Before the Interstates
So, even though Kerouac didn’t have the Interstates to drive on, he at least had a series of US and state highways to get him where he was going. Even when he was touring Mexico, there were well defined motor ways. And before Kerouac took his journeys, my Oklahoma neighbors to the north still had Route 66 to take them out of the dust bowl.
But in 1903, they didn’t have any of that. AND the cars were still pretty crappy. Leave it to Ken Burns to give us the very first cross-country road trip, which turned into the first cross-country automobile race. Kerouac and his buddies were all worried about having gas money to get them to the other side, taking money from hitchhikers and coasting the downhill mountain roads. But they had nothing on Horatio Nelson Jackson.
Check out Horatio’s Drive