Motorists Map of Illinois

Capone, Route 66, and the roads of Cook County during the Prohibition Era – a marvelous map of Illinois from the Roaring ’20s.

This uncommon road map of Illinois highlights the robust network of state highways across the Land of Lincoln during the mid-1920s. Thick, solid lines represent concrete surfaces – some of the finest roads available to the first generation of automobile tourists. Of particular interest is IL 4, along which U.S. Route 66 was routed in 1926. Dirt roads, including some state routes, and roads under construction are also marked according to the legend in the lower right. Campsites, providing rudimentary accommodations for early motorists, are pinpointed with small tents. An inset map of Cook County and a distance table of Illinois towns are further useful components of the piece.

The map was drawn by Viva Phelps, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point who worked as a rural schoolteacher before becoming a cartographer for the American Automobile Association. Her only other known cartographic work is a 1930 map of Stevens Point, held in the Raymond E. Specht Map Collection at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. Copyrighted and published in 1927 by the Motorists’ Association of Illinois, a short-lived organization that operated from the mid-1920s until 1934, when it was absorbed into the Illinois Automobile Association, a subsidiary of AAA.

The MAI’s recently acquired headquarters on South Michigan Boulevard, billed as the “Million Dollar Clubhouse,” is pictured on the verso; the building in the heart of Chicago’s Motor Row was later extensively renovated by the Illinois Automobile Association. Also featured is a multi-panel advertisement for the Hotel Metropole, which served as Chicago headquarters for Al Capone from 1925 until the summer of 1928.

Sources: Chicagology; Chicago’s Motor Row;