Motor Trips In and Around Minneapolis

Unfolding the ‘Minneapolis Drive Yourself System.

This clever compilation highlights the routes of six recommended trips in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota. A table is provided for each, offering a brief summary and turn by turn directions. Magnifications of the downtown area and Lake Minnetonka are surrounded by a network of roads, attractions, and geographic features that heavily distort space and distance. Photographs of different locations of interest and recreational opportunities are also shown, with numerous contemporary advertisements provided on the verso.

Published in Minneapolis in 1926 by the Sparks Publishing Company, under the authority of Advertising Manager E.E. Wippler. This particular example appears to have been distributed as part of an early car rental program, the ‘Drive-Yourself System’, advertised on orange paper covers. Self-described beneath the charming pictorial map – “A tour of the City of Lakes in a comfortable new Ford where you have the pleasure of driving yourself so that you may see things at your leisure.”