Tracing a T to Tampa Again:
The Route

Unlike Route 66, the Lincoln Highway, or even the 3-C Highway, Granny's Highway is not a path followed by hordes of travelers over the years. There are no souvenir maps, videos, or historical route markers. The down side is that I had to find my own route. The upside is that it's going to be tough to prove me wrong.

Some states, including Ohio, did some numbering of inter-county roads prior to 1920, but six more years would pass before the same could be said of inter-state roads. Some inter-state named auto trails, such as the previously mentioned Lincoln Highway, did exist and some were well marked. A few even provided printed maps and guides. Popular navigation aids were the numerous books produced by Scarborough Motor Guide Company, The Automobile Blue Book Publishing Company, and others containing "turn left at the yellow house" style instructions for driving between various cities. Granny's letters make no mention of any named auto trail or any guide book or map. It is possible that they or one of their traveling companions had a Blue Book or other guide readily at hand but there is no evidence of that.

Granny identified places rather than paths. The place names she mentions, and there are more then 100 of them, were used with computer software to produce a starting route. A couple of names no longer exist, a few were misspelled or have changed, and some required making a choice from multiple possibilities. The computer could plot a route that included all named points and could even be made to favor back roads, but there was no option for using only roads that existed on November 4, 1920. I have tried to compensate for that with some hand tuning. One type of hand tuning that I applied this time but not in 2001 is favoring the Dixie Highway. Although Granny never actually mentioned the Dixie Highway, there are times when they are clearly following it. Whether or not that was intentional, I cannot say. But the Dixie Highway was the major north-south auto trail in the area and time of their travels so it makes sense that it formed part of their route even it it was only by coincidence. I've learned quite a bit about the Dixie Highway since 2001 when my lack of knowledge caused me to drop any real consideration of it in plotting my path. This time, I've not only discarded computer plots that did not exist in 1920, I have favored paths that not only existed but which are known to have been popular.

The result is the product of hundred year old letters, computer automation, visual comparisons, and pure guesswork. The route covers a bit less that 4000 miles which the computer says should take about 100 hours to drive. Those numbers are less than my 2001 summary of 4200 miles and 125 hours for a couple of reasons. For one, the 2001 numbers were somewhat exaggerated numbers from the full plot rather than the plot that eliminated much duplication and which I actually intended to drive. The second is that the 2020 path really is about 100 miles shorter than the 2001 path. The general route is, of course, the same. It heads almost directly south out of Ohio then through Kentucky and Tennessee. In northern Alabama, the route curves east and crosses to Atlanta before returning to a more southerly heading through the rest of Georgia and into Florida. There it angles southeast toward Daytona but shoots up through Saint Augustine to Jacksonville before heading straight down the coast through Daytona to Miami. Then it's back up the coast to Melbourne and west through Saint Cloud and Kissimmee to Tampa. After visiting Saint Petersburg, the Robbins settled for a while near Lakeland but made an excursion from there to Sarasota over the Christmas holiday. They left Lakeland in the last half of January, and spent close to a month near Daytona before starting north along the same path that they arrived on. Near Macon they struck out north-east through the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland and into Washington. From there, it is west through Hagerstown then on to Columbus and home.

I really tried to reconstruct the 1920 path but, even if I caught every anachronism and computer goof, and I'm sure I've missed plenty, there is no way of knowing that my choices were correct. Furthermore, it is a certainty that Granny did not mention every town they passed through. I faithfully incorporated every location she mentions, including the roving near Lakeland and Holly Hill, but it is just not possible to divine every mile of travel or, on the highways of today, to reach every point. With perfection clearly unattainable, I set out to simplify the route by eliminating duplication while retaining every place Granny mentioned. This means that not every movement I make will track precisely with a line in Granny's letters but the savings in time and potential boredom from too many passes up and down the same stretch of road should be worth it.

There is noticeable duplication in four areas of the full route. As mentioned, both Lakeland and Holly Hill were "homes" for awhile and a few day trips were made in those areas. The third involves the visits to Saint Petersburg and Sarasota and the fourth is the return trip through northern Florida. In the case of Lakeland, I simply eliminated extra trips to Haines City and such and combined any additional points from those trips into one west bound and one east bound pass. The Holly Hill treatment was similar although even the shortened route passes through this area twice.

There was no Sunshine Skyway Bridge in 1920. In 2001, I used this bridge to reach Sarasota without backtracking but I'm skipping the bridge and allowing some backtracking this time around. In departing Florida, I've revived the 2001 method of expediting by using I-75 to near Macon rather than reversing the south bound path as the Robbins did.

I cannot fully explain why the 2020 route is divided in to sixteen segments as compared to 2001's four segments. The fact that directions are loaded onto a GPS unit with its own limitations in addition to those of the routing software certainly has something to do with it and I no doubt contributed a little by making some state line breaks. GPX files and PDF versions of the directions are available below.

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