-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [MAPS-L] Seeking a map of Old U.S. 40 in the Carquinez
Straits area, California, 1925-1927
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:33:52 -0600
From: Robert T Wyatt <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship <[log in to unmask]>
CC: Angie Cope, American Geographical Society Library, UW Milwaukee
<[log in to unmask]>

Hi Ken,

Certainly not a definitive answer but perhaps useful in this quest is
this 1917 map of Oakland and Berkeley which includes a road going west
"To Walnut Creek, Martinez, Williams & Redding, also optional to
Sacramento." Apparently this was a tunneled road.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/oakland_1917.jpg

I understand that Foothill Blvd at the bottom of this map was part of Rt
66, fwiw.

Will keep looking around a bit to see if I can be more helpful.

--Robert



Angie Cope, American Geographical Society Library, UW Milwaukee wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:        Seeking a map of Old U.S. 40 in the Carquinez Straits
> area,
> California, 1925-1927
> Date:   Thu, 8 Nov 2012 23:07:41 +0000
> From:   Ken Rockwell <[log in to unmask]>
> To:     Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship
> <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>
> I have contact with an elderly gentleman who is researching the route of
> old U.S. 40.  I have helped him with the Utah section, and now he has
> contacted me looking for information on the route in California,
> particularly in the Bay Area. He has seen a reference that it once
> passed through Martinez and Crockett in Contra Costa County.  He was
> hoping I’d have a map from the 1920s that might show the designated
> route, but I do not.  Our library’s Special Collections has some guide
> books with strip maps for Utah and adjacent states, published by the
> Utah State Association Touring Bureau and Auto Club Bureau of
> Information (probably predecessors of AAA chapters), and maybe similar
> guides exist for the California stretch.
>
> My best guess is that, when U.S. 40 was designated in 1925, it was
> routed through Benicia to a ferry crossing the Carquinez Strait to
> Martinez and then followed a route west to San Pablo Avenue, which was
> certainly U.S. 40 later on.  When the first Carquinez Bridge was built
> in 1927, they rerouted the official highway over it.  So the key is to
> find a road map showing U.S. 40 during the two-year period between
> designation and rerouting.  Maybe one of your collections out there
> (library or private) includes such a map and you could look this up for
> us?  A copy, paper or scanned would be wonderful if such a map is found.
>
> Thanks…
>
> Ken Rockwell
>
> Marriott Library
>
> University of Utah