Automobile Road Map Between Portland and Boston

A recommended road trip along the Atlantic Coast during the Progressive Era.

This rare and ephemeral guide map presents recommended automobile routes along the Atlantic Coast between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, decades before the interstate era transformed the journey into a routine highway trip. A relatively straightforward cartographic design emphasizes the suggested roads while identifying towns, geographic features, and landmarks along the way. Recognizing that early motorists might break up the roughly 120-mile journey or encounter mechanical difficulties en route, the publisher promotes a variety of hotels, restaurants, garages, and automobile services. This intimate relationship between local businesses and road map publishers would become a defining feature of early commercial road cartography.

The verso offers additional advertisements for the 35% Automobile Supply Company, Paul’s Pilgrim Auto Tours, the Hotel Wentworth, and an excursion to Poland Spring. The work was published by the Maine Tourist Agency, located in Portland’s Y.M.C.A. building, and distributed through the Information Bureau of the Board of Trade. Although undated, internal evidence, including the advertisement for the newly rebuilt Saco House, early automobile tourism imagery, and the open-air motor coach pictured, suggests a publication date of approximately 1913 to 1915.

A fascinating and scarce promotional artifact from the dawn of automobile tourism in New England, this map captures the transitional moment when private motorists were beginning to replace rail travelers as the primary audience for regional travel guides. No examples have been located in WorldCat, the Boston Public Library, or other major online institutional databases as of July 2026.