Conoco Touraide Stops for Lunch in Idaho

The "Touraide" name dates to 1930, when Continental Oil Company (Conoco) launched a free trip-planning service out of Denver: motorists mailed in their intended route, and the Conoco Travel Bureau sent back a customized guide with suggested stops, lodging notes, and annotated maps — a postal precursor to MapQuest, turnaround time measured in days rather than seconds. By the postwar years the service had evolved into standardized state road maps like this one, still carrying the Touraide name as a brand promise rather than a bespoke service.

Most Conoco road maps of this period were printed by H.M. Gousha Company, which held printing contracts with nearly every major American oil brand — Gulf, Standard, Shell — and produced an estimated 200 million maps annually at its peak. The maps cost drivers nothing; the oil companies calculated that a logo riding in the glove compartment was worth more than the printing bill.

The red triangle on the cover — carried over from Marland Oil, which Conoco absorbed in 1929 — was retired in 1970 when the company switched to a capsule design. That gives this map a possible production window of four decades, though the color photography and print quality read as late 1950s to mid-1960s. Idaho was a natural subject: the state's northern panhandle forests, accessible via U.S. Route 10 and later Interstate 90, were a primary draw for Pacific Northwest road-trippers.

The cover image — dappled light, tall conifers, a picnic table — was a deliberate choice over Idaho's more famous volcanic and canyon scenery. Shade and lunch are a better sell than lava fields when you're at a pump in July.