The practice of using journey lines to connect a trip’s start and end points as a continuous path grew in popularity in Europe starting in the seventeenth century. In their most radical form, journey lines can totally reshape the map. Strip maps, for instance, create a straight journey line but don’t keep north at the top, instead adjusting cardinal directions throughout the map. Journey lines became especially prolific on maps illustrating travel literature as that genre grew in popularity in the late nineteenth century. In these maps, journey lines could memorialize an ephemeral experience and recreate, at least in our imagination, that same trip. In doing so, the journey line offers a tool for exploring the relationship between time, geography, and shared human experience.