Friends of the guide

Every drive here is built from the public record and from people who know the road. Nobody knows a road like the people who live on it, grew up on it, or drive it every week. If that is you, this is the invitation.

Our own family has been on the Big Sur coast since 1869, and the Big Sur guide is better for every neighbour who has told us a name we were saying wrong, a place we drove past, or where the picture should have been taken from. We want the same for every road we drive.

What helps most

• A better picture of a stop. Taken at the place, in good light, showing what a traveller will see from the road. Your name goes on it, small, on the picture.
• A place we should stop at. Its name, what kind of place it is, and why. A picture if you have one.
• A correction. A name said wrong, a wrong fact, a stop in the wrong spot, a business that has closed or opened.
• A story. What happened there, who lived there, what the place was called before. A paragraph is plenty.

How to send it

1. Open the drive in the app and find the stop. Tap Improve. To add a place the drive does not have, use Add a place to this drive at the bottom of the list.
2. Say what it is, attach a picture if you have one, and put your name as you want it credited.
3. Sign in, or make an account with your email: that is what keeps your credit on what you send.

A person reads everything before anything changes. A picture goes on the stop with your credit; a place goes on the list for that drive; a correction or a story goes to whoever edits it.

Open the guides →

Let your pictures carry their location

A picture that knows where it was taken places itself on the map. That is the whole job done for us, and it is one switch on your phone.

iPhone. Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → While Using the App. Pictures taken after that carry their location. When you send one from the app, the location travels with it as long as the app can send the original; a very large picture is shrunk on the phone and loses it, so tick use my phone's location as well.

Android. Open the Camera app → Settings (the gear) → Location tags (some phones say Save location) → on. Then the same: send the picture from the app.

If you would rather not turn that on, tick use my phone's location when you send from the place itself, and we take the position from where you are standing.

What we ask, and what you keep

• You keep your copyright. You give Place Name Guide the right to use what you send in the guides and on this site, with your credit.
• Send only what you took or have the right to send. No pictures of people who did not agree to be in a guide.
• We hold every business to the same standard: describe, do not sell. A story about your family's place is welcome; an advertisement is not.
• Nobody is paid and nothing is sold through this in 2026. If that changes, this page changes first.