for cars. One section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike had been completed in 1940, and the tolls in the driver’s accounting were probably paid there.
For their return trip, they left Hollywood on Saturday July 12, 1947, and arrived back home in Wilmington on July 19.
One sheet inside the guide showed total expenses of $77.13 when they arrived in Harrisburg, PA, but no figures for the two-hour or so trip the rest of the way home were recorded. There was no mention of food or lodging.
I found the two TripTik guides at auction recently, and they instantly reminded me of going to the AAA office in whatever city I was living in at the time, sitting down at the desk of an agent and watching as the person mapped out my trip. I can still see the agent making squiggly lines with the marker to mimic the shape of the roads on the guide. That was not so long ago, certainly not as far back as the 1947 travelers.
TripTik was for me and other AAA members a natural part of the travel-by-car experience. It’d never occur to us not to go to the AAA office for the free guides and service. I don’t travel long distances by car anymore, so I tossed out most of my old maps and guide books years ago. TripTik was easy to read and follow, but it could also be cumbersome.
Now, it’s easier for me to map a route with the GPS on my smartphone, where I can easily find places to get gas, eat or sleep. But I can use the TripTik app on my phone, or do what I need online – including finding maps, developing itineraries, and learning about weather conditions, congestion and places to stop along my route.
TripTik became one of the many services that the American Automobile Association offered to its members for free. The organization was formed in 1902 when cars were in their infancy and roads were a mess.
It began publishing its own road maps (another company had originally produced them) in 1911. Starting in 1929, it issued its first TourBook, which came with a state map in the back. AAA would send out what it called pathfinders to measure roads, pinpoint construction and more. The results were printed on separate cards.
The first TripTik was issued in 1937, and by the 1950s, according to AAA, it was one of the organization’s most popular guides. By the 1970s, fewer side roads were included the guide and more color was added.
The AAA guides were not the only ones made to assist drivers. Two years ago, I came across a device called a Mile-O-Graph whose function was to measure the distance from here to there in miles. It resembled a thermometer, and I found an ad for it from the late 1950s.
As for TripTik, I was curious about whether I could still get the paper guide at AAA offices, so I called my local branch. I was told that they were indeed still available. One article noted that they were now computer-generated, printed and assembled as a booklet.
