Reading Street Maps

The Traveler's Aid

If you've never been there, you'll need a street map. These ubiquitous documents are sold at gas stations, given away as premiums and available on a dozen or more websites. Unfortunately, most schools teach geographic and political map-reading skills but leave out street maps or cover them only briefly. Most street maps, however, follow the same conventions and aren't so difficult to figure out if you're willing to spend some time studying them.

Streets and Highways

Streets (the primary purpose for a street map) are drawn with lines that demonstrate the importance or condition of the street. Interstates, highways, through streets, local streets and rural roads are generally drawn in increasingly smaller, less complex lines. Examples of each of these streets is given in the map "key," a box drawn somewhere around the edge of the map. Keys may also contain examples of paved or unpaved roads, an important feature when the area is unknown territory. Street names are scribed on the street or next to it, and interstate numbers are noted on a red, white and blue shield on the line. States also use unique shields to number roads: occasionally, county roads will have unique shields as well. Investigate several street maps before presuming competence.

Codes

Other symbols may indicate hospitals, schools and universities, parks (national and local), historic sites, tourist resources and other points of interest. These will generally be included in the key. Many maps will provide charts that give approximate distances between cities. Most maps will include a list of cities with coordinates (like latitude and longitude) that are arranged around the sides of the map to help find locations. Occasionally all of this will be included in a key, but more often, the key, a distance chart and an index will be scattered over its surface wherever the mapmaker can fit them. Other features on street maps may include rivers (with bridges) and other water and elevations (steep hills or mountains take more time to traverse). Maps that include interstate or other limited-access highways will have codes for interchanges, on and off ramps, lane configuration and toll information.

Scales

Scales are often included in keys but are more often found in a corner of the map if more than one map is on a page such as in an atlas, where inset maps give details for cities on a state page. Use them when both cities aren't listed on the distance chart. Scales give examples of distance used to calculate how far one point is from another. They are drawn in inches equivalent to miles on American maps---or maps prepared for American tourists. Most of the world uses the metric system, though, so many international maps will be drawn in centimeters equivalent to kilometers. Scales can be used for planning trips or projecting where a trip will end after a certain period of time (8 hours on an interstate highway will generally cover about 400 miles, including a total of an hour for meals without children).

Resources

• Free printable maps
• Online maps have less detail but are often easier to read