raginrayguns:

fruityyamenrunner:

transgenderer:

so confused by how people functioned before google maps and such. like. its not like the maps had street numbers on them. like maybe you know vaguely where the ranges are. and then like. once you know your start and end points you just like look at the map and like pick some roads that connect them. how do you know which way is faster

you didn’t

there’s a stephen king story about a woman who’s always optimizing routes, and she does it just by driving them and writing down what’s on the odometer.Ah, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, I guess it must be. Of course it turns out that she eventually find “shortcuts” with less distance than a direct route.

In Los Angeles, everyone carried a Thomas Guide in their car – a ring-bound book of maps with streets alphabetically listed in an index (also, street numbers were a consistent coordinate grid). Otherwise you’d just learn the main travel roads in your area (state highways, Main Street, arterials, etc.) and people would just give directions for the last bit from there.