It’s road trip season!  When I was growing up my Dad refused to stop the car for restrooms but would pull over and meditate for what seemed like hours on the historical jargon and landscape of each and every roadside historical marker.  It’s a rare Indian or Civil War Battle, sheep rustling, Lewis & Clark crossing point, or first general store that occurred adjacent to a rest stop with facilities.

What’s worse is that whoever wrote the text for those markers really assumed that it was such an important event that all subsequent generations would know the back story with no further explanations needed or so non-pc that all indians[sic] were the enemy.

I once encountered a local and probably self-published book of roadside markers in the library but it consisted of poorly printed black and white photos so bad that the inscriptions weren’t readable. Finally, in the modern age there is a solution in the Historical Marker Database. You can even trace your route on a Google map and see all the historical marker points along the way or look them up by state, topic, or key word. Even better, there are links to more information and finally the back story – what really happened, what tribes were involved, and why things turned out the way they did.  So you don’t have to wonder and then forget to look it up when you finally get to a computer. The downside is not all markers are in there yet.  Still, it beats driving by that brown freeway sign noting an historical marker is ahead wondering what the heck ever happened there as you note the number of miles to the nearest rest stop with bathrooms…