Customer Reviews

The Road Atlas Large Scale: United States (Rand McNally Large Scale Road Atlas U. S. A.)

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A recent roadtrip with our old atlas made us wish we'd brought along a magnifying glass and it prompted me to purchase this Atlas. Granted, this one has almost twice as many pages as my old atlas, but the dimensions are the same and the spiral binding makes it very easy to handle in the car. As soon as it arrived, we compared the text size to that in our original atlas and we saw a definite advantage. Very nice!

I have loved maps since I was a teenager. At one level, I just enjoy picking a state and seeing its geographical features and how I would get from one place to another. This Rand McNally Road Atlas is one that I have been using for over 40 years.

The 2007 version is top notch, like its predecessors. The maps that suggest how long it takes to go from one place to another are terrific; the suggested attractions that one might visit are very helpful; tourist and hotel information is very nice.

However, it is the state by state maps that are the central feature of this publication (as well as maps of Mexico and Canada and Puerto Rico). Anyone who is interested in how to get from Point A to Point B will revel in this work.

There are even road construction updates available online for those who buy these maps.

All in all, this is one of those "golden oldies" that merits consideration by those of us who want to know how to get from one place to another.

The Rand McNally atlases are well known throughout North America and we bought and used the new "2011 edition" on a long driving tour through different parts of the USA in May 2010. We selected it on recommendation from American friends.

Although in theory the atlas looks detailed, comprehensive and well planned, in practice it's not as easy to use as it might have been. One major criticism I have is that instead of using a regular grid system mapping the USA from for example north-west down eventually to the south east with the same universal mile-to-inch scale, the designers have chosen to present the map pages alphabetically by state, all with different mile-to-inch scales. Rhode Island is one inch = four miles, Indiana one inch = 10 miles, California one inch = 18 miles, New Mexico one inch = 28 miles, and on it goes with no obvious logic except maybe to fit each listed state to the page size available.

This means for example that if you are driving (as we did) through north-western New Mexico, into south-western Colorado, then into southern Utah and finally down into Arizona, instead of following your route logically from page to page you need to keep moving away from the page featuring the state you're just leaving and hunting for the map of the state you have just entered, then find out where you are, then go through the process again. The map scale in miles-to-the-inch changes with each new state, which is confusing if you're trying to get a regional perspective.

Whilst driving through the eastern part of Utah we found the atlas next to useless, as the one page devoted to "Utah/Eastern" contains no fewer than six fragmented small-scale maps plus city maps of Salt Lake City, St George and Logan which makes it almost impossible to see where you are in the Monument Valley area with any kind of wider perspective.

On the plus side, the atlas contains good information on each state: population, largest city, land area, highest point, and ranking in size/population. However, this information could easily have been presented in a separate section in the atlas and the country mapped in a more logical and useful way for the traveller.

It's also quite large and unwieldy at over 15 " x 10" so not easy to use in a moving car and difficult to carry on foot, as it won't fit in a small rucksack. Many pages are used to display several different smaller maps with different scales, so even this large format is not really needed or used to its full potential. The spring binder is a good feature and ensures the pages won't fall out and turn easily, and can be folded back right over so one page can be viewed at a time.

So in summary: accurate, reasonably detailed but not easy to use and could have been planned out better with more consistent scaling.

My husband had been using a Rand MCNally Road Atlas he had gotten back in the 70's. He loves maps. After he opened this spent the balance of the night looking through it. He thought the attention to details were Great!!!

What a disappointment. California is so chopped up, it is unusable. Even Arizona is excessively chopped up and is not even connected to a Mexican map - how useful is that if you live in Arizona? Most people want a road atlas for long distance travel planning and use in the car. This one is organized for people who don't know their way around their own locale. I'm sure all the information is usable at some point, but you would likely have a traffic accident trying to follow these maps in the car and it would be no fun at all sitting and planning a long trip with these disjointed maps. The most usable map is the large US map at the front - but I could have gotten that for free anywhere. Don't buy this atlas unless you've seen it in advance. I looked for a Rand McNally Western States Atlas - maybe they could do a better job with fewer states - nope - they don't have it.

I thought that the large format would be easier to use but it splits up the maps too much (i.e., Colorado is split over two pages with another page for cities). While I appreciate the larger maps for some things, I will probably get a smaller format to plan trips and only use this one for side trips and as a reference.

We have used this atlas for many years as we travel this wonderful country. Our only complaint has been and still is that they seem to just cut the map for the facing pages and they never seem to line up when you try to push them together due to the white space on each edge. I don't understand why they won't print an overlap on each page so it would be easy to follow a road from one page to the other. It always seems that what you are looking for is on the seam and it is difficult to see.

this road map is the best i ever seen,and ive seen some as a professional truckdriver in europe,i am gonna use it in september when i visit the usa its gonna be a big help planning the trip great!!thanks will from the netherlands

It is a good map resource, but being large scale, the states are in sections on different pages making it difficult to visualize a route that crosses several pages.

We loved our older edition of this atlas, but carelessly left it in the trunk of a rental car when we returned it, so we upgraded to the new edition. Without so much fine print, we find this atlas a lot easier to use when bouncing around in a moving car, and the spiral binding (instead of a stapled binding) means it can handle a lot of heavy use without the pages or cover starting to come off. The atlas also comes well-supplied with magnified maps of major (and not so major) cities.