Auto Trail
The system of auto trails was an informal network of marked routes that existed in the United States and Canada in the early part of the 20th century. Marked with colored bands on telephone poles, the trails were intended to help travellers in the early days of the automobile.
Auto trails were usually marked and sometimes maintained by organizations of private individuals. Some, such as the Lincoln Highway, maintained by the Lincoln Highway Association, were well-known and well-organized, while others were the work of fly-by-night promoters, to the point that anyone with enough paint and the will to do so could set up a trail; trails were not usually linked to road improvements, though counties and states often prioritized road improvements because they were on trails.
In the mid-to-late 1920s, the auto trails were essentially replaced in the United States with the system of numbered U.S. Highways. Similar numbering schemes had begun to be implemented in the Canadian provinces as well.
Read more about Auto Trail: List of Auto Trails
Famous quotes containing the word trail:
“Most of us don’t have mothers who blazed a trail for us—at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women’s movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums—what should they be? how should they act?—that became our uncertainties.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)