Reader's advisory: Wired News has been unable to confirm some sources for a number of stories written by this author. If you have any information about sources cited in this article, please send an e-mail to sourceinfo[AT]wired.com.
NEW YORK -- Richard Weingroff really loves roads, as long as he doesn't have to travel too far on them.
Weingroff, information liaison specialist for the Federal Highway Administration and the FHA's unofficial historian, doesn't have anything against roads -- he just doesn't like to travel much. But when he does hit the road, he sticks to the new interstates and steers clear of the older secondary highways.
Our plan is to drive the length of the U.S. Highway 1 along the eastern seaboard in search of geek history and culture. But Weingroff warns us that Route 1, all 2,425 miles of it from Fort Kent, Maine, to Key West, Florida, is widely believed to be the ugliest and most inefficient major road in the country.
"People say the interstates are sterile, but there's a lot to be said for getting where you're going quickly and safely," Weingroff said. "Plus, I don't think that abandoned mom-and-pop motels, greasy-spoon diners, bars and pawn shops are especially scenic. Why don't you just take Interstate 95?"
Photographer Laszlo Pataki (who happens to be my husband) and I are taking Route 1 because of the wonderful things tucked into the chaos and clutter marking the road that has been home and highway to geeks for the past 300 years. We want to visit historical monuments, meet some modern gurus and tell their stories.
Type "define geek" into Google's search box, and the spiffy new dictionary feature returns this definition: "a person who may be very smart yet lacks the social graces of those who are considered cool, a 'computer geek' is someone who spends too much time on the computer and has no social life."
That's one definition, but it's not the only one.
A geek is also someone who is, as Roget's Interactive Thesaurus (first edition) suggests, an "expert, guru, maestro, maven, philosopher, savant, scholar, teacher, thinker...."
Along the length of Route 1, survivors of the world's second-biggest whirlpool in Eastport, Maine, meet to swap stories and study the tides. In Massachusetts, researchers work to bring the real history of the Salem witchcraft trials to the Web. The grandson of the inventor of the first computer tends bar in Philadelphia.
Espionage experts reside in Washington, D.C. The designers of the Web's grandest open-source experiment hang out in Virginia. Swamp scholars in Georgia, alligator experts and astronauts in Florida and many more treasures are tucked away. Good luck finding all that as you speed along on the interstate.
Route 1 has been a test bed for some of the latest and greatest technologies of the past five centuries. The northern sections of the road date back to at least 1636, when it was no more than an ill-defined trail through dark woods. Early settlers were convinced that Satan and his minions dwelled there.
George Washington spent so much time schlepping up and down what's now Route 1 that one New England inn sets itself apart by wryly advertising that Washington did not sleep there.
In 1763, then deputy postmaster Benjamin Franklin painstakingly measured and marked the route from New York City to Boston mile by mile, using an odometer he'd designed and affixed to his wagon's rear wheel. Postal rates then were set on the basis of how many miles a letter traveled, and Franklin was attempting to squelch the constant arguments over the price of postage.
In 1771, a crimson and gold painted stagecoach called the Flying Machine made its debut on Route 1. Its owners boasted that the Flying Machine could reach the breathtaking speed of six miles an hour, whisking travelers from New York to Philadelphia in only two days, instead of the four days it typically took to make the 100-mile journey.
As old as parts of it is, the current configuration of Route 1 only began to come together in the early part of the 20th century. Back then, road building was a local responsibility. Towns often demanded that each male between 16 and 60 do a day's work each month on road projects.
"Rural residents often thought the roads were of benefit only to the city folks, and consequently they usually didn't do outstanding jobs," said Weingroff.
Cyclists and motorists in search of decent roads to ride along became organized activists. The League of American Wheelman and the National League for Good Roads, among others, held conventions several times a year, and published magazines such as Good Roads and Public Highways to track roadway politics and progress.
These associations soon began creating their own roads, known as Auto Trails. Many, like Prest-O-Lite's Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway, were funded by corporate donations.
Soon the auto trail groups had laid down myriad roads with evocative names: the Tamiami and Old Spanish Trails; the Lincoln, Jefferson, Yellowstone, Ocean-to-Ocean and Dixie highways. Many of these roads intersected and mingled in a merry but very difficult to follow fashion.
And since the trails were very much commercial ventures, among the mess of route and traffic signs was plenty of highway spam: signs extorting motorists to buy live bait and lunch, see the boxing bears, the wild donkeys or the world's biggest ball of string, and stay in this or that tourist camp.
"By the late 1930s there were plenty of good roads, but there were also an awful lot of confused motorists," said Weingroff.
In 1956, the federal government took action and proposed a plan to link all those individual trails into a modern highway system. Existing roads incorporated into the new highway system lost their names and were designated by numbers.
"Some people were pretty upset by the numerical scheme," said Weingroff. "They wrote letters to their local papers wanting to know if the government also planned to start numbering the mountains and rivers."
Natural features were allowed to retain their names, but the highways that were specifically planned to connect cities and towns were soon superseded by high-speed interstates, which often bypass residential areas so in-a-hurry motorists can speed along to their destinations undeterred by traffic lights or locals out for a leisurely drive.
But sometimes speed isn't all you need. It's almost impossible to find evidence of real life along an interstate, so we'll stick to tawdry, tacky, good old Route 1 in search of the eastern seaboard's geekiest places and people.
(Michelle Delio and photographer Laszlo Pataki have begun their four-week geek-seeking journey along U.S. Route 1. If you know a town they should visit, a person they should meet, a weird roadside attraction they must see or a great place to fuel up on lobster rolls, barbecue, conch fritters and the like, send an e-mail to wiredroadtrip@earthlink.net.)
