The "America's Highways" Project was made possible by a Technology Fellows grant from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Educational Resources (CER). Excerpts from the proposal that we submitted to the CER are included below:

Project Abstract

Professor Leslie's "Automobile Age" class offers students an in-depth look at the technological innovation that had arguably the largest effect on the evolution of society in the 20th century: the automobile. Among the topics covered is a brief history of Route 66, a road which, for many years, seemed to symbolize the new culture in America that followed the introduction of the automobile.

However, the inclusion of this subject matter in the course inherently presents a problem: it is extremely difficult to present the great historical significance of this highway in sufficient detail, especially when teaching students who were most likely born after Route 66 was decommissioned.

We hope to create an additional resource that students can consult for information about Route 66 by driving along what is left of the highway, chronicling its landmarks, geography and people in photographs, videos, sketches and interviews. All of the information we collect will be stored in a database and made available to future students via an interactive Website.

Faculty Sponsor Statement (by History of Science Professor Bill Leslie)

Whenever I teach Jack Kerouac's On the Road to students in my Automobile Age course, I wonder what Kerouac would tell them about what they could learn about America's car culture from inside a lecture hall. Certainly he would tell them to 'hit the road' and see roadside culture for themselves. In that spirit, I ask each of the students to read a classic 'road' book - Kerouac's On the Road, Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways, or Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - and then chronicle their own journey. Yet however insightful the students' observations of life on the road, and Hopkins students are nothing if not imaginative, these reflections remain locked in their journals. We just don't have an opportunity in a class of 180 students to share our stories and learn from one another. Nor does one class have a chance to learn from previous classes, because there is no way short of photocopying and distributing thousands of pages of journal entries to make this material widely available.

Having Jay and Shekar chronicle their experiences along old Route 66 will provide an invaluable template for future classes. Done well, a virtual road trip (virtual, that is, for the students who view it later) offers a chance for future students to learn much more about Route 66 than I can give them in a single lecture. More importantly, it will give them a model for capturing the experience of the road electronically. I envision the class building an electronic map over the next few years. Some students will follow the routes charted by earlier classes, adding their own commentaries, photographs, and interviews. Other students will take the road less traveled, so we can begin to see regional differences of the sort noted by Moon. Still others, who came to Hopkins from Europe, Asia, South America, Australia or Africa, can extend the map beyond the US, to places where road culture is very different. What we would learn from a trip along the Stuart Highway through central Australia, the Panamerican highway through Argentina, or the Botswana Highways of southern Africa! Not many Hopkins students will have the chance to visit these places for themselves, but they can still get a sense of how differently the road looks in other parts of the world. But we would not limit the map to real journeys. I can just as easily imagine a student project that would map the experiences of John Steinbeck's Joads on the way to California, including selected passages from The Grapes of Wrath, photographs from Dorthea Lange, and music from Woody Guthrie. Or a project on Kerouac's own trip, with commentary and photographs about how the road has changed since he made the trip back in the late 1940s.

Just as a road trip itself is an interactive experience for the students, so too will building and navigating virtual road trips. Ten groups of students headed down I-95 to Pedro's South of the Border will return with ten very different experiences, because the view from the windshield is as distinctive as each driver. Combine and layer those experiences electronically, and the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Having these virtual road trips archived also means better preparation for future students, who won't have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. In class, we talk about the early AAA Blue Books, the first guide books for motorists. Here's a chance to relive some of the excitement of those early days, when a guide book was much more than a highway map, but rather a compilation of individual experiences.

Besides their obvious skills in computer programming, web design, and digital media editing, Jay and Shekar bring to the project a spirit of adventure that will be essential for its success. Being willing to spend several weeks on the road taking photographs, taking to long-time residents of Route 66, writing a journal is a daunting assignment. Coming back and turning it into a virtual road trip is equally daunting (probably more for me than for them). I have thought for several years about offering an upper-level seminar on "the road" which would include the road as metaphor as well as a tangible expression of the car culture. How appropriate it would be to use the 'electronic superhighway' as the vehicle for exploring its predecessors.

I have already provided Jay and Shekar with as much historical material on Route 66 as I'm aware of, though there is less than you might think. I have considerable experience not only as a historian of car culture, but also in interviewing and photographing subjects for my other research interests. So I can advise them on what makes the difference between a Lange photograph or an Agee interview and a snapshot and some random recollections. If I could (if I was allowed!) I'd join them on the trip, but since that's not possible, we will keep in touch as they go along. They will send back what they discover in electronic form so I can tell them what seems to be working and what isn't. How will I determine whether the project has been successfully completed? Ideally, the project won't ever be completed, since Jay and Shekar are laying the foundation for what's to come. But I'll be thrilled if we have a virtual map of Route 66 in place by next January, when I'll once again start teaching the Automobile Age, this time with the enticing prospect of a virtual road trip to which all the students can contribute. I expect Jay and Shekar to complete most of the heavy lifting this summer. I doubt it will take more than a few hours a week in the fall to assembly the photos and interviews and maps into a first draft, which we can then revise as necessary. Six hours a week from such accomplished students can go a long way.