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Jan 27, 2001
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Kurumi's Place of Bookly Wonders
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What is a 'road geek'? Road geeks study, explore, and talk about roads and maps as a hobby, or if they're lucky, a career. To road geeks, roads have character and history, and old maps are more interesting than new. The term 'road geek' is usually self-applied and not derogatory.
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- general history/commentary: several decades of highway policy or planning; few or no specific roads
- nostalgic/Americana: drive-in cinemas, diners, and gas stations along the road
On this page, I'll show you some other books worth finding. I own them all, so I can answer further questions you have. So far, all are worth getting if the subject interests you. I'll skip worthless books for now.
Current Reviews:
- Bruce Radde, The Merritt Parkway.
- Larry Larned, Traveling the Merritt Parkway.
- Tom Lewis, Divided Highways.
- Frederic J. Wood, Turnpikes of New England.
My reviews are geared toward the road and map enthusiast, and lay out the "treats" in store for road geeks (see sidebar). They help you decide whether the book covers the topics you're looking for.
I used to have affiliate links to Amazon, but recent corporate behavior (1-click patent, threatening to sell your private information, wandering prices) led me to re-evaluate the deal. You're invited to either shop your local indie bookstore, hit the library, or make the chains compete on price.
Enjoy the reviews. My e-mail address is to the left.
Radde, Bruce. The Merritt Parkway. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993 (reprinted Sept. 1996).
The author's background (art history, currently a professor at San Jose State University) highlights the many crossover interests of road geekdom, and results in an eclectic coffee-table book about the development of Connecticut's Merritt Parkway in the late 1930s. Few if any other books cover both route planning and Bauhaus bashing.
The Merritt Parkway starts with a good discussion of the 1920s traffic problems leading to the call for a new highway, followed by the politics, route planning, and scandals behind the parkway's construction.
After brief coverage of the roadway and interchange design, Radde segues into his primary interest in the parkway -- its 68 ornamental bridges, all designed by George Dunkelberger. The fifteen-page "Picture Tour of the Merritt Parkway," all contemporary color photos, highlights some notable bridges.
The book then discusses events after the parkway's opening, including the addition of tolls and roadside services. The Wilbur Cross Parkway and I-95 are mentioned in passing, as well as the 1980s and '90s interchanges with routes 8, 25, and 7, under the heading "The DOT versus the Merritt Parkway." The final chapter compares the parkway with a few other roads, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Strengths: Many photos of the bridges, most of them contemporary shots, as well as a few overhead photos, diagrams, and newspaper clippings. Index and end notes.
Weaknesses: Overlooks the Parkway's role in statewide highway plans, why and when it became part of Route 15, and so on. Few maps.
Treats: Reproduction of parkway map handed out to drivers, circa 1945. A few photos of old exit signs and construction. Several bridge photos, including new Route 8 and Route 25 overpasses, and the I-280/CA 92 interchange.
Highways discussed: CT 15, Merritt Parkway, Wilbur Cross Parkway
Other highways mentioned: CT 8, CT 25, US 1.
Larned. Larry. Traveling the Merritt Parkway. Charleston, S. C.: Arcadia Publishing, 1998.
A retired traffic engineer takes a different approach to the parkway, five years after Radde's book. Despite the title (and its unfortunate classification under "travel" in some bookstores), Traveling the Merritt Parkway (TTMP) is not a travel book. Instead, it recounts the history of the parkway's design and construction. For road geeks, this is a distinct advantage.
The subject area draws natural comparisons with Bruce Radde's work; fortunately, the books take different approaches. TTMP covers more highway engineering and history, and less architectural design. The 128-page book contains about 200 black-and-white photos from the 1920s through 1950s. The typical page has two photos, each with a paragraph describing the scene and providing historical context. TTMP is organized geographically, following the parkway from New York eastward to the Wilbur Cross Parkway (which gets a short section as well). It's a fun read, but you have to assemble the beginning-to-end history as you move along.
TTMP emphasizes the engineering side of the parkway's development. There's plenty of dates-and-figures meat: how much certain bridges cost, how long they were, when things happened, and so on. The book also discusses the original Merritt Highway plan (a 40-foot undivided road, with mostly at-grade crossings), and similar Connecticut plans for Route 80 east of New Haven.
A road scholar's dream library would have include a book like this for every highway in the state.
Strengths: Very good historical treatment overall, including dates. Plenty of primary-source information, which I tend to find more compelling than analysis from a distance. I learned more from this one than I did from Radde (shown earlier). Photos of construction sites, as well as parkway scenes with 1940s era traffic.
Weaknesses: Not organized chronologically. Seldom a narrative thread from one paragraph to next. No index. Finding certain information can involve linear search.
Treats: Planning map of original Merritt Highway route in Stratford. Parkway tourist map, c. 1945 (same one as in Radde) A few copies of planning ephemera (such as guide sign draft drawings). Info on Merritt Highway (precursor to Parkway) A little info on Route 80, a cousin to the Merritt Highway. Coverage of Wilbur Cross Parkway, and plans for full parkway to parallel Berlin Turnpike.
Highways discussed: CT 15, Merritt Parkway, Wilbur Cross Parkway
Other highways mentioned: CT 80, CT 72, US 5, US 1.
Lewis, Tom. Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life. New York: Viking, 1997.
This companion book to the 1997 PBS show "Divided Highways" resembles many of the other contemporary U.S. highway history works on the shelves. Familiar topics include farmers in the mud, the Good Roads movement, the start of consistent nationwide numbering and signing, the 1939 World's Fair, postwar plans for an expressway network, Eisenhower's push for the Interstate System, the rise of suburbia and drive-by/drive-through architecture, growing opposition and the ill effects of building freeways in urban areas, and a look to the future.
Lewis's point of view is simply that highways have changed our lives, and though he examines several cases of controversial projects, he doesn't come down hard on one side or the other.
Though the path this book takes is well-trod, Lewis does sometimes go into more detail than previous authors have. For instance, the index actually mentions several highways by number.
Strengths: Excellent bibliography; those of you lucky enough to live near Washington, DC, could set aside a few weeks to read those sources. Chapter-long discussion of New Orleans' cancelled I-310 riverfront highway.
Weaknesses: Sometimes difficult or impossible to pin down exactly when events happened.
Highways discussed: I-310, New Orleans; I-695 and I-93, Boston; several others mentioned.
Wood, Frederic J. The Turnpikes of New England. Pepperell, Mass.: Branch Line Press, 1997. (reprinted from 1919)
Roadgeekery before the Web was for most of us a solitary affair. Imagine finding out about new, old, and cancelled roads nearly a century ago, before numbered highways and plentiful phones and cars.
Wood, one of the original road geeks, published in 1919 an exhaustively detailed account of about 250 18th and 19th century routes, most of them marginally improved horse paths with tollgates.
Each turnpike entry (ranging from a few paragraphs to several pages) appears to show as much information as Wood could scrounge up. For most turnpikes, you'll find out when the franchise was granted, where it was routed, how it fared (most lost money) and when it was handed over to the town. Assorted pictures of 1910s-era add color to the narrative, as well as anecdotes about people travelling the turnpikes, collecting tolls, or owning nearby property.
The original work is abridged in the 1997 reprint, but the cut material, marked with ellipses, is primarily financial trivia about some Massachusetts routes. The book doesn't suffer from these omissions.
The introduction explains typical turnpike financing and maintenance, and discusses the vehicles that traveled the turnpikes. The book is then sectioned by state: a state map showing town borders and turnpike routes, followed by descriptions of the turnpikes. The maps do not show other roads or railroads. To help you relate descriptions to the map, the publisher has assigned numbers to the turnpikes, in order of creation.
Most readers will probably want to know what remains of a turnpike today. The routes on the state maps are approximate; some turnpikes have been abandoned for over 100 years, others were not completed, and there may be no record of where exactly they went. It helps to have a detailed modern map of the area and look for appropriate street names (such as "Old Shetucket Turnpike").
Pros:
Strengths: In depth coverage of many turnpikes. Start and end dates for most. Approximate routing on state map. Some street names mentioned; helps in correlating to modern road system. Index.
Weaknesses: No route numbers mentioned (1919 printing predates route numbering); you'll need to do some detective work yourself. Some out-of-date descriptions (such as trolley tracks paved under decades ago) may complicate (or make interesting) your efforts.
The weaknesses are really not the fault of Wood or Branch Line Press. Adding modern route numbers to the text goes beyond a reprint. Perhaps this is the subject for another book.