William Marvel: Build-out of America

Thirty years ago last month, I embarked on the longest research trip I’ve ever undertaken, at least on this continent. For nearly five weeks I hopped from one manuscript repository to another across the Midwest and the right bank of the upper Mississippi, coming back through Kentucky, the Virginias, and the Carolinas before turning for home up the I-95 corridor. I can’t remember how many miles I covered, often at night, so as to be at the next state archive or historical society when it opened in the morning.

I had seen much of that terrain in the ’60s and ’70s, but every town and city seemed twice as big as I remembered. Urban expressways were longer and much more challenging. Still, though, most of the countryside remained rural in 1992. Many stretches of U.S. highway ran for 10 or 20 miles without a noticeable town, especially west of the Alleghenies. In the abundant farm country, there were often as few as three or four houses to the mile, and sometimes as many of them seemed abandoned as inhabited.