Buried in the loam of succeeding events, the past would be lost were it not sending up shoots to remind us of its presence. To see this for yourself, go for a drive.  There, amid the roadside's architecture, commercialism, folkways and filling-station towns, stands the chance expression of all that’s gone before.

Down a Yankee miracle mile, a miniature golf course models a Revolutionary War village.  On a Dixie backroad, a motel shows an antebellum couple dancing the Virginia Reel in a smart, neon two-step. What history lies behind a billboard announcing "America

Starts Here” along the Mason-Dixon Line, or a byway that leads from prim New England vistas to shabby New York farms just as in 18th-century accounts? This is roadside history—the spontaneous, colorful and ironic tales of the raveling American road.

As with the Gullah woman above, there are people whose presence

will transport you in time. In the Klondike's gold fields or the shadow of San Juan Hill, tales of old-timers can unite you with that you'd thought forever consigned to the past; while in Robert Frost’s woods or Evangeline country, an elegiac beauty reigns that’s itself historic. Contrast these with the ten-gallon tourist meccas of the cowboy West, or the ticky-tack Taras of the Dixieland South—places where you might find a trailer park named for Billy the Kid as artlessly engaging, or a restaurant in the shape of a smiling black mammy a discomfiting relic. Although often unseen as such, all are stations along the country's highways of living history; and whether insipid or inspiring, hucksterism or homage, they tell as much of the story of the America that inspired them as the America they now grace. Using those people and places that make up the living artifacts of the country's heritage, History on the Road will explore the past as it abides in the present.