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Searching for Interstate History Article: "Roads to Nowhere"

Started by Shenanigans, March 31, 2010, 07:24:13 PM

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Shenanigans

Hello everyone,

So I have been combing the Web trying to find this article I read on the history of the interstate highway system.  I only read it last year, but I believe it was an older article from a print publication, maybe written in the 1990's or 1980's.  It may, in fact, have been titled "Roads to Nowhere" or something similar.

The author started out talking about how when he was younger he was fascinated by the interstate.  He spoke of how he and his friends wanted to get as close to it as possible and would jump fences and just stand by it because it is not an environment designed for people.  I believe he also talked about how he liked maps when he was younger.

He then went on to talk about how the interstates came to be laid out where they are and how they were initially not supposed to go through most main cities.  How this, in some ways, helped to lead to the exodous of people living in the cities.  Also how the roads tend to connect endpoints that really have no significance to each other.

I may have found the initial link from The Consumerist or Jalopnik . . . but after combing their archives and Google to no avail I come to you.

Can anyone here point me in the right direction?  Thanks in advance.

--
Shen


leifvanderwall

I'd rather have a road to nowhere than a bridge to nowhere.

Shenanigans

Almost 22 months later...and I found it!

The Road to Nowhere
On Suburbia, the Interstates, and the National Defense: A Confession

By:Lee Sandlin

http://leesandlin.com/articles/RoadtoNowhere.htm

A really good read.  I got the bug to find this again when I came across The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler.

Alex

Quote from: Shenanigans on January 24, 2012, 12:30:40 PM

A really good read.  I got the bug to find this again when I came across The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler.

Read that book several years ago, was a good read.



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