Item #19926 A Tourist Guide of the Ozarks, Season 1925. ARKANSAS.
A Tourist Guide of the Ozarks, Season 1925
A Tourist Guide of the Ozarks, Season 1925
A Tourist Guide of the Ozarks, Season 1925

A Tourist Guide of the Ozarks, Season 1925

Fort Smith, AR: Loumar Service Syndicate, 1925.

5.25 x 7.5 inches, 150 pp + [8] page advertising insert on colored paper at center, with ca. 15 detail maps in the text and a folding map (17 x 17 inches) tipped in at the front showing all itineraries described in the book, with ad for Cook and Border Motor Co., “The Largest Garage in Northwest Arkansas” (in Eureka Springs) on verso. Illustrated wrappers, lightly soiled and creased, with some small chips; internally very good. One copy located in OCLC, in the Central Arkansas Library System.

Although the motto on the front cover, “Loumar Logs Show the Better Ways” suggests a series, this appears to have been the one and only publication of the Loumar Service Syndicate. That’s a shame, because this is a fine little guide. It offers mile-by-mile driving instructions (e.g., “Road forks. Take left fork down grade. Right fork leads to State Sanitorium for Tubercular Patients” or “CAUTION: Start down mountain. Narrow, winding road—sound horn for blind curves. DRIVE CAREFULLY. Note view of Paris in distance in the North”) for more than 35 automobile driving routes, primarily in Arkansas, but also in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. For each town along a route, the guide offers handy facts (demographics, climate, scenery, points of interest), notes service stations, and recommends restaurants and lodging when available. These descriptions, as well as the display advertising, make this an invaluable source of information about long-forgotten businesses in dozens of tiny towns throughout the region.

Item #19926

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