Guidebooks to Beat all Guidebooks

Ah, my collection of WPA books! However, the Michelin guides are strong competition for this distinction. What are the WPA guides? These are the books issued by the Federal Writers’ Project, renamed Works Progress Administration in 1939, a/k/a American Guide Series. This was part of the New Deal under Roosevelt, putting to work writers and photographers. The history has been aptly covered elsewhere, no need to repeat here – use Google or go out and actually BUY a book of the history such as Mangione’s The Dream and The Deal.
My introduction came at university in my geography classes. Field trips with Doc Goodman used a state guide as the bible. When we reached a significant site, cars would pull to the shoulder, everyone clamber out, smoke of weed emanating from one vehicle, and we would gather ’round Doc as he did a reading. It might be about the history of the interurban tracks, ruins just barely visible.
There is no other single source that provides history, tours, photos, stories, sections on art, agriculture, Indians, etc. all line one book. You get tales lost now as to how a town got its name. Remember in 1930 you still had Civil War soldiers alive, and people were closer to the tales of early pioneers. The information was not as diluted and now forgotten.
The books make places come alive. I understand the reason they settled here, learn that economies are constantly changing and you can’t fight it. They explain the landscape to me.
And they are well written, often by writers whose names are now familiar to every American literature class. Sometimes they were controversial, sections taken out, like some of the books discussion of Negros.
There is a guide for ever state and some territories. There are city guides, region guides, ethnic guides, and more. Sometimes they worked to maintain records of events and data, rather dry technical reading.
Why use outdated guides you ask? Sounds pretty silly. But history doesn’t change! And there is no other source to get that information. I like to travel back roads, the blue highways. I want to understand what I’m seeing. Example is a trip to get to route 66 in Illinois. I was in the eastern section, well south of Chicago. Off the road I noticed large conical hills sticking out of the flat fields. Being a superbly trained geographer, I of course realized these are not natural formations. Pulling off the road, I grabbed my Illinois Guide. There I learned I was in coal mining country! These hills were mine talus. I also learned about the miners union. Also, could clearly see that industry was a thing of the past, only the talus piles remaining.
The individual tour sections are great to follow, getting you off the nondescript highway into towns often now abandoned but telling a story. Sometimes you stumble on small gems of stores, scenery, and interesting people.
I have all the state guides, most first editions with dust jackets. And I have many other Writers’ Project books. I take them along on my travels and spend afternoons or evenings reading about where I’ve been and plan where to go tomorrow. As happens with collectors, it does become an obsession. But if you aren’t picky about edition, printing date you can pick up books cheap on eBay. Or go to your library where there will surely be at least a small selection and likely your own state sitting back on a dusty shelf.