It was Thanksgiving weekend. James Kim and wife, Kati, with their young daughters Sabine and Penelope, were motoring on their trip home to San Francisco on I-5, then turned toward Gold Beach on Oregon’s southern coast. The road James took began to climb. There was no traffic, and soon no cell service. By evening, the Kims realized they’d taken a wrong turn, but Bear Camp Road was now one track cleaving rugged steeps. Backing up in the dark, James almost sent the Saab over a precipice.
The idling engine kept them warm as snow fell. The next day, the family waited in vain for rescue. Another night. Another morning. James stamped out an SOS in the snow of a nearby clearing. Their food was gone. The third day — and the fourth — Kati breast-fed the children. On the fifth day, the Saab ran out of gasoline. On the sixth, James lit a fire, burning all the car’s tires. The flames and smoke brought no one. Desperate to get help, James walked away from his family on the seventh morning. He was unaware that the biggest search ever mounted in the state, begun days earlier, had now drawn national attention. His father, who owned an aerospace company, had hired three helicopters and 25 people to assist local efforts.
On the ninth day, an independent chopper pilot spotted the car. Kati and her children, frost-bitten and very hungry, were soon rescued. James Kim was found dead two days later, 16 miles away.
Forest tracks not plowed in winter are typically gated. But the cause of this unbearable tragedy can’t be laid to whoever may have left Bear Camp Road open. The Kims knew little of Coast Range forest and its road systems. More tragically, it appears they didn’t understand what a paper map in the Saab could have told them.
Modern Marvel
GPS access, with a dash screen and a pleasant voice, have done away with map-wrestling in cars. No more beating paper into submission or squinting at tangled webs of thoroughfares and indecipherable symbols! Just watch the road spool out on-screen and hark to Siri. Reliance on evolving images and voice prompts absolves us of having to know anything about the route. Alas, without a long view of the route by the compass, one wrong turn can bring you where you don’t want to be, with no easy fix. “Right” and “left” are not directions.
Even in familiar places, many people can’t point with conviction to any point of the compass, or say why such orientation might be helpful. True disciples of dash-screen trailblazing regard paper maps as they might scrolls in Sanskrit.
It wasn’t always so. Explorers relied on stories from indigenous peoples and the recollections of other trail-breakers. Sketches were rare treasures; maps from any quarter commanded rapt attention, as did compass headings, travel times or distances and, of course, cautions.
As it happens, I’m writing this 220 years to the day after William Clark of President Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery exulted on hearing breakers near the mouth of the Columbia River. On November 7, 1805, he wrote: “Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian, this great Pacific Ocean which we been So long anxious to See and the roreing or noise made by the waves brakeing on the rockey Shores (as I Suppose) may be heard distictly.” He may have been a day’s trek premature, because the Columbia is five miles wide at its bar, and raucous. But a cheer 20 miles shy of salt water can be forgiven. Lewis and Clark had reeled in 4,100 miles of wilderness, navigating forks against the thrust of mighty rivers, picking paths to distant mountain passes, dodging all manner of peril. Their maps were those they made.
Your Paper Route?
Modern maps come in many forms. Hikers and hunters rely on U.S. Geological Survey maps that cover four-sided areas defined by lines of latitude and longitude. Each is called a quadrangle, or quad, and is indexed by a name, usually a prominent feature within the area. The first such map dates to 1882, three years after the USGS was established. Common now is a quad spanning 7.5 minutes of “lat and long,” a measure adopted in 1904 and standard since 1947. The scale for the 7.5-minute map is 1:24,000. There are 15- and 30-minute quads, too. USGS maps show established trails and delineate, roughly, forested and open areas. Most notably they feature topographic contour lines at measured intervals of elevation. Hence the colloquial “topo map.” The closer the contour lines the steeper the slope.
All other maps featuring current roadways can be called road maps. Forest Service maps focus on USFS lands administered by our Dept. of Agriculture. Bureau of Land Management maps issue from the Dept. of Interior. Private map-makers peddle maps of rural places, too. In the Pacific Northwest, Charles Metsker began hawking county maps in 1901. Hunters snapped them up. With Kroll Map Co. since 1999, the Metsker enterprise is still Seattle-based.
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A paper map is comfortingly physical but feather-light and tuckable. It requires neither signal nor battery. Its utility is unaffected by weather or the hour. It delivers a comprehensive view of what’s around you — not just a slice of your route. A road map may reveal few roads or many; it doesn’t demand that you take any. Once, a Texas rancher led a pal and me many leagues across vast, rugged pastures to where we could hunt. “This is a good place,” he said. “There’s a shorter route back. Just head northeast. You’ll hit a road 20 miles on.” My friend, at the wheel, blanched. He didn’t know northeast from Northrop-Grumman. He needed an address, and Siri’s soft coo. He had no address for asphalt. Siri was silent. I, a digital dunce, brought us to civilization with my compass.
No Passing Fad
In my youth, state-wide road maps were available at no cost from service station attendants, who pumped 22-cent gasoline while checking the oil and scrubbing the windscreen. Whatever these maps cost now, they’re a bargain.
Of course, you’ll want maps of every state on your route. Half a dozen state maps in a large Ziploc bag slide neatly into my car’s glove box. If you live in a cluster of small states or often take cross-country trips, you’ll want an atlas — a book of maps. The most common road atlases have been published by Rand McNally. There are myriad versions. A staple-bound 2026 atlas of the U.S. and Canada with 152 oversize pages (10 ½ x 15 ½ inches) lists at $28; a spiral-bound 304-page version lays flat for $33. The mid-size (8 x10) spiral-bound 184-page atlas fetches $23. Specialty maps such as National Geographic’s 144-page oversize Adventure Edition bring details helpful if you’re planning hikes and visits to historical sites. I’m sweet on large print, for easier reading in the car. Atlases are offered by Barnes & Noble and by the small bookshop near me, in a town with no stop-light 40 miles up a mountain road. Walmart Super Centers also carry Atlases. Look for discounted prices.
My staple-bound Rand McNally atlas is dog-eared from use. To me, driving without a map is like navigating an unfamiliar house at night without flipping a light switch. I’m astonished that many drivers –not just the young — prefer road images snaking across a small dash screen.
It’s true that to read a map (not just check a marked route at a glance) you must stop the car. Also, you may have to don reading glasses. And at night you’ll need the roof-light. Most annoying to the digital faithful: A state road map won’t herd you to a street address in a town that appears on paper as a dot.
The “Old” Way
While the final approach to a destination you’ve not seen can add time and frustration to a drive, it has redeeming qualities. Having to ask directions is an act of humility, a vanishing virtue. Men who ask impress people who think men incapable of contrition.
Excepting that final mile to a destination you’ve never seen, navigating by map should bring you efficiently along your route. It will be one you’ve chosen of many shown — not a default track dictated by your dash. You can an alternate path, if not shorter, then more interesting.
Most maps have a compass symbol or an arrow indicating north. Road maps put north at the top of the paper. The difference between true north and magnetic north, significant for cross-country travel at high latitudes, can be ignored on road trips.
A map’s “neatlines” or borders show where the cartographer stopped. Straight neatlines common to road maps corral slivers of adjoining states, for perspective and to make trip-planning and map-reading easy across state boundaries. Natural borders (ocean’s shoreline) can mark off mapped areas. So too legal markers (the limits of designated wilderness).
Every road map has a legend that explains its symbols, lines and colors that represent real-world features. The legend shows the relationship of map measures to actual distance: the scale of miles. A map key is like a legend but lacks a scale of miles. While most maps helpfully include publication dates, these can be hard to find and are absent on some state maps. I’m loath to discard maps; but using one long out of date can confuse, as unheralded signs, exits and service centers rush past.
Road maps help you plan fuel stops and target freeway exits. In country laced with rivers, maps show ferries as well as bridges. Coastal salt-water ferry routes are traced on road maps of my home state of Washington. They’re the most convenient way to reach islands in Puget Sound. Passenger-only routes — that is, no vehicles — are so indicated, seasonal restrictions noted.
Discerning the Path
Colors matter. Some are almost universal — red for major thoroughfares, for instance. Two-lane and divided four-lane sections may be distinguished by their width on the map. A black line commonly indicates a paved local or county road. An “empty” center between thin black lines often means the road is unimproved, or gravel. These may not be maintained year-round. Interrupted lines often show primitive roads that may or may not be open to public access. Colors of controlled-access freeways differ on state maps. My Washington highway map shows I-90 in orange. I-84 on an Idaho map is bright green; on an Oregon it’s a darker green with a white centerline.
Maps also use color to indicate property ownership or type. Shades of green usually indicate state and national forests and parks. A Washington map shows NPS lands in dark green, USFS lands in lighter green. National wildlife and tribal lands are tan. Oregon instead colors tribal reservations gray. A lighter gray distinguishes U.S. military reservations on Washington maps. A dark blue line through the light blue of the Columbia River indicates commercially navigable water to its junction with the Snake. Oregon has the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area in pink.
To sum, if legends of two maps match as regards one feature, they may not on others. Every map has its own legend.
Maps of big places can feature “out-takes,” or boxes of larger scale to add detail to specific areas. Commonly, they’re of a city noted by color or a directing line from the map to the box. A spot the size of a pea is thus “magnified” to useful scale, with main streets and beltways visible to help drivers navigate the metropolis. Conversely, the map can appear as an inset — Rocky Mountain National Park, for example, illustrated as a colored swatch on a small outline of Colorado on the map’s periphery, to show where the Park lies within the state.
Following the Path
A map is useful only to the extent it’s understood. A travel map is best studied before a trip, and used often to confirm routing. Besides preventing wrong turns, a map can alert you to any you’ve made and bring you back on track — provided you consult it before you’re stranded. Sparing a brush with tragedy, a map allows adventure to grab you by the lapels and tug you along a route Siri never heard of.
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