Chicago and Vicinity Road Map [Title on Verso]

The roads of Cook County, Illinois during the Roaring 20s.

This eye-catching antique map of Cook County, Illinois was copyrighted in 1923-1924 by the Chicago Motor Club and printed locally by Walton & Spencer Co. The image highlights the world of recreation and leisure available to motorists in the Chicagoland region during the Prohibition Era. Forest preserves, parks, golf courses, and cemeteries – all popular outdoor retreats – are brightly colored in green and listed in the adjacent indices. A robust network of paved (red) and gravel (black) roads provides convenient access to these and numerous resort towns, lakes, and rivers.

In order to promote the publishers’ special interests, local railroads are pointedly omitted from the image. The verso of the sheet lists over 200 Chicago Motor Club locations across the Tri-State region of northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and northern Indiana. A map of these stations and the Atlantic Yellowstone Pacific Highway are also provided, along with several advertisements and an overview of local parking regulations.

Cook County during the 1920s was largely defined by the metropolis of Chicago, then a hotbed of illegal activity fueled in large part by Prohibition. Rival gangs violently fought for control of the illicit alcohol trade, leading to the rise of Al Capone and his takeover of the Chicago Outfit in 1925. The year of the map’s copyright, 1924, saw the gang (still then under Joe Torrio) move most of its operations to Cicero, just outside city limits.