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Book: Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings
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Authors: Ken Jennings
Tags: General, Social Science, Reference, Technology & Engineering, Human Geography, Atlases, Cartography, Atlases & Gazetteers, Trivia
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time in history, jet-age transportation has put essentially the entire Earth within the reach of these insatiable travelers. They can now dispense with the atlas, having visited every single one of its pages. They’ve become the atlas.
And in at least one case, they’ve literally become the territory as well. In 2002, Jack Longacre, the founder of the Highpointers Club, learned that he had terminal cancer. “ I want to be on the mountains,” he told friends as he prepared his will. “That’s where I belong.” So he collected film canisters, labeled them with the names of the fifty states, and distributed them to club members. When he died nine months later, they honored his last wish by scattering his ashes on the United States Geographic Survey markers atop all fifty high points, the peaks and the trailer parks, the mesas and the rest stops, every single one. One final checklist.
Chapter 9
TRANSIT
n. : a piece of surveying equipment used by mapmakers:
a theodolite with a reversible telescope
There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by. I have listened to accounts by such travelers in which every road number was remembered, every mileage recalled.
—JOHN STEINBECK
I t’s a spectacularly beautiful day for a drive in the Pacific Northwest. Mount Rainier looms above the blue waters of Commencement Bay so big and clear that it looks like a special effect. Behind it tower summer banks of golden cumulus clouds straight out of a Maxfield Parrish painting. But the two men I’m driving with seem oblivious to nature’s wonders. They’re interested in a different kind of scenery.
“That bridge we just crossed was built in 1928. It was widened ten years ago, but the plaque there is still stamped with the original date,” says Mark Bozanich, who is behind the wheel. He’s a slow, thoughtful talker with a slightly scraggly white beard, the prerogative of the wise old geek in virtually any field. “And that bridge we’re going under now still has the old Milwaukee Railroad logo, did you see that?”
John Spafford, in the passenger seat, is a somewhat younger guy with frosted blond hair, still clipped as short as it must have been during his eight-year career in army intelligence. He’s been explainingthe snarled traffic caused by a state route that essentially dead-ends to our southeast. “There’s a missing link between Tacoma and the 167, the Valley Freeway. It comes down into Puyallup, and now you’re connecting with the 512 that’ll take you south to I-5, but there are plans to expand it all the way up to the port!” Visions of a six-lane limited-access bypass from Tacoma all the way north to the Seattle suburbs dance in John’s eyes.
Mark and John are self-confessed “roadgeeks,” as these amateur highway scholars prefer to call themselves. * Just as Britain’s oft-ridiculed “trainspotters” have made a science of ticking off locomotive numbers in little notebooks, so have roadgeeks appointed themselves the guardians of America’s road network, from its mighty interstates to its tiniest country lanes. They can tell the difference between a Westinghouse streetlight and a GE one and are the only ones who notice when the lettering on interstate signage is switched over from Highway Gothic to the new Clearview font. (Hint: Look for the curved tail on the lowercase “l”!) They follow road construction projects with a regularity and fervor that others might reserve for a favorite soap opera or sports team. They know why there’s one I-76 in southern Pennsylvania and another one in northeastern Colorado, † and how to interpret West Virginia’s odd, fractionally numbered county routes. ‡
Scratch a roadgeek, and you’ll find a maphead; virtually all their stories begin with a road atlas, scrutinized for long hours during one of the endless driving vacations of childhood. Mark grew up carefully tallying the traffic
And in at least one case, they’ve literally become the territory as well. In 2002, Jack Longacre, the founder of the Highpointers Club, learned that he had terminal cancer. “ I want to be on the mountains,” he told friends as he prepared his will. “That’s where I belong.” So he collected film canisters, labeled them with the names of the fifty states, and distributed them to club members. When he died nine months later, they honored his last wish by scattering his ashes on the United States Geographic Survey markers atop all fifty high points, the peaks and the trailer parks, the mesas and the rest stops, every single one. One final checklist.
Chapter 9
TRANSIT
n. : a piece of surveying equipment used by mapmakers:
a theodolite with a reversible telescope
There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by. I have listened to accounts by such travelers in which every road number was remembered, every mileage recalled.
—JOHN STEINBECK
I t’s a spectacularly beautiful day for a drive in the Pacific Northwest. Mount Rainier looms above the blue waters of Commencement Bay so big and clear that it looks like a special effect. Behind it tower summer banks of golden cumulus clouds straight out of a Maxfield Parrish painting. But the two men I’m driving with seem oblivious to nature’s wonders. They’re interested in a different kind of scenery.
“That bridge we just crossed was built in 1928. It was widened ten years ago, but the plaque there is still stamped with the original date,” says Mark Bozanich, who is behind the wheel. He’s a slow, thoughtful talker with a slightly scraggly white beard, the prerogative of the wise old geek in virtually any field. “And that bridge we’re going under now still has the old Milwaukee Railroad logo, did you see that?”
John Spafford, in the passenger seat, is a somewhat younger guy with frosted blond hair, still clipped as short as it must have been during his eight-year career in army intelligence. He’s been explainingthe snarled traffic caused by a state route that essentially dead-ends to our southeast. “There’s a missing link between Tacoma and the 167, the Valley Freeway. It comes down into Puyallup, and now you’re connecting with the 512 that’ll take you south to I-5, but there are plans to expand it all the way up to the port!” Visions of a six-lane limited-access bypass from Tacoma all the way north to the Seattle suburbs dance in John’s eyes.
Mark and John are self-confessed “roadgeeks,” as these amateur highway scholars prefer to call themselves. * Just as Britain’s oft-ridiculed “trainspotters” have made a science of ticking off locomotive numbers in little notebooks, so have roadgeeks appointed themselves the guardians of America’s road network, from its mighty interstates to its tiniest country lanes. They can tell the difference between a Westinghouse streetlight and a GE one and are the only ones who notice when the lettering on interstate signage is switched over from Highway Gothic to the new Clearview font. (Hint: Look for the curved tail on the lowercase “l”!) They follow road construction projects with a regularity and fervor that others might reserve for a favorite soap opera or sports team. They know why there’s one I-76 in southern Pennsylvania and another one in northeastern Colorado, † and how to interpret West Virginia’s odd, fractionally numbered county routes. ‡
Scratch a roadgeek, and you’ll find a maphead; virtually all their stories begin with a road atlas, scrutinized for long hours during one of the endless driving vacations of childhood. Mark grew up carefully tallying the traffic
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