California Road and Recreation Atlas (Benchmark Atlas)

This map is quite thorough. Shows elevation, and quite up to the minute roads and highways. I wish it came in a spiral back, to make it easier to open the pages, and put less wear on the map itself.

Since receiving a CA Benchmark Road & Recreation Atlas several years ago I have basically recycled all the other road atlases we owned. A road atlas is just that, a "road" atlas, but I like to see the terrain featured on maps too. The Benchmark Atlas is an excellent "big picture" map for planning trips or for tracking where you want to go on roads when out and about on a road trip. Off-road it really isn't that useful, but I have topographical GPS's for that need. I do use it though for off-road trip planning when an area on the map looks interesting. Although I have mapping software, GPS's, phones with maps, etc, I still keep one of the Benchmark maps in all my vehicles and I'm surprised how much we still use it even with all the hi-tech options we have these days.

I'm not impressed with this atlas. My main complaints are: in the recreation section the public lands areas are hard to see and not clearly defined and not all campgrounds are shown. They are "selected" campgrounds, also there are no descriptions of the campgrounds, ie, how many campsites or cost. In the Landscape section public lands are not defined at all, there are some campgrounds shown here that aren't in the recreation section. I would rate this atlas as adequate, barely. The reason I bought it is that it was the only atlas my local book store had here in Colorado. I wouldn't buy it again. Sorry the store but I didn't want to wait for it.

Yesterday I found at my local Oceanside AAA a newly revised edition, copyrighted 2012 by Benchmark Books. It appears that there are some map changes, such as showing the recent Route 52 extension from the 125 east to the 67 in Santee, and the updating of population stats to reflect the 2010 Census. One disappointment was that College Blvd and Cannon Road in Carlsbad are still not shown in their correct alignment nearly a decade after their being connected together, as shown for example in Rand McNally's 2008 maps of San Diego county. Still, I hope to see this updated edition soon made available by the store to replace the one I currently have.