1897 Bicycle Road Maps and Atlas of Wisconsin

Bicycle Road Maps in Sections of the State of Wisconsin, copyrighted and published by the Wisconsin Division of the League of American Wheelmen in 1897 — reproduced here in full color complete: the index map and all twelve sectional maps, covering every county in the state.

This was a boxed set of twelve folding pocket maps, sold to League members for fifty cents in the case with the index and to everyone else for two dollars, at the height of the bicycle boom and the Good Roads movement it drove. Orders and road reports went to C. B. Case at the L.A.W. Map Department on Milwaukee Street in Milwaukee, and the maps themselves were compiled by M. C. Rotier.

Drawn at four miles to the inch, the sheets show every road in the state, distinguishing ordinary roads from the best cycling roads, with railroads, township lines and county lines. What makes them extraordinary is the rating: along each route runs a code combining grade and surface — 1 for level, 2 for hilly, 3 for very hilly, paired with A for good, B for medium and C for bad. A rider in 1897 could trace a route from Madison to Milwaukee and know before setting out which stretches were level and hard-packed and which were very hilly and bad.

The twelve sections cover the state entire: the southeast from Dane and Milwaukee down to Kenosha; the Fox Valley and the lakeshore to Door County; the southwest lead region; the Mississippi and Chippewa valleys; the central sand counties; the pineries of Marathon, Langlade and Oconto; the northwest from Polk to Chippewa; and the cutover north through Vilas, Oneida, Bayfield and Douglas.

For anyone interested in Wisconsin before the automobile, in the Good Roads movement, or in the roads and villages their family knew, these sheets record the state in a detail no other source preserves — an essential reference for cyclists, local historians, and collectors of Wisconsin history.

26 pages. 8.5" x 11". Full color. Paperback.

Satisfaction guaranteed or you can send it back!