The Driving Decade: Roadside America Website 1996-2006

Yep, we've been plunging across the web on wacky road trips for a decade. Since September 1996. Longer, actually.

Join us for a short self-congratulatory journey to Memorylaneville (or exit now).

Though RoadsideAmerica.com officially launched in September 1996, Roadside America technically debuted on the web two years earlier, in July 1994. That's when writers Doug Kirby, Ken Smith and Mike Wilkins navigated the Internet's first coast-to-coast virtual vacation, sending daily road trip uploads to AOL and Wired magazine's web site. No big deal to today's wireless crowd, but back then we had to stop at gas stations and diners and beg to use their office phones, so that we could patch in our modem. We probably caused a mini-recession in take-out orders, but we managed to upload scores of photos and a handful of postage stamp-sized video clips.

Sept. 1996: First home page was a jolly, clickable cartoon tornado swirl.

We crafted more hypertours, accumulated cyberceleb endorsements (hilarious today), and jumped in as the web became the favored vehicle for reporting on the latest oddball places. We spent half of 1996 typing descriptions of everything that we'd seen for the previous ten years into BBEdit text files, and then added all of the places that we'd visited since 1992, which was when our book New Roadside America was published.

With the urgent plea, "Let us be your Travel Brain," RoadsideAmerica.com launched on the Internet with a cartoon image map home page, 50 state pages, 250 other pages, and a lot of pent up energy. It was only a matter of weeks before reader tips started to trickle in... then the floodgates opened.

March of Historic Milestones

1996

September: RoadsideAmerica.com is officially open for business. The first "Sight of the Week" we feature is The Head of Fire Horse Fred. Site philosophy: "A reward on every page."

1996-1998: Tacky postcard motif greets visitors to the site.

December: We introduce a special section devoted to Muffler Men, with a small list of locations. Within days, site visitors are reporting eyewitness sightings all over the country.

The Smileage Club signs up its first member.

Average gas price/gallon: $1.23 (DOE Avg, not adjusted for inflation)

1997

Our popular Roadside Pet Cemetery section launches (We still occasionally plant worthy new dead animals).

In the news, we reported how lives were saved by ending the 55 mph speed limit on US highways.

Average gas price/gallon: $1.23

1998

We redesign to accommodate thousands of new visitor tips, feature sections, tours and news. Usability PhDs shake their noggins in disgust as we continue to favor navigation bar image maps and a billboard homepage.

A connection is revealed between the dead albino squirrels in Madison, Wisconsin and an Albino Squirrel Capital in Missouri.

1998-2004: Billboard landscape. 1998's Frazee turkey fire.

Average gas price/gallon: $1.06

1999

Our Tourism News section is loaded with stories about the latest "eatertainment" horrors, international tourism atrocities, and endless statue defacings.

Millennium plans and attractions appear in the news in a run up to the big event. Later, everyone wants to forget it ever happened...

Average gas price/gallon: $1.17

2000

Roger, World's First Wooden Search Engine, helps visitors search tips. His slogan: "I'm better than nothing!" And if you search on "Nothing," you'll find that it's a town in Arizona.

Average gas price/gallon: $1.51

2001

June: We officially recognize Canada as a country with worthwhile roadside attractions.

August: We launch a monthly feature section, named "The Pile" as a pre-blog catch-all for whatever.

September: Terrorists attack America, reducing the World Trade Center to a mound of rubble the recovery teams nickname "The Pile." A Bunyan Muffler Man stands on RA's homepage, brandishing an American flag.

November: We report military base museum and nuke plant visitor center closings, due to heightened security.

December 2004: Billboard homepage retired, replaced by a text-list design.

December: Rooty, the not-too-bright brother of Roger, helps search unpublished tips in the Secret Site. Rooty is only popular with the most hardcore of Smilers.

Average gas price/gallon: $1.46

2002

We officially acknowledge Hawaii and Alaska -- homes to more than a couple of tourist attractions -- with their own state pages.

We chronicle the unfolding drama of the Nut Lady, featured as a favorite museum and personality on our site since 1996, but now under siege by "Dark Forces" after her miraculous revival from a coma.

Average gas price/gallon: $1.36

2003

We tackle "Jugs of Pee," a growing national epidemic of trucker bombs littering highways and threatening safety. A map charts the advance.

Average gas price/gallon: $1.59

2004

Sort of a geek milestone -- we get the attraction database under control, reducing manual updates. Not that we publish tips any faster (thanx for yr patience, tipsters).

Average gas price/gallon: $1.88

2005

We add the capability to find hotels and motels near attractions.

Average gas price/gallon: $2.30

2006

January: Interactive Roadside America Attraction maps are added to thousands of reports and tips. You asked for 'em, and we spent months pouring over old notes, and going blind looking at fuzzy satellite photos, to give 'em to you.

June: Another geek milestone. We add an RSS feed after someone explains to us why it is a good thing.

July - August: We conduct celebratory 10th anniversary road trips to Arizona, Arkansas, DC, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virgina, seeing mostly new attractions and a few old favorites.

Average gas price/gallon: $2.85? $2.35?

And onward....

At peace with the Mummies of the Insane, Philippi, WV.