Chicago - Lake Geneva: A 100-Year Road Trip: Retracing the Route of H. Sargent Michaels' 1905 Photographic Guide for Motorists

In 1905, Homer Sargent Michaels, an automobile agent based in Chicago, developed an unusual solution to one of the thorniest problems facing early motorists: finding one’s way from one city to another along the poorly marked rural roads of the time. Michaels’s solution was to take photographs of every major intersection or turning point along a route. The Chicago Map Society, in collaboration with the Newberry Library, has compiled a new edition of one of Michaels’s 1905 guides showing the route from Chicago to Lake Geneva, a resort town in southern Wisconsin. This new edition reproduces the guide, with brief explanations and new photographs of the exact locations. Today, a new edition of one of Michaels’s 1905 guides shows the route from Chicago to Lake Geneva, a resort town in southern Wisconsin. This program will be presented by author and historian Wilbert Stroeve and uses one of these guides from 1905 to navigate from Chicago to Lake Geneva and Beloit. It shows a Chicago-Lake Geneva region that has been transformed - and even more remarkable, a few scenes that have remained unchanged. The original maps and modern maps help you carefully retrace the route.

Cost:

$10 for the public

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