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Show 1917 Automobile Blue Books Appear Containing Valuable Information H 1ST Tl 1817 BLUE BOOKS SHOW Tp A Brief Review of the Ten I' Volumes Covering 400,000 I Miles of Roads in the United States and Canada. t Motorists all over tho country will ' be more than casually Interested In tho announcement that the Automobile Blue Books for 1917 are novr ready j and for sale. Ever since touring be-1 be-1 gan to take hold .is one of our great national pastimes, the issuance of a 1 now Blue Book series has been regarded regard-ed as a mile-stone in the progress of tho motor car industry. For, while ' touring was given its first great impetus im-petus by tho improvement of automobiles automo-biles to tho point where they ran con sistently rather than by the grace of Providence its development, of later years, has been most largely aided by tho building nnd charting of roads. I Particularly the charting, since It is one thing to have good roads to tour I on, and quite another to be able to find - I your way about on them without get- 'JjLJ ting Involved in a hopeless tangle. jSmlfcV Through the whole development of gi3j2 ur road facilities tho Bluo Books have tflp been closo on tho heels of the con-JH. con-JH. structlon gangs. As a result there is now scarcely a traversible cow path in these moro than ever United States that has not been scouted and duly recorded re-corded by Blue Book sleuths. Sixteen years ago, In the old childhood child-hood days, when a hundred mile run was considered almost supernatural and justly, when 3rou recall the machines ma-chines of that nge tho first Automo-'bllo Automo-'bllo Bluo Book made its appearance. It was a slim affair of some two hun-idred hun-idred pages, and covered, covered, mind you, the entire United States. Its running run-ning directions were beautifully direct, in a naive sort of way. In fact, wo may admit, without danger of being accused of casting malicious asper-.slons asper-.slons on tho child that has become fa-ithor fa-ithor of a very big man, that the Blue tBook of sixteen years ago quite frank-fly frank-fly passed tho buck to the motorists who used them. In those days, If you contemplated a trip from Now York to, isay, St. Paul, and turned to the Blue Book for guidance, you would find v .something like this: "Go to Pitts- burgh, then Cleveland, then Toledo, Si then Chicago, then to St. Paul." L) Perhaps this quotation Is not abso- Sltoj lutely accurate. The Book may have ftljr1 een a NtUc moro explicit but not By .,.' much. more. Klh- This one slim book of 1901 has igrown until today It has branched out into ten thick volumes. The two hun- dred pages of the first iBsue have been increased to over 10,000, The few imeagor maps havo been added to so . copiously that there are now more than 1,000. The fow thousand miles of motor roads described in the first edition havo grown to -100,000 almost every tourablo road in the United States and,parts of Canada. One of the new volumes is the Chicago Chi-cago Metropolitan Blue Book (Volume C), which does for the great central ,city what the New York Metropolitan i Blue Book h.'is done for two years. The Automobile Bluo Book forms a t complete guide to tho United States. It tells the motorist where to go and bow to get there and back. It gives him detailed running directions down I to one-tenth of a mile, for every road j he may want to use. And It shows ' him, so far as possible, what roads are in good condition and what are not. In this year's edition there has been a redivision of the states among' the is& tcn vlume3' In eacn book the maps IfS have been drawn so as to overlap, for a few miles, the adjacent territory in the next volume. By using two or moro volumes in conjunction, the motorist may cover with ease an enormous area of ground. In contents the books run as follows: Volumo 1 New York State and Ad- Jacent Canada Tho amount of territory covered in tho 1917 volume Js the same as that lor laib, out there is more detail or roads. The territory Long Island, Con-; Con-; nectlcut as far as New Hav-en, Dan-bury Dan-bury and Waterbury; Massachusetts as far as Plttsfleld; Vermont as far ' as Rutland and Burlington; Ohio as far as Cleveland; Pennsylvania as f far as Pittsburgh and Delawato Water Gap; and Now Jersey as far as Trenton, Tren-ton, Asbury Park and Atlantic City. The resort sections aro covered more thoroughly than ever before, and many ; small routes have been developed. Volume 2 New England and Maritime Provinces i A great Improvement In this volumo 3s the outlining of a northern route from Quebec to Edmunston, Me., via Rivlero du Loup, thus opening a new course across the northern country j and enabling the motorist to go . , through the White mountains and At-1 At-1 y-w lantio coast sections, or vice versa, A -without retracing his road. The vol- time covers Long Island, New York H5 City and Eastern New York stato ns far as the eastern shore of the Hudson, Hud-son, Albany and tho Lako George and Lake Champlain section; Montreal I and Quebec. .Volume 3 New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, and West Virginia. The feature of this book is the new route to Philadelphia from New York. This Ib twelve miles longer than the old route, but will savo the motorist time, as it crosses a much lesB crowd-f crowd-f ed area. Edensburg, Pa., has been made a new routo center. The abolition aboli-tion of tho motor car forry from Now : York City to Atlantic Highlands, N. J., has necessitates changes in some of the routes in that section. Altogether, Alto-gether, about 500 miles of now routes (have been added. j Volume 4 Michigan, Indiana, Ohio ' and Kentucky JL ? The nrea covered by the 1917 vol- ume is moro restricted than that of last year, but it is covered moro thoroughly. thor-oughly. Wisconsin and Illinois have been moved to another volumo. Extensive Ex-tensive routes into adjacont states, and trunk-line routes across Illinois to Chicago aro given. Volume 5 Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wiscon-sin, Iowa, and Upper Peninsula of Michigan Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri" are the only states in this volume that were Included In Volume 5 of last year. Tho old trunk linos have been routed again, with Improvements and (minor details recorded, while tho great road building activity of last year has added add-ed a good deal of mileage. Volume 6 The Southwestern States This includes tho southern states eaBt of the Mississippi; Washington, D. C and a single trunk-line route to New York City. Tallahassee has been made a new route center, and dozens of new Florida routes have been added. add-ed. Volume 7 The Western States This section is made up of the greater great-er part of the old Volume 5 and one state from old Volume 6. A Blue Book car has spent more than four months in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and , Louisiana this season getting additional addition-al road information. Extension routes lead to Spokane, Salt Lake City and Phoenix and there are trunk lino routes eastward to the Mississippi river riv-er This volume Is indispensable to tourists taking the southern trans-continental route Volume 8 The Pacific Coast States The great number of added routes in the Pacific coast states has necessitated necessi-tated many changes in Volume 8 for this year. The volume has been divided divid-ed into two sections, No. 1 including California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona, Arizo-na, and No. 2 including Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Last year the Pacific Pa-cific coast volume contained only California, Cal-ifornia, Oregon and Washington. The amount of new information for Volume 8 made It advisable to publish it in two sections instead of one. Volume A New York City Metropolitan Metropol-itan Blue Book The radius about New York City has boon increased from 75 to 100 miles in this volumo of the Metropolitan Guide. It gives 150 round trips to all the delightful suburbs and resort sections sec-tions In the vicinity of tho metropolis. These trips are half-day, full-day, week end and three-day runs. The New Volume C Chicago Metropolitan Metro-politan Blue Book This Is the first volume of Chicago's Blue Book. It contains 150 round trips within a radius of 100 miles of Chicago. Chica-go. It is similar to the New York City volume in that these trips will be half day, full day, week end and three day runs. How the Information Is Gathered The task of gathering Information and furnlBhing reliable and up-to-date data on the 400,000 miles of roadways covered by the Automobile Blue Books Is no slight one. The Blue Book maintains thirteen scout cars which spend the better part of every year going over old routeB, finding new ones, charting all roads, investigating hotels, garages, Bupply stations and so on. The data thus gathered Is Bent to the editorial offices, where It Is collected, col-lected, classified and used to build up the volumes tho year 'round. A staff of draftsmen is kept busy all year preparing pre-paring new maps and correcting old ones. This year practically every map Is new. In addition to the valuable information informa-tion contained in the books themselves the Bluo Books give still another service. ser-vice. Any owner of one or more volumes vol-umes who fills in and malls the blue card that is tucked into every book becomes entitled to free Information of a special nature regarding trips, hotels, ho-tels, condition of roads and the like. This means that if you want to travel to a certain place by a route different from that given In the printed running directions In tho Blue Book Itself, you are at liberty to write to the Blue Book oillces asking that the Touring Bureau make up a route specially for you. You may do this as many times as you wish during tho 1917 season, so long as your card shows that you are the owner of a 1917 Blue Book. Correspondents all over the country keep the Touring Bureau Bu-reau Informed as to road conditions at all times and the Blue Book's scout cars are on the road the year through. |