There are 90 route relations tagged as network=US:auto_trail. Some of them may represent present-day signposted historic byways that follow the old auto trails, but others are vestiges of pseudohistoric road mapping.
In 2021, @Mateusz_Konieczny responded to a thread in Slack by posting this note, which @dannmer is now threatening to dismiss as a stale issue. The note singled out a route relation purporting to represent a section of the Dixie Highway near Cincinnati as of 1918. I’ve wanted to delete it for years as quite a nonsequitur in OSM, but it’s part of a much longer nationwide route relation. I don’t know to what extent the Dixie Highway retains a physical presence in other states.
Granted, many streets along the relation continue to bear the name Dixie Highway. Lest anyone forget why it’s called that, there are occasional monuments commemorating the Confederacy, even in the North. The Dixie Highway was originally marked by “DH” monogram signs, but I’m unaware of any attempt to revive the monogram on modern route markers or designate official historic byways along the former route. This contrasts with the more famous and patriotic Lincoln Highway, which is clearly within OSM’s scope based on its prominently posted “L” route markers.
Looking more closely, I’ve identified a subset of auto trail route relations that are even more suspect, as the cited source doesn’t support the assertion that it’s where the auto trail once ran. This includes the 1918 Dixie Highway relation. It’s unclear whether these routes would even be within scope for OpenHistoricalMap, but they’re definitely misleading in OSM:
Unfortunately, some of the source citations have been removed over the years, so it’s more difficult to know which routes are based on field observation in the present day and which are extrapolations from the wrong guidebook. Can folks take a look at the auto trails mapped in their respective states and determine whether we need to keep or remove them?
The old auto routes that I see in 1920s road maps in my area are definitely not signed and in many, maybe most cases, the roads in those areas have been re-aligned. The only surviving traces I have noticed are some side and by roads bearing the name of an old auto route. For example “Old Spanish Trail”.
There are whole groups dedicated to following some of these, for example the Lincoln Highway. But even they have problems when there are various alignments that were used over the years: Which one to call “official”. So, in general, I don’t think the old auto routes should be in OSM unless there is modern signage.
I know that sections of the the last alignment of the Lincoln Highway in California have modern signage so I think that can and should be mapped based on current signage. But I’ve never seen signage for the Atlantic & Pacific Highway (roughly along old US60 and US70 alignments in the west), the National Park Highway, or National Old Trails Road (roughly along old US66 in Arizona).
I agree that the historic routes that no longer exist should be imported into OpenHistoricalMap and then removed from OSM. while it is very interesting data, I don’t think it belongs in OSM (tho I have no issue with leaving the old_refs on still-existing roads)
I also strongly believe this, otherwise we’d be even more over the top in Tulsa than the four Route 66 related relations we have now (3 for different chronological variations of Route 66, State Highway 66 (which is also the final historic alignment but not signposted as historic) and USBR 66 (which doesn’t strictly follow the old route for various bicycle-related quality of life issues). And that’s before getting into variations of the Ozark Trail (which predated Route 66, and trying to map old alignments would be straight up fiction mapping at this point as any remains going through ranches, pastures and back yards now tend to be of the archeological variation, like the old 1920s Ford that has a fully grown and dead tree right through it in the back 40 of a friend’s property just out of town that very likely hasn’t moved since breaking down on the Ozark Trail).
OHM has some coverage of U.S. 66 through Oklahoma, though it needs route relations before we can claim parity with what’s in OSM. The Ozark Trail isn’t mapped yet, so some help there would be more than welcome, as with the Ford-model planter.
Pretty sure I’ve done just about what I can with Route 66 in Oklahoma with the information I have available to me and I’m kinda in the dark about the Ozark Trail save for the bits that became part of US 66 Historic or are still a part of OK 66. The relations are there for the currently signposted historic US 66 alignments plus the current OK 66 and USBR 66. Going back earlier than that runs into veracity problems: Oklahoma’s only been a state since 1907 and records from before the Great Depression tend to have gotten lost, and much of the record from before statehood was deliberately destroyed (a dark rabbit hole for folks who want to explore that on their own).
As for the junk car, that’s deep enough in the underbrush of my buddy’s property I’m pretty sure I’d create an attractive nuisance for him by mapping it (he values his privacy after decades of a relatively public and active life, and there’s enough rusted hulk around a dead tree to tell what era it’s from and that it’s a Ford but not enough that isn’t an iron rich patch of dirt around it to tell what model it was; this truly is the Peter Iredale of highway vehicles, and there’s not enough trace of the old road left to tell if it was parked perpendicular or parallel).