National Read a Road Map Day

“The road goes every onward”, but where does the road in fact go? We could always ask our handy-dandy GPS, but National Read a Road Map Day a day dedicated to going back before the time of such handy little devices.

Instead it heralds back to a time when it was actually possible to hold a road map upside down, or stand over the hood of your car on the side of the road with it spread out.

The map represented adventure, it represented places unseen and roads untraveled, and was the ultimate guide back to where we started. If we could find out where we were on it.

How to Celebrate National Read a Road Map Day

Read a Map

On this day, it’s time to bust out an old paper map, it doesn’t even have to be a recent one, and discover the wonders that these maps hold. No one says the map you read even has to be recent!

Ever found yourself curious about the roads that Rome was so famed for? There are maps that exist for those, showing what ends of the earth they all travelled to.

But let’s assume you’re going to stick to a more modern map. Now we’re going to give you a tutorial on how to read one!

Find a Local Map

The first thing you’re going to want to do is get your hands on is a map of your local area, and a Road Atlas.

This last is particularly useful, as it includes a national map plus one of each state. You can generally find these in gas stations, bookstores, supermarkets, or if nothing else you can locate one online.

You’re going to want to get one that’s been printed within the last three or four years to make sure they’re accurate. Nothing worse than finding out a road or highway on a map has changed names and you’re driving right by it!

Get Into the Details

The next step is an easy one, you’ll note that almost all maps, and especially the atlas, will have a grid laid out, numbered going one direction, lettered going the other.

You can use these to find the co-ordinates of your starting point, and your destination. If you check the back of the atlas or map, you’ll find that prominent towns are listed by their coordinates on the map.

Locating and marking these with removable stickers will make finding them easier in the future, and give you a clear idea of your route.

Make a Route

The next step is doing just that, finding your route! There’s usually more than one way to get from a starting point to a destination, and there’s lots of options to take along the way.

If a highway is available, those generally serve as the most direct route between two points, otherwise you’ll have to look for main roads, and side roads. It’s always a good idea to check out all of these to find the route that suits your needs, after all, the highway is fast, but it’s not much for taking in the scenery.

The way you can tell what all of these are is by checking out the ‘legend’ or ‘key’ on the side of the map. These lists of symbols will tell you how to identify cities, highways, interstates, country roads, unpaved roads and side roads, and manmade landmarks.

Lots of different options for the intrepid traveler. By taking the time to look over the map and study its contents, you’ll make sure you’re never lost, even when your phone battery dies and your GPS cuts out. All of this gained by doing just one simple thing! Celebrating National Read a Road Map Day!

National Read a Road Map Day

Roman Route Lists Worked More Like Timetables Than Maps

Long before modern road atlases, Romans used written “itineraries” that listed routes as sequences of place names with distances, almost like a timetable rather than a picture of space.

The Antonine Itinerary, compiled in the 3rd century, records some 225 routes across the empire, giving mileages between towns so travelers could calculate journey lengths even without a visual map.  

The Tabula Peutingeriana Stretches the Roman World into a Strip Map

One of the most famous survivals of Roman road mapping is the Tabula Peutingeriana, a medieval copy of a late Roman map that compresses Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia into a long, narrow strip. Rather than showing realistic geography, it emphasizes connections along the road network, foregrounding routes, way stations, and distances over accurate shapes of coastlines or countries. 

The First Surviving Topographic “Road Map” Comes from Ancient Egypt

What is often called the world’s oldest surviving topographic map is the Turin Papyrus Map from around 1150 BCE, drawn for an Egyptian mining expedition in the Wadi Hammamat.

It shows hills, quarries, temples, and routes with colors and annotations, giving not just directions but information about resources and hazards along the way, a concept that reappears in modern road atlases with symbols for services and terrain.   

John Ogilby’s 1675 Britannia Turned Roads into Measured Strip Maps

In 17th‑century England, John Ogilby’s “Britannia” (1675) standardized the mile at 1,760 yards and published 100 detailed strip maps of major roads.

Each plate shows a route as a series of parallel strips with mile markers, river crossings, and towns, arranged so travelers could follow a road visually and know exact distances, much like following a modern state highway map.  

Automobile Road Maps Emerged with the Car Itself 

Purpose-made road maps for motorists appeared soon after cars became practical. In the United States, Rand McNally issued its “New Automobile Road Map of New York City & Vicinity” in 1904, using a special wax engraving process to mass-produce detailed highway information at low cost, which helped make the road atlas a staple of early 20th‑century car travel.  

Gas Stations Once Gave Away Millions of Free Road Maps

During the mid‑20th century “golden age” of motoring, American oil companies treated road maps as marketing tools and distributed them for free at service stations.

By the 1960s, firms such as Gulf, Texaco, and Shell collectively printed tens of millions of state and regional maps annually, often branded with their logos, which shaped how drivers pictured national and state highway networks.  

Paper Maps May Strengthen Spatial Memory More Than GPS

Studies in cognitive psychology suggest that people who learn an area using paper maps often build stronger “survey knowledge” of the layout than those who follow turn‑by‑turn GPS instructions.

Experiments have found that GPS users tend to remember fewer landmarks and have more trouble drawing accurate sketch maps afterward, while map users develop a more flexible mental model of the environment.