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Chicago-Lake Geneva | A 100 Year Road Trip

In Partnership with the Ela Area Historical Society

Join historian Wilber Stroeve on a photographic road trip from Chicago to Lake Geneva and learn how early motorists navigated without road atlases, highway numbers or GPS devices.

Long before there were in-car navigation systems or even dependable fold out maps with all the roads named and numbered there were “photo-auto guides”. Before 1910, when the automobile was quite new to the roads, early motorists used these guides to make cross-country trips, where they were instructed to take the “right turn at the yellow farmhouse”, or “the uphill fork near the big oak”. The routes were long and winding, and every twist and turn had its own photo with little arrows showing which way to go. This route takes us from Chicago to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and by the way, it does pass through Lake Zurich. Photos taken a century later at all the turns show how the same scenes have changed.

This program will be presented by Wilber Stroeve of the Chicago Map Society, historian and photographic contributor to the book Chicago-Lake Geneva: A 100 Year Road Trip. Copies of the book will be available. Come ride along as we use a 1905 photo guide book to find our way from Chicago to Lake Geneva - we promise you’ll enjoy the trip.

Presented in partnership with the Ela Area Historical Society.

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