New interactive map displays 12 famous road trips in U.S. literature

The road trip has long played a significant role in American literature, whether it’s Jack Kerouac criss-crossing the U.S. in his 1940s novel ‘On the Road’ or Tom Wolfe’s psychedelic journey in ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’. The trajectory of 12 well-known road trips has now been mapped...

To explore the vast American landscape in an automobile has always been the epitome of freedom. Numerous classics of U.S. literature are centred around driving along the sheer endless highways of the American continent. Richard Kreitner and Steven Melendez have now mapped 12 famous road trips for the publication Atlas Obscura. Among the illustrious journeys are Mark Twain’s ‘Roughing It’ from 1872, F. Scott Fitzgerald's ‘The Cruise of the Rolling Junk’, Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ (1957), Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’ (written in 1968) and Cheryl Strayed’s novel ‘Wild’, published in 2012. Here is the complete interactive map.

Photo: Getty Images