Discover America

Among the ephemera I inherited from my grandparents was a 1967 Humble Oil Company Touring Guide. From my understanding, you could contact Humble Oil’s travel division and ask them to prepare a map for your travels with the route from your departure point to your destination marked, including alternatives (if available) for fastest route, a scenic route and a different return route (which would make me happy as I often return a different way than the outbound trip to see different things, much to my wife’s chagrin). Accompanying this map would be the Touring Guide booklet outlining travel tips, how to read maps and other information the intrepid traveler might need. I’ll include a link to a PDF of the entire booklet at the end of this article, but thought I’d point out a few interesting items first.

A sample map showing the three possible permutations of a route that could be provided by the prepared map
I, too, often hold a roadmap while fishing for salmon
Thanks for clarifying

 

“Hey kids! Let’s plan our vacation and have some Purple Drank!”
The current roster of National Parks is 63, so either this list is incomplete or the last 55 years have blessed us with a lot more

Interestingly, this list includes Oklahoma’s long-gone Platt National Park, which I previously wrote a bit about here.

Nothing like going on vacation and touring factories! (Though I’d probably enjoy it, once again to my wife’s chagrin).
“…completion by 1972”
This seems like too much math for me to do while planning a vacation
As a resident of Texas, I can assure you that global warming has ensured there’d be some red on this map if it were from this century
“Smile son, for Old Sol is coming to take us to our eternal reward!”
That’s about $311 in 2022 money, which seems like you could do better than today (unless you stay in an AirBNB where the owner charges as much as the room for a “cleaning fee”)
If you have a station wagon, you can turn the rear into a dangerous playground for your kids!
Were they just ignoring the fact that Hawaii also became a state in 1959 after Alaska and would thus be the newest state? Did they refuse to acknowledge it because you can’t get there by car?
Canada hadn’t bought into that whole “metric” thing yet
Canada was still using Her Majesty’s Gallons
Canada didn’t change to the metric system until 1975. The United States didn’t change until never.

You can download the complete PDF for your nostalgic enjoyment here.

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