The Open Road for Boys

[1] Contributors included Ellis Parker Butler, Jonathan Eldridge, Edward C. Janes, Kenneth Payson Kempton and Charles G. Muller, Alpheus Hyatt Verrill and Kerry Wood.

The appeal of Open Road for Boys and the magazine's advertising, specifically an ad for the Red Ryder air rifle, was captured by Jean Shepherd in his short story, "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid."

This story was collected in In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, source of the film classic A Christmas Story (1983): A popular Open Road feature was a cartoon contest which showed a drawing of a problem or situation, inviting the magazine's readers to do a follow-up cartoon showing the resolution of the problem.

Well known cartoonists, such as Paul Coker, George Crenshaw, Dan Heilman, Eldon Pletcher, Mort Walker, Bill Yates and Bob Zschiesche,[2] saw their first printed cartoons in the Open Road competitions, which also had an influence on illustrators and fine artists, as the painter Wayne Thiebaud noted in an interview with Susan Larsen: Cover artists included Jacob Bates Abbott, George Avison, Clarence Doore, William D. Eaton and Charles Hargens.

The club's official pin, in gold and dark blue, displayed the left profile of a Davy Crockett-type adventurer wearing a coonskin cap and carrying a rifle.