Chris Bessert

While Chris has many hobbies and interests, one of his biggest is transportation history. He authors and maintains three websites with complete details on the highway systems of three Great Lakes area states/provinces. Jump to them directly via the following links:

• Michigan Highways
• Wisconsin Highways
• Ontario Highways

Otherwise, he still enjoys the cartographic arts. Anyone who knows Chris knows his love of maps and all things geographic- and cartographically-related. While his wife, Linda (married since 1996, together since 1992!), has always been more than tolerant of his hobby, his daughter, Rachael, ripped the first one of her daddy's maps when she was just over a year old. Yes, daddy needs to make sure his maps are out of the reach of his daughter... but maybe someday she, too, will share her father's interests in them! If not, she'll still be the cutest child ever!

Chris is the GIS Analyst with the Allegan County Land Information Services (LIS) Deapartment, and was previously the GIS Specialist with REGIS in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He actually gets paid to play with GIS data and make maps all day. Of course, his career is much more complex than that, but from the age of four he vowed that he'd someday make maps for a living. Helping manage massive databases, giving presentations, coordinating user support and being a webmaster, though, wasn't something he thought of while growing up in Howell, Michigan! Mom and Dad are generally still proud of him... although that's mostly for the beautiful little granddaughter he and Linda gave them and for the wonderful daughter-in-law he also gave them. Even his little sister loved him so much, she went to school (GVSU) near him and now lives in Grand Rapids!

This is a little website set up by Chris & Linda, Rachael's proud new parents, in response to repeated requests for photographs and the latest information on how Rachael is doing. As many of you know, Chris & Linda welcomed their daughter into the world six weeks early in late June, so the birth and first few weeks of Rachael's life have been a bit less than "usual."