We still enjoy using an atlas
Published 11:38 pm Monday, October 19, 2026
Many years ago, our family always carried an atlas, or a bound book filled with maps of the United States, Canada and Mexico, in our car.
We used it to find our way when we mostly traveled out west for family vacations. And you could also play a game with it by picking a state, closing your eyes, and using your finger to pinpoint a location on the map. The place you picked might be somewhere you drove to or just imagined in your mind. The kids enjoyed this — of course, this was before tablets and smartphones.
Nowadays, atlases and road maps are rarely used because we all have smartphones with GPS. Some of those phones connect to your car, where the directions to a destination are displayed on the vehicle dash. Well, that is all good, except when you have no Wi-Fi and your GPS stops working. Remember, technology is great when it works. So, maybe carrying a physical map or atlas in the car isn’t such a bad idea after all.
A couple of years ago, we went looking for an updated atlas. We checked gas stations and convenience stores, places where they used to sell them. We checked the local bookstore — no atlas, but the store offered to order one. Eventually we ordered one from Amazon. We were excited about our 11-by-15.5-inch Rand McNally 100th Anniversary Road Atlas 1924-2024 edition. It also features the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
It’s the first atlas I’ve had in years. We keep it on the porch to peruse through when we are discussing a trip. It’s become dog-eared since 2024, and it’s been lightly rained on, but we enjoy talking about travel and looking at places to visit, which prompts us to use those smartphones to look up possible vacation locations.
Although in the time and age we live in now a large atlas is basically obsolete, for some reason my husband and I enjoy having the physical copy in our hands to dream. I think it just brings back good memories of past vacations and happy times with family.
Nostalgia aside, smartphone GPS and printed atlases each have advantages and drawbacks. A reliable paper map protects your privacy because it neither tracks your location nor stores your travel history. You can also view several pages at once to compare state lines and find a more scenic route. The best feature of an atlas is that it needs no batteries and won’t fail, while extended GPS use drains the battery.
A paper map is difficult to use if you’re driving alone. But we’ve always had a driver and a navigator, whether using a map or GPS. I’m the navigator (because I do it better) and my husband is the driver. And of course, a handheld map has no real-time updates, like road construction or closures.
Smartphone navigation is state-of-the-art. It can reroute you if a road is closed and give you an ETA. It fits in a purse pocket or backpack. But it runs on battery power and can be susceptible to heat and cold. It can also fall and break.
Maybe the happy middle ground between GPS devices and an atlas is to use them together?
Where one fails, the other might excel. And you can always buy smaller atlases — we just like the big one.
And Rand McNally says it best: “Integrating GPS technology with traditional navigation skills ensures a comprehensive navigational toolkit, (and) the future of navigation involves a balanced use of both digital and analog methods for effective exploration.”
I guess so, but I still love my atlas — now on to the next great adventure!
Faith Bemiss-McKinney is the former features editor for the Sedalia Democrat. She can be reached at faith_bemiss@yahoo.com.
