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Road Maps: Companies
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Oil company road maps have a special significance for Pennsylvania because the oil industry started near Titusville with Edwin Drake's oil well in 1859. Gulf, based in Pittsburgh, was the first oil company to hand out free road maps beginning in 1914; these maps carried route numbers that referred to detailed driving instructions published by the Automobile Blue Book Publishing Company. Most other oil companies began distributing maps in the 1920's, when route signs made using a simple map more feasible. General Drafting, Rand McNally, and H. M. Gousha dominated oil company road map publishing; other names were Mid-West, National Survey, Gallup, Diversified Map, R. R. Donnelly. Rand McNally began making maps for Gulf in 1922. General Drafting made maps almost exclusively for Standard Oil (Esso) beginning in 1923.
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Rand McNally's first road map, the New Automobile Road Map of New York City & Vicinity, was published in 1904. In 1910, the company acquired the line of Photo-Auto Guides from G.S. Chapin, which provided photographs of routes and intersections with directions. Andrew McNally II (son of Frederick McNally) personally took photos on his honeymoon for the Chicago-to-Milwaukee edition. The company continued to expand its book publishing business, with best-selling children's books such as The Real Mother Goose (1916) and Kon-Tiki (1950).
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A handful of dairy companies have issued road maps. This example was issued by the Jersey Farms Milk Service of Nashville, Tennessee. This map dates from the pre-Interstate highway era. In a theme reminiscent of many oil company maps, this firm's map advertises its milk as "the power fuel of people".
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