Thanks for stopping by! My name is Jonathan. If you’re in the roadgeek circles, you may have known me as “Jason of ORoads” on both m.t.r and AARoads. I decided to shed that moniker — I’m older and don’t really care anymore, lol.

Anyway, ever since I could count I was interested in pointing out numbers everywhere. Naturally I drifted towards paying attention to all the numbers on the highway as they’d whiz by on our road trips. Route numbers. Exit numbers. Mileposts. License plates. The list goes on and on. My interest in roadgeeking more seriously was in 9th grade, when I caught sight of an old alignment of OR-217 down Boones Ferry Rd. on a topographic map. Further, I noticed Washington’s highways were numbered completely different from today. From then on, I fell in love with highways — where they are, where they’ve been, and where they’ll take us tomorrow.

However, I didn’t really get going when I got to college. There, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I discovered I wasn’t alone. I also found out that we called ourselves roadgeeks. Inspired by Mike Wiley’s original Oregon Highways site, I started up a website, ORoads, which focused on signed Oregon Routes instead. The history of both are intertwined, so I still had a fair amount of highway information. I adopted the pseudonym of “Jayson Elliot”, an allusion to my first and last initial, for personal reasons. “Jayson” looked weird, so I eventually used “Jason” instead.

Access to my college’s topographic map section was instrumental in building the site. But like always, life got in the way. Graduated college. Moved. Got married. Got jobs. Lost jobs. Started grad school. Got divorced. Graduated grad school. Moved again. Every couple/few years or so, I would work on a page or two, do some updates, upload some pictures, then return to the life I built. But thanks to improvements in technology, research tools and communication, it’s never been easier to find some pretty interesting stuff buried in the past. Hell, it wasn’t too long ago someone discovered forgotten OR-42N, and I found a few strange entries myself I’m still researching. All in due time 🙂

Ever the web developer, I’m building a custom CMS to handle the information on Oregon’s highways. In the meantime, I’ll be posting some stuff here. I also have an Instagram for more photogenic posts. Time to bring my roadgeeking into the 21st century!

Edit: I’m also still playing around with this site’s design and color schemes. Be prepared.