For our November Sketchbook, Strauss takes us on a retro-fabulous bird migration. As in all modern travel, there are rules and regulations. In this case, each flock of birds is allowed one item of luggage to be stored in the backseat (or strapped to the roof) of a vintage car classified as “bitchin” or better. To honor Zócalo’s Los Angeles home base, all birds she features are either native to California or spend a significant amount of time here on their migration. See if you can identify the blue-gray gnatcatcher, the western tanager, the black-bellied plover, the streak-backed oriole, and the Bohemian waxwing.

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Ninety-nine of his works are now on view in Ed Ruscha and the Great American West at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. Visitors can take a visceral journey through the American West and the motifs that Ruscha found most fascinating and worthy of re-interpreting during 50 years of living and working in California.

His notable captivation with landscapes is embodied in his depictions of sunsets with brilliant gradations of red, orange, and yellow. These often serve as backdrops for words or images that suggest the vastness of the western landscape and the enormousness of the sky.

Ruscha has spoken of this connection between the sky and the character of the region, saying, “The East I associate with steel and industrialism; the West with space and sunrises and sunsets.” The gas station has also been an important element of Ruscha’s work, and a photograph taken in 1962, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, became the basis for several of his best-known paintings and prints.

Ruscha also captured the changes in Los Angeles during the 1960s as it became a major urban center of the West Coast, while suburban sprawl and the construction of freeways contributed to its emerging car culture. He took hundreds of photographs from its roadways in a kind of documentary style—empty lots, apartment houses, and buildings along the Sunset Strip—and used them to create photographic books that were part artistic investigation, part visual travelogue of the eccentric and banal places in the city that had been built around and for the automobile.

Other works comment on the city and its cultural touchstones, including his famous “Technicolor” renditions of the Hollywood sign, and other subjects that symbolize the romantic aura and excesses of the film industry.

Today, Ruscha continues to work at the age of 78, maintains a studio in the California desert, and still makes regular road trips. Asked in 2011 about a road trip he would like to take in the future, Ruscha was optimistic: “It would need to be a dirt road somewhere here in the state of California in the desert, somewhere that lets me do some exploration on roads without any maps. There are still a few I’ve never tried, and I want to believe that wild spots still exist out there.”

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In 1900, Americans were hampered by wretched roads and limited by the speed and endurance of the horses that powered buckboards, coaches, and wagons. If they had an urge to travel far distances, they had to rely upon the steam locomotive.

As fantastic as it might have seemed at the turn of the 20th century, the idea of supplanting the iron horse with the horseless carriage did catch the fancy of some intrepid men and women. Eager to test the technological limits of their new contraptions, a few hardy souls set off upon far-reaching expeditions between 1900 and 1910.

Colorado attorney Philip Delany, recounting his 1903 excursion from Colorado Springs to Santa Fe, observed, “and so the machine is conquering the old frontier, carrying the thudding of modern mechanics into the land of romance. . . .” Such travel meant seeing “the wildest and most natural places on the continent,” encountering more than a few hints of danger on steep and rocky mountain roads, and reliving the exploits of American pioneers. “The trails of Kit Carson and Boone and Crockett, and the rest of the early frontiersmen,” he declared, “stretch out before the adventurous automobilist.”

At the same time, some city dwellers simply sought an escape. Early 20th century urban environments had their drawbacks: sidewalks overflowing with scurrying pedestrians; streets crowded with unending waves of trolleys, delivery wagons, carriages, and pushcarts; the persistent stench rising from mounds of horse manure; raw sewage emptying into open gutters; rotting piles of uncollected garbage and dense clouds belching from factory smokestacks.

Upper-middle-class tourists motored through the countryside and then camped by the side of the road, finding the sentimentalized image of the gypsy or the tramp quite a compelling identity to assume. They reveled in their sense of independence from stodgy summer resorts and the tyranny of inflexible timetables set by railroads or steamship lines. They delighted in the beauty and serenity of unspoiled countryside. In the same article quoted above, Philip Delany observed that “when [the automobilist] is tired of the old, there are new paths to be made. He has no beaten track to follow, no schedule to meet, no other train to consider; but he can go with the speed of an express straight into the heart of an unknown land.”

Photograph illustrating an article called “From Coast to Coast in an Automobile,” World’s Work, May 1904

In its infancy, however, an automobile could not deliver most Americans from their urban frustrations—for most Americans could not afford to own and operate one. At a time when average annual salaries might not reach $500, many automobiles might cost between $650 and $1,300, securely beyond the grasp of all but the wealthiest. Moreover, with few garages, filling stations, and dealerships outside of city limits, even the infrastructure required for the care and feeding of the automobile could be difficult to locate and could drain the motorist’s wallet. During their earliest years, neither automobiles nor auto touring could be considered within the reach of the masses. Automobility would only become pervasive over time, thanks to rising wages, falling prices for used cars, expanding opportunities to buy these machines on credit, and, especially, the introduction of Henry Ford’s revolutionary Model T in 1908.

Even for those Americans who could afford the first horseless carriages, to go off the few familiar paths in most parts of the country, especially in the great distances of the trans-Mississippi West, required a large measure of self-reliance. One motor traveler characterized the roads of his native Wyoming in 1909 as “deep ruts, high centers, rocks, loose and solid; steep grades, washouts, or gullies . . . ” He went on to note that, “unbridged streams; sand, alkali dust; gumbo; and plain mud, were some of the more common abominations.” Between the obstacles presented by such abysmal road conditions, the likelihood of frequent mechanical breakdowns, and the rarity of supplies to sustain driver and vehicle, these early outings always required an audacious spirit.

Aspiring long-distance auto tourists back then were counseled by self-proclaimed experts to carry abundant quantities of supplies. Those who made the first transcontinental drives between 1901 and 1908 hauled along ropes, blocks and tackle, axes, sleeping bags, water bags, spades, camps stoves, compasses, barometers, thermometers, cyclometers, first aid kits, rubber ponchos, tire chains, pith helmets, assorted spare parts, and sufficient firearms to launch a small insurrection. Mary C. Bedell’s impressive list of gear, published in her entertaining 1924 account of auto touring, Modern Gypsies, typifies what was carried by the most dedicated motor campers both in scale and variety: “tent, duffle bags, gasoline stove, Adirondack grate and a kit of aluminum kettles, with coffee pot and enamel cups and saucers inside”—an array of equipment that added “four or five hundred pounds” alone to the weight of the fully loaded automobile. A car so laden, puffing along western trails, bears a striking resemblance in the mind’s eye to a hermit crab staggering across the ocean floor burdened with its house on its back.

Even as motoring Americans loaded up their cars with the contents of their local hardware stores, however, the growth in their numbers year by year provided alluring prospects to entrepreneurs in small towns and great cities throughout the West. Garages, gas stations, roadside cafés, and diners began to pop up along more frequently traveled routes while hotels, restaurants, and general stores started to advertise in the earliest guidebooks produced by organizations such as AAA and the Automobile Club of America. Following the lead of Gulf Oil in 1914, gasoline retailers commissioned maps branded liberally with their logos for free distribution at their service stations. Motorists once left entirely to their own devices now encountered a rapidly evolving infrastructure of goods and services.

Cover of The Auto Era, featuring Bud the dog, a passenger on an early cross-country automobile trip

Meanwhile, governments at the local, state, and federal levels began to invest increased engineering skill, construction efforts, and tax dollars in road improvements. While motor tourists by the end of the World War I might still encounter 10,000 miles of battered gravel trails littered with potholes for every 10 miles of carefully surfaced and maintained roads throughout the country, the increasing pace of improvements made it far easier to drive through the West than it had been for those who had attempted such a journey only a decade before.

Although still new to the American scene by 1920, the road trip thus had begun to take on a shape familiar to modern eyes. Above all, the automobile was assuming a dominant role in popular recreation as more and more Americans incorporated it into their visions of recreation and leisure. As costs fell and reliability increased, as the successful outings of the few began to inspire the many, and as the thrill of this new technology spread through an ever-wider range of the populace, motoring for pleasure insinuated itself as a notion in the minds of many Americans. Indeed, less than a decade after the turn of the 20th century, author William F. Dix could assert that the automobile had become nothing less than a “vacation agent” for motor-savvy Americans as it “opens up the countryside to the city dweller, [and held out the promise of] great national highways stretching from ocean to ocean and from North to South.” Over those highways, he continued, “would sweep endless processions of light, graceful, and inexpensive vehicles . . . carrying rich and poor alike into a better understanding of nature and teaching them the pure and refreshing beauties of the country.”

While Dix fell far short as a prophet of social or technological developments, his sense of how inextricably linked the automobile would become in the leisure pursuits of Americans has been thoroughly borne out by the evolution of the American road trip.

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The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, conceived of by L.A.-based visual artist Zoe Crosher and co-curated with Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), answered that question with a series of about 100 billboards by 10 artists installed along the I-10 Freeway—from Florida to California.

In 2013, Crosher and LAND’s director Shamim Momin invited 10 artists to create “chapters” of 10 billboards, and the results were as diverse as the landscapes they inhabited. In New Orleans, people spotted a billboard by Sanford Biggers—a photograph of a long line of camels crossing an arid desert—while Houston drivers pondered the four words printed on one of Eve Fowler’s billboards: “the difference is spreading.”

For Crosher, this kind of reflection is key to the Manifest Destiny Billboard Project.
“The hope is to urge people to reconsider the history and mythology of the cross-country road trip,” says Crosher. “Instead of talking abstractly and fantasizing about the trip west, the idea is to physically move through the very landscape being fantasized.”

The first 10 billboards went up in Jacksonville, Florida, in October 2013—Shana Lutker’s “Onward and Upward” series, which showed historic images of skies, like a painting of pre-Spanish Florida or a photo of Jacksonville in 1909. Whizzing by on the freeway, drivers catch a glimpse of a double image—one skyline superimposed on top of another.

After Florida, billboards popped across the I-10 east to west—from Alabama and Louisiana to three cities in Texas, then on to New Mexico, Arizona, and finally California. The last chapter, by Matthew Brannon, will be installed in L.A. in late June, to coincide with a culminating weekend of events and exhibitions throughout the city related to the project’s themes.

Several of the project’s artists played with the device of repetition so often used in traditional advertising—using the same image on every billboard so it became ingrained in commuters’ minds. For his chapter, “Love and Work,” in San Antonio, John Baldessari created a split image of a man reclining in a hammock and a huge black-and-white gear. The visual parallel of man and machine, and leisure and labor speaks to “the precarious balancing act that is both America’s ambition and the source of many of its most salient problems,” according to the project description.

Crosher’s own chapter, “LA-LIKE: Shangri-LA’d,” went up along the I-10 in Palm Springs in April 2015. Her billboards show lush green foliage—which is meant to symbolize the promise of abundance in contrast to the desert that surrounds it—that becomes increasingly brown and withered as you progress through the billboards.

The quick glimpse, the experience of viewing art at 70 miles per hour, is part of what makes the project so special. “When you actually see the billboards, it happens so quickly,” said Crosher. “There’s this wonderful moment of billboard hunting, of trying to find something that is so very difficult to see, going that fast.”

The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project’s Culminating Weekend takes place across Los Angeles from June 24 to 28.

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Two years ago, I moved to College Park, Maryland, to start my freshman year of college. On our way, my family stopped in Annapolis, the state capital, to do some sightseeing. I was drawn to the city’s history–which you can see all around you in the architecture, the cobblestone streets, the landmarks–and delighted by the views of Chesapeake Bay and of the sailboats on the water. I felt more welcome in that city in my first five minutes there than I ever did in College Park.

I settled into my dorm and college life, but I was desperate to get to Annapolis. There was no convenient way to travel between the two cities via public transportation, so I bought a car before my second semester began and got a retail job at a mall in the capital. Annapolis became my weekend hangout spot, too. Soon I was going back and forth five days a week. The drive became as routine as showering, and I realized that it was an act beyond that of commuting.

Even when I had no real reason to be in Annapolis, I developed the habit of jumping in my car and immediately heading east. I was constantly Annapolis-bound, heading south on U.S. Route 1, then east on East West Highway, a right turn onto Route 401 until merging onto U.S. Route 50 for the last 20 miles. I could do it with my eyes closed, and on some late nights, it’s possible that I did.

The scenery along Route 50 is basic, almost indistinguishable from other major highways on the eastern seaboard. There were certain curves and hills that added color to the experience, but it wasn’t about what I saw on the drive. It was what I felt.

Spending hours doing absolutely nothing in Annapolis brought consistent joy into my life. Yet I was never reluctant to leave. There were even times when I’d get off the highway and immediately turn onto the onramp heading back toward Route 50, never setting foot in Annapolis. As much as I hated College Park, I had friends there. And as much as I loved Annapolis, it wasn’t home. I had two separate lives in two separate cities. Route 50 was my connection between these two, and when I would drive that route, I didn’t have to choose. No matter which direction I was traveling, I had something waiting for me. On Route 50, I had everything.

Sean McEntee is a broadcast television journalism student at Columbia College Chicago.

*Photo courtesy of Dougtone.

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