Roadside history, out loud
The brown signs you always pass too fast
You see the marker, read half of it, and you are already a quarter mile past. Wayside finds what is along the road ahead of you and reads it out while you keep both hands on the wheel.
A real one, from I‑70 in Kansas
“Fort Hays had no wall around it at all. What it really did was hold supplies and troops. Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok both worked here as Army scouts.”
The Wikipedia article opens with the fort’s years of operation and never mentions any of them. Wayside reads the whole thing and looks for the part worth repeating to whoever is in the passenger seat.
How it works
- Say where you are going, or just drive. Type a start and a destination, or set off and let it work out which road you are on.
- It finds what is along the way. Towns, forts, lakes, oddities. Fifteen interests you choose from, so a fishing trip and a history trip hear different things.
- It reads them to you as you reach them. Roughly one every ten minutes, announced by name, with lock-screen controls. Audio keeps playing with the screen off.
Two things it will not do
It does not make things up. Every piece carries a span copied word for word out of the source, checked automatically before you ever hear it. If that check fails the piece is flagged rather than played.
It does not pad. A town whose article is a founding date and a population count gets skipped and the next place comes up instead. A slightly longer quiet stretch beats something nobody wants to hear.
What you get
| No account | Free account | Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan a route and play it | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| The opening of every place | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Choose your interests | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rate what you hear | — | Yes | Yes |
| The whole of each piece | — | — | Yes |
| Drive with no destination | — | — | Yes |
| Your drives kept and replayable | — | — | Yes |
| Save a trip for out of signal | — | — | Yes |
Most places are written in two to four parts. Everyone hears the first one, which is a whole story on its own and runs about a minute. Premium keeps going: Fort Hays has four parts and runs four minutes.
Two ways to use Wayside.
Just drive
No destination needed. Wayside watches which way you are going and finds the next ten miles of whatever road you are on, again each time you turn.
Start drivingDriving without a destination is part of the paid plan.
What you want to hear
Applies to both of the above. Change it any time — while driving, it is in the panel at the top of the road ahead.
Previous routes and drives
Nothing matches those filters.
Coverage
Every place we know, where it is, and how much has been said about it.
The corpus
By interest
Search everything ever written
What people said
Nothing waiting.