Road maps and Roadgeeks go together like bad food and bad people; and I've collected a few good maps in my time; but I have a soft spot for this lot. Union 76 is my favorite gas station-historically, anyway, now they're another corpo-entity trying put a happy face on the exploitation of the Third World's resources. But that's another kettle of fish. Back in the 50's, they were priolly just as ruthless, but they gave away FREE ROAD MAPS, and for a few years, instead of the ubiquitous Bland Mc Crappy maps, you could get these spiffing specimens produced by the Jeppeson Company of Denver CO(alas no longer with us).  They were more well known for relief maps, and you can find their work on the Colorado State maps of the 50's, among other places(check old geography textbooks or encyclopedias).

Here are the covers of the 4 maps. The artist credited for this lot is one Hal Shelton.

 
Here's a money shot from the Idaho map. The legend is pretty standard, close to what Bland Mc was putting out, however the relief detail is quite good-which of course was Jeppeson's speciality. The maps have a “52-xxx" code in the margins, which I'm guessing is a date code.

Here's the Albuquerque inset from the New Mexico map.

 
And here's the Grand Canyon inset from the Arizona map. Don't you love how the relief detail is tipped into the general area of the park? I had to include the “life you save" message, which was common on maps put out from the 30's-50's.

 
The detail here isn't really that great, but you get the idea-This is the simplified style used on the Western US Map. You're looking at South Dakota. Dashed dines are unsealed roads. If you squint real hard you'll note that the state highway numbers are much the same as they are today, with a few exceptions.

 
The Jeppeson maps had their own take on the "Miracle Fold" scheme-patented, no less(#2 264 119): The maps were divided into "pages" and these pages were worked into the grid location scheme: so a given location would have a coordinate like this: “Roswell(population) ...3-F6". The grids on the map were actually standard issue alphanumeric jobs, but the addition of the "page" number probably helped speed up the location process-even if it rilly is redundant. For those too manly to do grids, the pages also have titles that indicate their general area. If you look at the maps, you'll note the dimensions are not rectangular, the lower aspect has a slant; and that's especially notable when you open the map.