The Friday before Memorial Day Weekend is considered National Road Trip Day. It’s a fitting celebration, as the holiday weekend typically kicks off a season of summer vacations and day-trips which necessitate hitting the road and enjoying the sites and attractions across the country. Even if you are staying put this National Road Trip Day, you can enjoy a virtual road trip right from your living room couch, courtesy of the American Folklife Center’s digital collections!
To start your journey, hop on over to the AFC’s Field Surveys Story Map for an introduction to the Center’s numerous field survey collections. Starting during the Bicentennial in 1976 and leading all the way into the late-1990s, the Center conducted large-scale cultural documentation projects in many different regions throughout the United States. The collections resulted in thousands of photographs, audio- and video- recordings, maps, ephemera, and – my favorite – field notes that give a wonderful peak into a specific point in time in these communities. Whether you’re interested in traditional music, occupational culture, foodways or hundreds of other regional traditions, the field surveys are a wonderful place to start your journey. The Story Map provides a quick overview of each of these projects alongside maps of the geographic survey areas and samples of photographs and sound recordings from each collection, as well as links to their respective digital presentations.
The Field Surveys are not the only AFC collections that include story maps that can help illuminate your virtual road trip. If you have a hankering for music from the Windy City, you might consider checking out the Chicago Blues and Jazz Story Map, featuring selections from the American Folklife Center’s Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection (AFC 1981/004). Or perhaps you’d like to traverse California, following in the footsteps of ethnographer and folk music collector Sidney Robertson Cowell. In that case, I would suggest the California Gold Story Map. Looking for a story map that spans the length of the United States – from the East Coast all the way to Hawaii and Alaska? Check out the Living Nations, Living Words Story Map, which brings together maps of the country with poetry from 47 Native Nations poets.
Of course, as the most well-traveled road trippers can tell you, even with a good map at hand, you can still get terribly lost. Such was the case with Michael Bell and some of his fellow travelers during the fieldwork for the Rhode Island Folklife Project (AFC 1991/022). Several of Bell’s fieldnotes speak to a common navigation problem faced by people in the days before GPS navigation:
“Since none of us is close to intimate with the process of getting around the State (as Gerri and I proved yesterday), we decide to go in groups of two, visiting both team members’ chosen spots for the remainder of the day. Gerri and I head out I-95 north toward Woonsocket. We have been told that, normally, it is a half-hour drive; naturally, it takes us more than twice as long to find our way to the city’s center. As yet, we have no detailed road maps for townships and cities, and, with the road sign situation being so poor, we have to guess frequently. Our hit rate is about 50%.” – Michael Bell, August 5, 1979
The lack of street signs and the unreliability of the maps the team does have is a thread that runs through many of Bell’s notes on Rhode Island:
“Gerri notes features that might prove worth pursuing later in the week, while I attempt to avoid going the wrong way on unmarked one-way streets. This happens only once; fortunately, the light Sunday traffic keeps us from disaster until I can turn around.” – Michael Bell, August 5, 1979
Several days later, Bell got a little bit of insight on part of their navigation troubles:
“I have also noticed that when there are street signs on streets, many are one-sided; in fact, all the street signs around the Providence area seem to be printed on one side only. Sometimes there is only one such street sign, and it’s facing in the direction that you happen not to be able to see, so you cannot tell what street you are crossing. I asked about this down at the desk, and Barbara, who was at the desk at the time, told me people steal the signs, but she wasn’t sure why. […] Leslie also mentions that the older license plates in Rhode Island say something like ‘Tour Rhode Island,’ or ‘Discover Rhode Island.’ With the lack of signs, the crazy roads, and so on, I am sure that discovering Rhode Island is something one must do on his own, without much help.” – Michael Bell, August 13, 1979
It seems that, navigation issues aside, Bell did still manage to discover the joys of traveling through the state, as he remarks “the view of Newport from the high, arching bridge is breathtaking (and worth an extra two dollars). Sailboats, large and small, are highlighted by the sun behind us, in sharp contrast against the dark bay; from this height they appear almost motionless, though the wind is brisk and sails are full. Just smelling the salted air stimulates memories of growing up on another coast 3,000 miles away. I think it might be love at first sight and feel a bit guilty about the prospect of enjoying too much the work ahead of me.”
Any good road trip must include a balance of fun roadside attractions and sensible “comfort” breaks. Both of these are represented in Candacy Taylor’s Archie Green project collection, The Green Book – documenting African American entrepreneurs (AFC 2018/029). First we’ll stop at Swett’s Fine Food in Nashville, Tennessee, currently run by David Swett. Swett’s Fine Food originally opened as a beer tavern in 1954. One day, Swett’s mother decided to offer something more than just sandwiches:
“They had hamburgers, they had hot dogs, they had French fries, so she said, ‘Look, let’s cook some real food.’ So she started cooking fried chicken and meatloaf and greens, green beans, green vegetables and macaroni and cheese and candied yams. That was the original menu. And from that, she started that menu in 1955 which was about a year or so after they opened up the beer tavern and by 1956, ’57 we kind of conferred it over to more, what Nashville likes to call ‘a meat and three’ type of restaurant. We went from there, we moved on into the ‘60s in the restaurant business and went from a beer tavern to a full-fledged restaurant. So today we don’t even sell beer anymore, we more of a family-type restaurant. We only sell food.”
Over the years, the family business grew to include the original restaurant, a grocery store, a convenience market and gas station, rental property across from Swett’s Fine Food, and a company at the airport.
Today, Swett estimates that the original restaurant serves 300-400 people a day. He credits their long-term success to a combination of things. “You know it takes good luck,” Swett says. “It takes a little luck and being in the right place at the right time and you have to also have good people around you, good lawyers, smart friends help a lot and I’ve been lucky to have that. […] Some of it’s luck and some of it’s hard work.”
Reverend Allen Threatt echoed this same combination of hard work and luck with the success of his family’s business in Luther, Oklahoma. Threatt’s grandfather opened the Threatt Service Station in 1915, offering gas, food, and options for entertainment. The filling station actually predates the creation of Route 66 – referred to by many as the “Mother Road” by a decade. Threatt explained:
“When grandfather built that place, 66 highway wasn’t coming through at that particular time. But God so fixed it that it was the right place, so when they did build 66 highway, it was right there for the need.”
The gas station was one of the few black-owned businesses that could be found along the famous highway, and served as a safe place for travelers passing through “sundown towns,” thus making it an essential stop for black travelers plotting their road trips along Route 66.
In addition to the filling station, the family operated a popular nightclub next door called The County Line. “On a Saturday night,” Threatt recalls, “even when I got up as a young man, 21, 22, 23, I used to go out there on the weekend and on the weekend, cars would be lined up on both sides of the road two miles and during that time I thought the County Line was a huge place but after growing up and going back inside again, it’s so small. And I don’t know how all those people forced their way inside that place.”
The Threatt Service Station also had entertainment options for travelers interested in the more…unique attractions often found along the Mother Road. Threatt remembers that, during his uncle’s ownership of the business, there was a big pit in the ground behind the station filled with rattlesnakes. People would come to the station to fill their gas tanks and, while waiting, they would walk around the building, look into the pit of snakes, and toss in a coin or two. Reverend Threatt wasn’t too sure where his uncle got all the snakes, but he figured he must have bought at least some of them, and other people had tossed in others they caught. “And people would love to see the snakes and that they would walk up there, they wouldn’t get too close, afraid they may fall in, but they would look at the rattlesnakes.” Later, his uncle would retrieve the coins that people threw in the pit. Again, Allen isn’t too clear on how he did this, but he guessed his uncle used a magnet on a stick.
“I know there were a lot of those…you know Route 66 was notorious for those…‘come and see the’…there would be some animal situation going on, but not a pit of rattlesnakes. I never heard of that. The service station is really kind of full service.”
Don’t worry if rattlesnake pits and nightclubs aren’t exactly your cup of roadside attraction tea. The Center has plenty of other collections to entertain you during a stop on this virtual road trip. You might swing by the Ransomville Speedway in western New York, and take in the history of this unique dirt track racing venue.
Since roadside eats go hand-in-hand with road trips, you might consider listening to an interview with Concessions Manager April Matson, who can explain their popular concession stand items. When asked if there was anything they served that was different than most places, Matson responded:
“I think the biggest thing was making flat dogs, because I had never done fried bologna, even though my grandmother did, but I never had cooked it. […] Flat dog’s always been there. How I cook it is four pieces of bologna, then I put it in a hot dog roll with peppers and onions. So you fry it, and then put it with peppers and onions. […] We have all that [condiments] out at the counter. The people put that on themselves. It’s more if they want the peppers and onions.”
If you plan to visit a National Park this summer, perhaps you’d prefer to page through the photographs and audio recordings that make up the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve Collection (AFC 1985/022) or the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project (AFC 1982/009).
Although it does not specifically focus on national parks, many photographs in the Montana Folklife Survey Collection (AFC 1981/005) feature the stunning landscape of places such as Glacier National Park and the National Bison Range, or a section of the Badlands near Fort Peck, Montana. Those interested in learning more about the day-to-day experiences of NPS rangers can check out the interviews in AFC’s collection Ranger Lore: The Occupational Folklore of Park Rangers, Archie Green Fellows Project 2013-2014 (AFC 2013/014).
As anyone who has undertaken a long journey can tell you, what you listen to on the road can be just as important as having a reliable map, enough gas, and good road snacks. After all, no one wants to find themselves stuck on an eight-hour journey with no radio reception and only two cassette tapes to listen to on repeat. True story. Despite loving both bagpipes and powwow drums, by about hour four of listening to the same two tapes everyone in the family car – with the exception of my father – was starting to go a little loopy. To spare you all from a similar fate, I recommend you take a moment to cue up some playlists to ease you down the road.
The seventh season of the Center’s America Works podcast launched on April 21, 2025. The eight-episode season focuses on workers whose jobs involve animals. This and all previous seasons can be downloaded from the Library’s America Works podcast page. Need to fill an even longer road trip playlist? Consider downloading all 46 episodes of the Center’s Folklife Today podcast!
You might also consider queuing up music from the Center’s newest digital collection. Sonidos de Houston: Documenting the City’s Chicano Music Scene (AFC 2022/009) documents “the deep roots and contemporary manifestations of Chicano musical traditions that have long flourished in and around the city of Houston, Texas.” The collection includes interviews with Houston-based musicians and videos of live performances by La Fiebre and Avizo at Discovery Green.
As this epic road trip through the Center’s digital collections draws to a close, I will leave you with one final collection item. Though most people might not immediately think of Hawaii when they think “road trip,” there is no denying that the islands are home to the same things that make for a great road trip: great music, fantastic roadside eats, vibrant living traditions, and a stunning landscape steeped in deep history. All of these – music, food, history, and culture – can be found in the documentary Unearthing the Lost Songs of Kohala, from the digital collection of the same name (AFC 2022/007).
I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey, and that the collections featured here have inspired you to take your own epic road trip in celebration of National Road Trip Day. When you do, remember to follow in the footsteps of the fieldworkers and documentarians featured here and keep a travel journal.
Further Reading
Planning a road trip and curious about the folklife collections that might correspond with your destination? Check out AFC’s National Heritage Area Research Guide to jumpstart your research
For more articles celebrating road trips, Route 66 and kitschy roadside Americana, check out these posts from the Library’s many blogs!
- Thanksgiving Road Trip, by Kerry Ward (November 22, 2017) from Folklife Today
- On the Road Again: Scouting Out “Roadside America” Sites, posted by Barbara Orbach Natanson (Oct. 12, 2017) on P&P’s Picture This blog
- Free to Use and Reuse: John Margolies Photographs of Roadside America, posted by Wendi Maloney (July 6, 2017) on Timeless blog. An earlier version of this post, written by Micah Messenheimber, was published on the Picture This blog
- We Love Lucy…Roadside Architecture and Pachyderm Primary Source Analysis, by Danna Bell (May 7, 2020) on Teaching With the Library blog
- America on the Road: The Family Vacation by Car, by Joshua Levy (July 26, 2021) on Timeless: Stories from the Library of Congress
- 1920s Road Trip: The Lincoln Highway in Strip Maps, by Ryan Moore (February 21, 2018) on Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps at the Library of Congress
- The Mother Road Trip – Route 66 History and Activities, by Kimberly Grossett (July 29, 2022) on Minerva’s Kaleidoscope: Resources for Kids & Families
- Summer Road Trip: National Parks, by Heather Thomas (August 2, 2023) on Headlines & Heroes: Newspapers, Comics & More Fine Print
- Let’s Take a Spooky Road Trip! By Erin Allen (October 30, 2015) on Timeless: Stories from the Library of Congress
Interested in learning more about Roadside America? Check out this 2011 lecture by John Margolies, sponsored by the Prints & Photograph Division: Marvels of Roadside and Main Street America: John Margolies
Take an Imaginary Road Trip with Jason Reynolds, seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. In this video, Reynolds challenges kids to describe the best and worst parts of an imaginary road trip with a person they admire.
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Yes
Just a big Thank you !