Local History

Automobile Tour Guide Books

This article originally appeared in Exchange, a newsletter published by the Wisconsin Historical Society. (Volume 33, Number 1, Winter 1991) It is the 13th in a series of articles titled Researching Community History. The series highlights the Society's resources available to local historians. It was written by Tom McKay, retired local history coordinator for the Wisconsin Historical Society.

America's devotion to the automobile has played a part in the 20th-century history of every community in Wisconsin. The last column in this series examined the bits and pieces of local history that researchers can gather from state highway maps. Before highway maps became the standard guide for automobile travel, adventuresome motorists took to Wisconsin roads with the aid of automobile tour books. In the pages of these guides, local historians will find useful information about the dawning of the automobile age in their communities. The landmarks that tour book publishers used to guide travelers from community to community also offer more fragments of the early 20th-century history of rural Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Historical Society's collection of automobile tour books includes examples from as early as 1908 until well into the 1920s. A small number of examples exists for the earliest years. For local historians, the most interesting volumes will be those published before 1918, the year when Wisconsin began designating numbered state highways. The tour books prior to that year relied on detailed directions which identified frequent landmarks to guide motorists from one destination to the next. For example, the 1910 Annual Tour Book of the Wisconsin State Automobile Association used 129 entries to guide travelers from Wausau to Appleton, a distance of 102.9 miles.

While many tour book entries consist of a simple "cross R.R." or "pass left hand road," scanning route descriptions can reveal interesting details about the communities and rural environs along the routes. County historical societies frequently encounter a dearth of historical information about the rural hamlets that once dotted the landscape but have largely disappeared over the last 90 years. The routes described in the tour books passed through scores of these hamlets in Wisconsin. Where the route was complex or difficult to describe, the authors included more descriptive facts to guide travelers through a rural community. For example, the 1910 Wisconsin State Automobile Association tour book reveals that the hamlet of Edwards (near Howard's Grove) had an operating cheese factory and saloon. On the other hand, King's Official Route Guide for 1916 indicates that Elm City (between Antigo and Rhinelander) was just a railroad station. Entries in this guide also show that the Clark County hamlet of Spokesville had a church, creamery and store in operation. Although the tour books contain only partial information about any hamlet, the facts listed in the entries can be valuable additions to files that county historical societies maintain about their rural communities.

Some local historians may find unusual and pleasant surprises as they conduct research in the automobile tour books. King's 1916 guide suggests that travelers nearing Green Lake turn off to "Mitchells Glenn, a place worth seeing, with fine views and a cabin full of historic curios of Wisconsin." Some publishers found that even the most detailed tour books could be made more accurate, or more attractive to buyers, by including photographs of key turns or junctions. These photographs, taken from the point of view of an automobile, constitute scenes which most local historical societies will not hold in their collections. The Wisconsin State Automobile Association 1910 tour book shows part of a rural flour mill near Whitehall and an excellent view of Ray Mercale's Cash Grocery in Palmyra among approximately twenty-five photographs. The Wisconsin Historical Society's tour book collection also includes a photographic automobile map of the route from Chicago to Milwaukee. Published in 1905, this booklet contains a photograph of every turn and many landmarks along the route. Despite the mixed quality of their photographs, the tour books will provide previously unknown views of several communities.

Local historians may find the automobile tour books most useful for the insights they offer into the coming of the automobile age to a community. The publications concentrated on descriptions of road surfaces. Portage County historians can locate the beginning of brick pavement in Stevens Point on the route from Knowlton by using the 1910 Wisconsin State Automobile Association tour book. That same book identifies a stretch of corduroy road, made from logs, between Weyauwega and Freemont. All of the tour books clearly distinguish dirt, clay, and sand road surfaces from each other. Those identified as clay or sand roads may have accompanying comments about passability in poor weather. Researchers can discover city streets which had macadam paving and country roads which were favored with a gravel surface.

Companies printed automobile tour books as profit making ventures. Display advertisements and directory listings in the tour books contributed to the income generated by the publications. These advertisements contribute today to the history of local companies that made early entries into automobile related businesses. The 1908-09 Automobile Blue Book featured a 72-page directory of automobile related businesses throughout the state. Listings included garages, automobile dealers, gasoline retailers, mechanics, hotels, automobile manufacturers, and specialty equipment dealers of all kinds. Entries for Milwaukee businesses predominate, but listings of businesses in all parts of Wisconsin appear. Display ads in the various tour books promote everything from Cream City car tops to the Hotel Marinette to four models of Johnson vehicles which were manufactured in Milwaukee in the early 1900s.

During the early years of this century, Wisconsin residents hit the roads in the invention that would revolutionize the American lifestyle. Automobile tour books reveal a part of that story as it unfolded in communities across the state. These rare volumes can be consulted by visiting the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society. The next article in this series will examine another early record of the automobile's impact on Wisconsin's local history and a record which is available on microfilm in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin's library, the monthly magazine titled Wisconsin Motorist.