Change happens in our country so quickly today that most of us don’t seem to find the time to read about how we got here.  Let’s face it.  For most of us, reading history is not much fun.

But what about studying our past in a classic 1969 912 Porsche on our old highways?

Our highway history can not only be seen as we travel, but we can easily find old highway maps to help us.

I admit it.  Unashamedly, I’m a Highway Geek. 

Our U.S. highways reflect the history of our nation for the last hundred years or so and, in many cases, much longer than that. 

Did you know, for example, that Interstate 5 in northern California and southern Oregon was largely built on top of U.S. Route 99? 

And did you know that, in the 1930s, a large segment of U.S. Route 99 was built on top of the Siskiyou Trail? 

And did you know that the Siskiyou Trail was the route used for hundreds of years by Native Americans to get from summer lodgings in the mountains of today’s southern Oregon to the rivers and relative warmth and rich agriculture lands in today’s northern and central California? 

That’s real history if there ever was such a thing and you can see it by automobile if you just know what to look for.

Each of the USA Routes (numbered highways from the 1926 organization of federal highways in the U.S.) has its own storied history.  For example, just about everyone has heard of one of our most famous USA Routes, “The Mother Road”, U.S. Route 66. 

But what about U.S. Route 95?  One of the original numbered U.S. highways in the 1926 federal highway plan adopted by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), highway 95 connects our border with Mexico at San Luis, Arizona to our border with Canada at Eastport, Idaho.  This highway was started in 1926 and remains one of the most beautiful, and desolate, of all the U.S. highways.  Yet it serves Blythe, California, Las Vegas, Beatty, Goldfield, Fallon and Winnemucca, Nevada, Riggins, New Meadows and the beautiful resort areas in and around Coeur d’ Elaine, Idaho and everything else along its full length of about 1,574 miles.  This magnificent old highway was the subject of my second book, “U.S. Route 95”.

Old highway maps are your highway history “textbooks”.  They are often loaded with historical data about USA Routes from border to border and ocean to ocean.  Old highway maps are readily available from reputable “brick and mortar” used bookstores and on the Internet.  Some can even be downloaded for free (if they are not used for commercial purposes) from the Internet or from other highway-oriented web sites.

Finally, I do a lot of my travel on America’s former and current USA Routes in my 1969  Porsche 912.  

The original owner, the sparkling new 912 was delivered to me in June of 1969.  It was a daily driver for a few years then, when I became too busy with life and parallel careers in the private sector and U.S. Army Reserve, I removed the battery and parked the car for about 25 years.  (I should have completely drained the fuel tank, too, but didn’t.  Oh well.)

In 2005, I retired from a career in private sector corporate management and from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel.  That’s when I had the car taken to North American Racing Werks (German spelling) in Reseda, California to be prepared for its new life as a modernized, and even improved in certain respects (but not “restored”), long-distance highway cruiser.   

Shortly after the car was finished a year and a half later in November of 2006, I took it on a “break-in” trip of about 3,000 miles from Los Angeles, California to Joplin, Missouri and back. 

The eastbound portion was mostly on U.S. Route 60, one of the original 1926 AASHO U.S. highways, and the return trip was mostly on the much faster but less historic I-40, I-15 and I-10.

On the eastbound leg, during and after an energetic snow storm (the 912’s heater worked just fine) in and near Mountainair, New Mexico I experienced an “Ah-Ha moment.” 

On a very cold January morning letting the car warm up outside the historic Schafer Hotel in Mountainair, I decided that the total travel experience on America’s old highways in a classic 912 Porsche sports car was a wonderful travel combination I just had to share with others.

And that’s exactly what I did.