VALLEY CITY, N.D. — When North Dakota's pioneer settlers came by horse and wagon to Valley City, their route took them beneath the Hi-Line Bridge. With the arrival of the Model T came primitive dirt roads and the need for maps.
At the Barnes County Historical Society Museum, just past the giant Triceratops, museum Director Wes Anderson is still breathless after a family donated a AAA map book from 1914.
"Considering what we have today as real roads, back then it's closer to Lewis and Clark than what we have today," Anderson said.
Anderson considered the donation to be priceless.
"(People) find old things and they bring it to me and I'm grateful for that. Too many things have gone to the garbage, that shouldn't have," Anderson said. "1914. I've been looking for something like this for quite some time because it's really kind of essentially the first guide across North Dakota for automobiles."
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It is believed to be one of AAA's earliest blue books for North Dakota drivers. The book reads like early Google print-out directions.
"'Turn left past the courthouse for four blocks, four corners turn right with poles going upgrade,'" Anderson said, reading aloud some of the directions from Fargo to Bismarck. No interstate. No two-lane paved highway. No street numbers or names.
"Nothing graded, nothing marked. Follow the poles and find the church, hang a left, and you know, go left at the blacksmith shop," Anderson said.
Today, that road is Main Street in downtown Valley City. It was dirt back in 1914. Those cars turned onto Central Avenue. Today, traffic cameras and stoplights direct the flow of vehicles.
It would be years later that Highway 10 and Interstate 94 would carry travelers east and west. For now, the great attic find has created a buzz at the Barnes County museum and called to mind much simpler times and a road less traveled.
The Trust Project
