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The process, developed by Will, was as follows: on a large sheet of butcher paper, the basic geographical details, shorelines, rivers, streams, hills and mountains, were first sketched in with colored pencils. Then an arbitrary starting date was chosen, generally sometime in the 1800s, and roads, towns and perhaps railroad lines were added. From there, we'd progress decade by decade, enlarging and developing the towns and, of course, adding more roads. As time went on, major existing roads were widened, then made into super-highways and finally, as we got to the present day, I could start designing interchanges and make them into freeways.
In the lower left of this one, you'll notice the faint outlines of some wharfs extending into the river. Apparently these had been incompletely erased as part of some urban-renewal project that included the addition of the shoreline freeway. Also, you'll see that all my freeways, as well as divided surface streets, are impeccably landscaped. No doubt this was an homage of sorts to the way Highway 101 through Santa Rosa actually looked before the freeway was built.
At the age of 10 or 11, I was probably one of the few to take advantage of the Larkspur Public Library's subscription to California Highways, a highway engineer trade publication. After the second bore of the Waldo tunnel was completed, along with the freewayization of the approaches, I copied the designs of the interchanges from one for show-and-tell in my fifth grade class. I remember being sorely disappointed that no one else seemed to share my enthusiasm.
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