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Summer 1947
NY — SF — NY
NY — SF — NY
New-York (NY) — Adel (IA)
NY, 242nd Street (NY)
Filled with dreams of what I’d do in Chicago, in Denver, and then finally in San Fran, I took the 7th avenue subway to the end of the line at 242nd street, right near Horace Mann the prep school where I had actually met Henri Cru.
NY, Hudson river (NY)
And there took a trolley into Yonkers; downtown Yonkers I transferred on an outgoing trolley and went to the city limits on the east bank of the Hudson river.
NY, Bear Mtn. bridge (NY)
I started hitching up the thing. Five scattered shot rides took me to the desired Bear Mtn. bridge where Route 6 arched in from New England.
Newburgh (NY)
But they let me in, and rode me back to Newburgh which I accepted as a better alternative than being trapped in the Bear Mtn wilderness all night.
NY, 34St. bus station (NY)
I walked down to the river, and among all things I had to ride back to NY in a bus (...) The bus left at 2 o’clock in the morning from the 34St. bus station.
Chicago (IL)
I arrived in Chicago quite early in the morning.
Joliet (IL)
To get out of the impossible complexities of Chicago traffic I took a bus to Joliet, Illinois.
Davenport (IA)
My first ride was a dynamite truck with a red flag, about thirty miles into the great green Illinois (...) But she was a middleaged woman, actually the mother of sons my age, and wanted somebody to help her drive to Iowa. I was all for it. Iowa! (...) I took over the wheel, and though I’m not much of a driver drove clear through the rest of Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, via Rock Island.
Des Moines (IA)
Just as we rolled into Rapid City he saw another truck coming behind us, and because he had to turn off at Rapid City he blinked his tail lights at the other guy and slowed down for me to jump out (...) Off we roared, and an hour later the smoke of Des Moines appeared ahead over the green cornfields. He had to eat his breakfast now and wanted to take it easy, so I went right on into Des Moines the rest of the way about four miles, hitching a ride from two boys from the U. of Iowa.
Adel (IA)
A crazy guy with a kind of toolshack on wheels, a truck full of tools, that he drove standing up like a modern milkman, gave me a ride up the long hill; where I immediately got a ride from a farmer and his son heading out for Adel in Iowa.
Adel (IA) — Longmont (CO)
Stuart (IA)
But we stuck together and got a ride from a taciturn man to Stuart Iowa, a town in which I was destined to be really stranded.
Council Bluffs (IA)
So when the Omaha bus came through just before dawn we hopped on it and joined the sleeping passengers---for this I spent most of the last of my few bucks, his fare as well as mine. (...) We arrived at Council Bluffs at dawn.
Omaha (NE)
Then Omaha, and by God the first cowboy I saw.
Preston (NE)
We got a ride from a couple of young fellows, wranglers, teenagers, countryboys in a put-together jaloppy and were left off somewhere up the line in a thin drizzle of rain. Then an old man who said nothing and God knows why he picked us up took us to (Preston) Nebraska.
Grand Island (NE)
I told my soul, and the cowboy came back and off we went to Grand Island. We got there in no time flat.
North Platte (NE)
I was glad when the two Minnesota farmboys in the cab decided to stop in No. Platte and eat.
Ogallala (NE)
We came suddenly into the town of Ogallala, and here the fellows in the cab called out “Pisscall!” and with great good delight.
Cheyenne (WY)
Great crowds of businessmen, fat businessmen in boots and tengallon hats, with their hefty wives in cowgirl attire bustled and whoopeed on the wooden sidewalks of old Cheyenne; further down were the long stringy boulevard lights of new downtown Cheyenne.
Longmont (CO)
I got a ride right off from a young fellow from Connecticut who was driving around the country in his jaloppy painting; he was the son of an editor in the East. He talked and talked; I was sick from drinking and from the altitude. At one point I almost had to stick my head out the window. But I made it, and by the time he let me off at Longmont Colo.
Longmont (CO) — Sacramento (CA)
Denver, Larimer street (CO)
The man and I had a long warm conversation about our respective schemes in life and before I knew it we were going over the Denargo fruitmarkets outside Denver, there was smoke, smokestacks, railyards, redbrick buildings and the distant downtown graystone buildings and here I was in Denver. He let me off at Larimer street.
Denver, Grant street (CO)
Allen had a basement apartment on Grant street and we all met there many a night that went to dawn---Allen, Neal, myself, Jim Holmes, Al Hinkle and Bill Tomson. More of these others later.
Denver (CO)
And then it all started. The following ten days were as W.C. Fields says “Fraught with eminent peril…” and mad. I moved in with Allan Temko in the really swank apartment that belonged to EdW’s folks.
Central City (CO)
In the afternoon I was involved in that trek to the mountains and didn’t get to see Neal or Allen for five days. Beverly Burford had use of her employer’s car for the weekend. We brought suits and hung them on the windows and took off for Central City, Bob Burford driving, Ed White lounging in the back, and Beverly up front. It was my first view of the interior of the Rockies.
Denver (CO)
The sun came out, and Ed White rode a trolley with me to the bus station. I bought my ticket to San Fran, spending half of the fifty, and got on at two o’clock in the afternoon. Ed White waved goodbye. The bus rolled out of the storied eager Denver streets. “By God I gotta come back and see what else will happen!”
Cheyenne (WY)
The bus trip from Denver to Frisco was uneventful except that my whole soul leaped to it the nearer we got to Frisco. Cheyenne again…
Salt Lake City (UT)
And then went over the rangelands; crossing the Divide at midnight at Creston, arriving Salt Late City at dawn, a city of sprinklers, the least likely place for Neal to have been born.
Reno (NV)
Then out to Nevada in the hot sun, Reno by nightfall, its twinkling Chinese streets; then up the Sierra Nevada, pines, stars, mountain lodges signifying Frisco romances.
Sacramento (CA)
And Truckee itself, homey Truckee and then down the hill to the flats of Sacramento. I suddenly realized I was in California.
Sacramento (CA) — Los Angeles (CA)
San Francisco (CA)
I wandered out like a haggard ghost, and there she was, Frisco, long bleak streets with trolley wires all shrouded in fog and whiteness. I stumbled about a few blocks. Weird bums (it was Mission st.) asked me for dimes in the dawn.
Marin City (CA)
And following his instructions I took a bus and rode out over the Golden Gate bridge to Marin City.
Sausalito (CA)
Down by the Sausalito waterfront Henri suddenly whipped out his gun and shot at the gulls.
San Francisco (CA)
Meanwhile I began going to Frisco more often; I tried everything in the books to make a girl. I even spent a whole night with a girl on a parkbench, till dawn, without success.
Oakland (CA)
In Oakland I had a beer among the bums of a saloon with a wagon wheel in front of it, and I was on the road again.
Fresno (CA)
He drove me into buzzing Fresno and let me off the south side of town.
Bakersfield (CA)
He left me off the south side of Bakersfield and then my adventure began. It grew cold.
Grapevine Pass (CA)
The bus groaned up Grapevine Pass and then we were coming down into the great sprawls of light.
LA, Main street (CA)
We got off the bus at Main street.
Los Angeles (CA) — Dalhart (TX)
Hollywood (CA)
We went to Hollywood to try to work in the drugstore at Sunset and Vine.
Arcadia (CA)
So before the daily room rent was due again we packed up and took off on a red car to Arcadia, California.
Bakersfield (CA)
We were going to take a bus to Bakersfield and work picking grapes.
Selma (CA)
We would hitch hike to Selma her hometown and live in her brother’s garage.
Madera (CA)
He drove seventy miles an hour in the old heap and we went to Madera beyond Fresno to see some farmers.
Fresno (CA)
We went back and picked up Bea and her brother and the kid and drove to Fresno.
Selma (CA)
We drove back to Selma. On the way we pulled up sharp at a roadhouse on the highway---highway 99.
LA, Main street (CA)
I got out on the highway and hitched a ride at once. It was the fastest whoopingest ride of my life. The driver was a fiddler for a famous California cowboy band. He had a brand new car and drove eighty mile an hour. “I don’t drink when I drive” he said and handed me a pint. I took a drink and offered him one. “What the hail” he said and drank. We made Selma to LA in the amazing time of four hours flat.
Dalhart (TX)
Then I bought my bus ticket to New York. (...) I forgot to mention that I didn’t have enough money for a bus ticket all the way to New York, only Pittsburgh. (...) Every bump, rise and stretch in it mystified my longing. In inky night we crossed New Mexico immersed; at gray dawn it was Dalhart Texas.
Dalhart (TX) — New York (NY)
Kansas (KS)
At nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going home in October.
St. Louis (MO)
We arrived in St. Louis at noon.
Indianapolis (IN)
I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis.
Pittsburgh (PA)
She got off at Columbus Ohio and I slept all the way to Pittsburgh.
Harrisburg (PA)
I walked five miles to get out of Pittsburgh and two rides, an apple truck and a big trailer truck, took me to Harrisburg in the soft Indian Summer rainy night.
NY, Times Square (NY)
Gad, I was sick and tired of life. But the madman drove me home to New York. Suddenly I found myself on Times Square. I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square.
Winter 1948/49
NY — SF — NY
NY — SF — NY
New-York (NY) — Flomaton (AL)
New York (NY)
It was time to go. We drove to my house, a whole gang of ten, to get my bag and call Bill Burroughs in New Orleans from the phone in the bar where Neal and I had our first talk years ago when he came to my door to learn to write.
New Jersey (NJ)
Neal pushed the Hudson thru the Lincoln Tunnel and we were in New Jersey.
Philadelphia (PA)
In no time we were at the approaches of Philadelphia.
Baltimore (MD)
He wheeled the car around and we roared back to Philly and got on route one and arrived in Baltimore in an hour and a half.
Virginia (VA)
In the scraggly Virginia dawn poor Rhoda, head bowed, huddled in her coat, not wanted for Cal, made her way back to a crossroads bus stop on foot.
Richmond (VA)
When we got through Richmond we began forgetting about it and soon everything was OK.
Rocky Mountains (NC)
We spent two hours in Rocky Mt. waiting for Herbert Diamond to show up.
Dunn (NC)
We were in Dunn in an hour, at dusk.
Macon (GA)
I drove through South Carolina and all the way beyond Macon Georgia.
Flomaton (AL)
“Just pas’t the tip of Florida, man, Flomaton it’s called.”
Flomaton (AL) — Houston (TX)
Mobile (AL)
I took a deep breath; a locomotive howled across the darkness, Mobile bound.
New Orleans (LA)
At dusk we were coming into the humming streets of New Orleans.
Algiers (LA)
We bounced the car up on the Algiers ferry and found ourselves crossing the Mississippi river by boat. (...) Then we went to Bill Burroughs house outside town near the river levee.
Graetna (LA)
In the afternoon we went to Graetna, just Bill and me. We drove in his old Chevvy.
Baton Rouge (LA)
We wheeled through the sultry old light of Algiers, back on the ferry, back towards the muddy-splashed crabb’d old ships across the river, back on Canal, and out; on a two-lane hiway to Baton Rouge in purple darkness;
Port Allen (LA)
Swung west there, cross’t the Mississippi at a place called Port Allen and tore across the state of Louisiana in a matter of three hours.
Sabine (TX)
I said “Okay I will” we rolled across the hoodwink night of the great Louisiana plains---Lawtell, Eunice, Kinder and DeQuincey, western rickety towns becoming more bayou-like as we reached the Sabine.
Beaumont (TX)
“Texas! It’s Texas! Beaumont oiltown!”
Houston (TX)
We zoomed through Beaumont, over the Trinity River at Liberty and straight for Houston.
Houston (TX) — Tucson (AZ)
Fredericksburg (TX)
We were near Fredericksburg Texas in the high plains. It was the worst winter in Texas and Western history, January 1949.
Sonora (TX)
At Sonora I again helped myself to free bread and cheese while the proprietor chatted with a big rancher on the other side of the store.
Ozona (TX)
Arriving at dusk and not stopping except once when he took all his clothes off, near Ozona, and ran like a jackal through the sage yipping and leaping.
Pecos (TX)
Soon we were in the orange-rocked Pecos canyon country. Blue distances opened up in the sky.
Clint (TX)
We descended into it. “Clint Texas!” said Neal. He had the radio on to the Clint station.
El Paso (TX)
For a moment I was worried; but Neal only wanted to dig the streets of El Paso with the kid and get his kicks. They straggled off.
Las Cruces (NM)
Passing Las Cruces New Mexico in the night, the same Las Cruces that had been Neal’s pivot on the way east, we arrived in Arizona at dawn and I woke up from a deep sleep to find everybody sleeping like lambs and the car parked God knows where because I couldn’t see out the steamy windows. I got out of the car.
Benson (AZ)
In this manner I rolled into Benson Arizona.
Tucson (AZ)
We drove on to Tucson. Tucson is situated in beautiful mesquite riverbed country overlooked by the snowy Catalina range.
Tucson (AZ) — Toledo (OH)
Bakersfield (CA)
Neal wanted to tell me everything he knew about Bakersfield as we reached the city limits.
Tulare (CA)
We thanked him and took off. Next stop was Tulare. Up the valley we roared.
Madera (CA)
We were turning off the Oregon-road at Madera and there we made our farewell with little Alfred.
Oakland (CA)
When we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco.
San Francisco (CA)
I stayed in San Francisco a week and had the beatest time of my life. Louanne and I walked around for miles looking for food-money.
Butte, Montana (MT)
In Butte Montana I got involved with drunken Indians; spent all night in a big wild saloon that was the answer to Bill Burroughs’ quest for the ideal bar;
Big Timber (MT)
In Big Timber I saw a young cowboy who’d lost an arm in the war and sat with the old men in a winter afternoon inn looking with longing eyes at the boys loping by outside in the great Yellowstone snows.
North Dakota (ND)
Moreover you would think a bus trip such as I took from Frisco to New York would be uneventful and I’d get home in one piece and could relax. Not so; in North Dakota the bus got stuck in a tremendous badlands blizzard.
Toledo (OH)
In Toledo Ohio I got off the bus.
Toledo (OH) — New York (NY)
Detroit (MI)
Hitch hiked up to Detroit Michigan to see my first wife.
Pennsylvania (PA)
In Pennsylvania I had to get off the bus and steal apples in a countrytown store or starve.
NY, Ozone Park (NY)
I staggered back East in search of my stone, got home and ate everything in the icebox again, only now it was a refrigerator, fruit of my 1947 labors.
Spring 1949
Denver — SF — NY
Denver — SF — NY
Denver (CO) — Sacramento (CA)
Denver (CO)
With this I tried to move my family---that is to say, my mother, sister, brother-in-law and their child---to a comfortable home in Denver.
Denver, Alameda Boulevard (CO)
I got up and hitch hiked down from my house out Alameda Boulevard Denver six miles into town;
Denver, Larimer Street (CO)
Then I staggered to Larimer street with my eleven dollars and got drunk in Jiggs’ buffet bar across the street from the Windsor Hotel where Neal Cassady had lived with his father Old Neal Cassady in the depression Thirties.
Colorado/Utah Border (CO)
So all my problems were solved and I got a Travel Bureau car for eleven dollars gas-fare to Frisco and zoomed over the land to Neal. (...) We sat tight and bent our minds to the goal. As we crossed the Colorado-Utah.
Salt Lake City (CO)
Yes, zoom! In Salt Lake City the pimps checked up on their girls and we drove on.
San Francisco (UT)
I was seeing the fabled city of San Francisco stretched on the Bay in the middle of the night.
Marin City (CA)
Tomson agreed to drive us to Marin City to look for Henri Cru. (Neal never gave cute names to perfectly normal drab pursuits.)
SF, Howard Street (CA)
“Wheeoo! let’s go!” cried Neal, and we jumped in the back seat and clanked to Howard Street.
SF, Mission Street (CA)
Mission street that last day in Frisco was a great riot of construction work, children playing, whooping Negroes coming home from work, dust, excitement, the great buzzing and vibrating hum of what is really America’s most excited city.
Sacramento (CA)
In the afternoon we were buzzing towards Sacramento and eastward again. The car belonged to a tall thin fag who was on his way home to Kansas and wore dark glasses and drove with extreme care.
Sacramento (CA) — Rock Island (IA)
Nevada (NV)
We left Sacramento at dawn and were crossing the Nevada desert by noon after a hurling passage of the Sierras that made the fag and the tourists cling to each other in the backseat.
Salt Lake City (UT)
Reno, Battle Mountain, Elko, all the towns along the Nevada road shot by one after another and at dusk we were in the Salt Lake flats with the lights of Salt Lake City.
Craig, CO (CO)
In any case they got too tired in the morning and Neal took the wheel in the Eastern Colorado desert at Craig.
Denver (CO)
Now we had a number of circumstances to deal with in Denver and they were of an entirely different order than 1947.
Coyote, CO (CO)
I felt and we were doing it fast. It grew dark when we turned off the hiway at Junction and hit a dirt road that took us across dismal E. Colorado plains to Ed Uhl’s ranch in the middle of Coyote Nowhere.
Iowa (IA)
I went to sleep and woke up to the dry hot atmospheres of July Sunday morning in Iowa
Des Moines (IA)
In the afternoon we crossed old Des Moines again.
Davenport (IA)
In the afternoon we crossed drowsy old Davenport again and the low-lying Mississippi in her sawdust bed;
Rock Island (IA)
then Rock Island, a few minutes of traffic, the sun reddening and sudden sights of lovely little tributary rivers flowing softly among the magic trees and greeneries of mid-American Illinois.
Rock Island (IA) — New York (NY)
Chicago (IL)
We saw distant smokes of Chicago beyond the drive. We had come from Denver to Chicago, 1028 miles according to the Rand-McNally .mileage chart, in exactly 23 hours counting the two hours we wasted in the Colorado.
Lake Shore (IL)
It was now time to return the Cadillac to the owner, who lived out on Lake Shore drive in a swank apartment with the enormous garage.
Chicago (IL)
He scratched his head at the sight of it. We had to get out fast. We did. We took a bus back to downtown Chicago and that was that.
Detroit (MI)
We took a bus to Detroit, our money was now running quite low.
DE, Briggs Stadium (MI)
The moment we were in the new Chrysler and off to New York the poor man realized he had contracted a ride with two maniacs, but he made the best of it and in fact got used to us just as we passed the Briggs Stadium and talked about next year’s Detroit Tigers.
NY (NY)
The man got tired near Pennsylvania and Neal took the wheel and drove clear the rest of the way to New York and we began to hear the Symphony Sid show on the radio.
Spring 1950
NY — Denver — Mexico City
NY — Denver — Mexico City
New York (NY) — Amarillo (TX)
NY (NY)
In New York we were always jumping around frantically with crowds of friends at drunken parties. It somehow didn’t seem to fit Neal.
Cincinati (OH)
The following midnight I took the Washington bus (...) The dark and mysterious Ohio, and Cincinnati at dawn.
Abilene (CO)
By night Missouri, Kansas fields, Kansas night-cows in the secret wides, crackerbox towns with a sea for the end of every street; dawn in Abilene.
Denver (CO)
When we arrived in Denver I took him by the arm to Larimer street to pawn the penitentiary suit.
Castle Rock (CO)
Now we pointed our rattly snout South and headed for Castle Rock Colorado as the sun turned red.
Colorado Springs (CO)
Came to Colorado Springs at dark.
Trinidad (CO)
We passed Walsenburg; suddenly we passed Trinidad where Hal Chase was somewhere off the road.
Raton, New Mexico (NM)
Then we were in New Mexico and passed the rounded rocks of Raton.
Dalhart (TX)
Across the immense plain of night lay the first Texas town, Dalhart, which I’d crossed in 1947
Amarillo (TX)
We bowled for Amarillo, and reached it in the morning among windy panhandle grasses.
Amarillo (TX) — Linares (Mexico)
Childress (TX)
At Childress in the hot sun we turned directly south on a lesser road and continued across abysmal wastes to Paducah, Guthrie... ...and Abilene Texas.
Abilene (TX)
...and Abilene Texas.
Fredericksburg (TX)
I took the wheel and drove all the way to Fredericksburg.
San Antonio (TX)
Suddenly we were in absolutely tropical heat at the bottom of a five mile long hill and up ahead we saw the lights of old San Antonio.
Laredo (TX)
We leaped into the car and off. I was so exhausted by now I slept all the way to Laredo and didn’t wake up till they were parking the car
Nuevo Laredo (Mexico)
We were longing to rush right up there and get lost in those mysterious Spanish streets. It was only Nuevo Laredo but it looked like Barcelona.
Sabinas Hidalgo (Mexico)
We arrived at Sabinas Hidalgo across the desert at about seven o’clock in the morning.
Monterrey (Mexico)
Entering Monterrey was like entering Detroit, among great long walls of factories, except for the burros that sunned in the grass before them, and the barefoot girls that cut along with groceries.
Linares (Mexico)
I took the wheel and drove among reveries of my own, through Linares, through hot flat swamp country, across the steaming Rio Soto la Marina near Hidalgo, and on.
Linares (Mexico) — Mexico City (Mexico)
Victoria (Mexico)
These were my growing thoughts as I drove the car into the hot sunbaked town of Victoria where we were destined to spend the maddest afternoon of our entire lives.
Limon (Mexico)
And suddenly Limon appeared before us, a jungle town, a few brown lights, dark shadows, enormous and unimaginable skies overhead and a cluster of men in front of a jumble of woodshacks
Tamazunchale (Mexico)
So off we roared again, creating air for our hot caked faces, and went to Valles and on towards the great foothill town of Tamazunchale.
River Moctezuma (Mexico)
In no time at all we soared to an elevation of 5,000 feet among misty passes that overlooked steaming yellow rivers a mile below. It was the great River Moctezuma.
Zimapan (Mexico)
At Zimapan, or Ixmiquilpan, or Actopan, I don’t know which, we had reached the approaches of the last plateau.
Zumpango (Mexico)
At Colonia we reached the final level of the great Mexican plateau and zoomed straight ahead on an arrow road towards Zumpango and Mexico City.
Mexico City (Mexico)
“Shall we change our insect T-shirts?” “Naw, let’s wear them into town, hell’s bells.” And we drove into Mexico City. (...)
About The Project
On The Road quickly became an obsession when I discovered it. This project aims at following the journey of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady as depicted in the novel.
All quotes utilized in this project have been extracted from the original scroll edition (2007). The quotes are the properties of © The Kerouac Estate.
My own notes were relied upon to track the various locations mentioned in the book. Currently, a map of Mexico has yet to be added, but I am working to include it in the near future. If you think I have missed any location, please feel free to reach out to me via Twitter or by reporting issues on the Github repository of the project. The road itinerary used in this project is based on the recommended route provided by Google Maps as of January 16th, 2023. It should be noted that some roads may not have existed at the time the novel was written, making the present itinerary not entirely accurate.
I would also like to acknowledge another project that was an inspiration to me; interactive places by Dennis Mansker.
This project is open to contributions, and all necessary information can be found below. The project itself has been developed using Javascript, with the use of Vue.js, Nuxt, D3.js and Scrollama.
Source Code on Github
Google My Maps itinerary
by Loris Mat