From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Old style Highway markings

Lincoln Highway

Dixie Highway

The system of auto trails was an informal network of marked routes that existed in the United States and Canada in the early part of the 20th century. Marked with colored bands on telephone poles, the trails were intended to help travellers in the early days of the automobile.

Auto trails were usually marked and sometimes maintained by organizations of private individuals. Some, such as the Lincoln Highway and the Lincoln Highway Association, were well-known and well-organized, while others were the work of fly-by-night promoters, to the point that anyone with enough paint and the will to do so could set up a trail; trails were not usually linked to road improvements, though counties and states often prioritized road improvements because they were on trails.

In the mid-to-late 1920s, the auto trails were essentially replaced in the United States with the system of numbered U.S. Highways. Similar numbering schemes had begun to be implemented in the Canadian provinces as well.

List of auto trails

This transport-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

See also

• List of U.S. Routes
• U.S. Highway association

References

• American Automobile Association, Highways Green Book, 1922, pp. 418-420
• Clason Map Company, Midget Map of the Transcontinental Trails of the United States, 1923
• Automobile Club of America and National Highways Association, United States Touring Map, 1924
• Clason Map Company, Touring Atlas of the United States, 1925
• Rand McNally Auto Road Atlas, 1926, accessed via the Broer Map Library

External links

• North American Auto Trails
• Richard F. Weingroff, From Names to Numbers: The Origins of the U.S. Numbered Highway System