1953 Pictorial Tourist Map of Routes 50 and 24 in Colorado and Kansas

Eat your way from Kansas into the Colorado Rockies.

This is a circa 1953 map of central and southeastern Colorado and part of Kansas, printed in two colors on a diner napkin. This 'Map-kin', produced by the Best Stops Travel Service of Salt Lake City, Utah, is a pictorial icon of the pre-interstate Colorado road trip, focusing specifically on the region along U.S. routes 24 and 50 stretching from Glenwood Springs in the West to Garden City, Kansas. The route covered on the map passed through Colorado Springs and Pueblo; the map highlights diners and lodges on the way. Its decoration emphasizes both the region's cowboy and gold rush history, and the attractions for the automotive sightseer and sportsman.

The Routes

Traveling east to west, the map traces U.S. Route 50 from Garden City, Kansas to Pueblo, Colorado. Instead of following 50 to Salida, the map guides the traveler north along the unnumbered route 85 to Colorado Springs, and then along route 24 to Glenwood Springs. The route passes well south of Denver (although that city is shown, with roads traced connecting it both to Glenwood Springs and Colorado Springs. Interstate route 70 is not pictured: it would not be constructed until 1957.

The Best Stops

The 'Map-kins' were intended as advertising works, not nostalgia pieces, so consequently the businesses named on it were ones that were in operation at the time. Many of these diners would disappear shortly after the advent of the interstate; most are distant memories with little trace remaining. Today there is no hint of Garden City's Garden Cafe on 322 North Main; likewise, we have no glimpse of the Uptown Cafe and Court in Syracuse. Pinky's Drive-In leaves no trace after 1954; we see references for Oley's Pantry in Lamar only in 1953 and 1954 newspapers. Patti's, in Pueblo, was a long-lived fixture: opened in 1947, it stayed in operation until 2013. While Colorado Springs' El Tejon eludes us, Thunderbird Inn remains in operation as a Florissant institution. Buena Vista's The Western may have passed to new owners and been renamed. Hanging Lake Park folded in 1972.

Natural Wonders and Historical Attractions

Throughout this area are interspersed a charming array of iconic travelers' destinations - historical sites and monuments, natural landmarks, all attracting the hungry tourists at whom the Map-kin was targeted. Colorado's gold rush history is noted: the spot near Salida where gold was discovered in 1891, and the Cripple Creek Gold Camp 'of yrs ago' appear. Pike's Peak and Mount Elbert are depicted, as are the petrified forests (painfully attacked by a reckless woodpecker). A bathing beauty lounges by the hot springs near Glenwood Canyon. Colorado's oil fields and steel mills also make an appearance, as well as Kansas' wheat fields and the buffalo herd of Finney County State Reserve.

Aspen?

The sharp-eyed will note that between Buena Vista and Glenwood Springs, there is no note of the illustrious Aspen, Colorado. Best Stops, focusing on the eateries available to the automotive tourist, was sticking to reliable routes. Compared to Route 24, Route 82 between Buena Vista and Glenwood Springs was (and is) a winding, steep, and dangerous road. Between 1950 and 1959, despite the efforts of businessman and philanthropist Walter Paepcke (1896 - 1960), Aspen's population was still barely 1000 people. The exclusive resort experience developing there was basically unknown and entirely too exclusive for the travelers to whom the Map-kin catered: it wasn't the sort of place a road tourist could stop and grab a bite on the road.

The probable man behind Best-Stops, Dorius Ether Black, appears to have traveled widely in the American west as a member of the Latter Day Saints, and to have been intimately familiar with the roadside food options from New Mexico to Idaho. BestOPS (or by the time this piece was composed, Best-Stops) changed its format and printing techniques shortly after 1951 as a result of the company having been bought from Black by Salt Lake City jeweler Lincoln Carter White. These changes (compared with others of the company's maps) can help in our dating, along with the map's content. Most Map-kins are numbered. This one is numbered #130; we have dated number #103 to 1952, supporting a contextual assessment of an early date of 1953. By 1955, Black had relocated to Florida and was working as a salesman there, and Best-Stops does not seem to have produced any new work after that.

Publication History and Census

The mapkin was printed, using a halftone process, by the Best Stops Travel Service Map-kin division of Salt Lake City, Utah. The firm appears in the Salt Lake City directories of 1951 and 1952 under its two consecutive business names (BestOPS and Best Stops; that this example - number 130 - bears the latter trade name tends to support the later date. Only one of a possible 143 mapkins is listed OCLC and a sole example of Mapkin 106 is held by the Library of Congress. Given the purpose and general life expectancy of the diner napkin, as a form, the scarcity of these objects is perhaps unsurprising.

Cartographer

BestOPS (fl. 1948-1953), a.k.a. Best Stops Travel Service, was an American map-centered advertising company that arrived, and vanished, in the period following World War II (1939 - 1945) but preceding the c. 1955 explosion of the Interstate Highway System. The company's sole apparent product was a series of maps printed on diner napkins - hence, Mapkins - intended to promote roadside restaurants and cafes along the scenic routes to America's national parks and wonders. Thus, the mapkins capture the moment in American automotive history in which newly prosperous families took to the roads and ate their way across America, one diner at a time.

The company's address - always printed on the Mapkin - appears briefly to have been in Portland, Oregon, but then to have relocated to Utah. A few show an address in Provo, but the majority we have identified show one of several addresses in Salt Lake City; after 1951, mainly in the Beason Building. Most of the Mapkins can be dated, with reasonable confidence, based on the rapidly-changing landscape of the restaurant trade. Our research suggests that most were composed between 1948 and 1953.

The Salt Lake City directories of 1951 and 1952 are illuminating. The '51 directory includes an entry for BestOPS Travel Service, naming a Dorius E. Black as manager. In 1952, the directory names instead 'Best Stops Travel Service;' Black is listed as Vice President and Sales Manager, with its president listed as Lincoln C. White. Lincoln Carter White (1919 - 1986) was a successful Salt Lake City jeweler who had offices in the Beason Building corresponding to the addresses found on Mapkins after 1951. We suspect White not to have been the creator of the Mapkins, but an investor.

Dorius Ether Black (March 15, 1918 - June 29, 1985) is a better candidate. Before his wartime service in the navy reserves he had travelled abroad as an LDS missionary. We see no indication of his profession between 1946 and 1950; The 1950 Census listed him as separated, and living in Provo with his mother and siblings. His profession was listed as a salesman with 'Travel Service,' with two younger sisters working as stenographers for the same (we suspect that it is the sisters, Alma Jane and Ireta, who actually drew the Mapkins, while Dorius traveled, sold, and researched them). Up until 1951, BestOPS Travel Service operated via post office box addresses, in Provo, Salt Lake City, and briefly in Portland, Oregon. We suspect that Black started BestOPS and ran it out of his mother's house, with the assistance of his sisters, while he travelled around the country selling his mapkins to various diners en route. As a LDS missionary, he may well have been traveling as a proselytizer at the same time. In 1951 or 1952, he sold the business, or a share of it, to White: perhaps with an eye to providing a home for his fiancée, whom he would marry in 1952. White's involvement brought changes: more industrial printing methods, slicker branding, and a less-confusing business name - while as Vice President and Sales Manager, Black continued to travel and work his sales contacts. But before long, his travels for Best Stops brought him to Florida, and he decided to stay there - first in St. Petersburg, where he would begin work for a brokerage, and then to Orlando. Without Black, Best Stops appears to have ceased producing new Mapkins. White seems to have kept the business until it was struck from the Utah tax rolls in November 9, 1973, but while it appears likely that Best Stops would have continued trying to sell its back stock, we have seen no Mapkin that could credibly have been made any later than 1955.

We would like to extend our gratitude to Doug Misner, Library and Collections Manager of the Utah Historical Society, for his crucial assistance in identifying the individuals behind these fascinating pieces of cartographic Americana.   Further Details...

Condition

Very good. Original folds present. No soup.