Esso gasoline station road map, Tennessee and Kentucky, 1956, showing the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway funicular in Chattanooga on the cover

 I am always intrigued by the very rare occurrence of gasoline station roadmaps that show "transit."  

I have Esso maps with a map of the London Underground, at least two New York City maps (Esso, Texaco) showing the Manhattan part of the NYC Subway, this map, an Exxon Map showing public transportation of the United States, along with highways, and and British American Oil map of Toronto with a small drawing of a TTC subway entrance.  There is an Esso map for Alberta that I haven't acquired yet showing a cable car for skiing related transportation, as part of the set of drawings on the cover.

An inset on the inside of the map reads:

The front cover of this map shows one of the cars of the Incline Railway ascending to the summit of historic Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, Tenn.  Through wide windows and glass roofs, passengers gain startling views of the city and the Moccasin Bend of the Tennessee River.  Equipped with numerous safety devices, the cars are hauled by cable simultaneously in opposite directions, passing at a midway station.  The Incline Railway operates daily, 6am to midnight.  One way fare is 35 cents, round trip 65 cents. 

This is also cool because it includes an inset on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and a map of the TVA lakes/recreational facilities.   Interestingly, it's produced by Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso), separate from Standard Oil of Kentucky--later acquired by Standard Oil of California (Chevron)--which produced its own maps too.

These kinds of maps date to what Peter Muller calls the "Recreational Auto Era" of urban form, when people stayed pretty close to home, but when they drove distances it was generally for tourism or to visit friends and relatives.  

Interstate Highway and US Highway road signs, Greensboro, NC.

This era was from 1921 to the 1950s.  During the RAE people drove on state roads and federal highways (the US roads).  Interstate Freeways didn't exist then, and when they started being constructed is when urban form shifted from a focus on the center city to the metropolitan area, knitted together by freeways.

The maps reflect this desire in a couple ways.  First, back then most of the large chains had touring services that would provide travel and route information.  Those services ended in the early 1980s.  Two gasoline price crises in the 1970s led to changes in the gasoline sales business model.  

They shifted to selling gas as a fungible commodity and were no longer so focused on developing "the brand" and working to have loyal customers focused on the brand.

Second, RAE maps usually include inserts and drawings of places worth visiting, like the Smoky Mountain inset.  Third, although it varied, some firms showed local scenes on the cover of the map, from the states the map covers.  But sometimes they alternated this and definitely later as the US moved into the "Metropolitan City" era, cover art focused on branding of the chain, not local landmarks.

One map I haven't yet acquired from the Esso Kentucky/Tennessee maps shows an Atomic Energy Museum on the cover, sponsored by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which produced electricity from dams and nuclear power plants.  Also, a key facility for the production of nuclear weapons in WWII was in Kingsport, Tennessee.