Front Page Introduction: The Loneliest Road 21 Sep 20234 Nov 2023 "It's totally empty. There are no points of interest. We don't recommend it... We warn all motorists not to drive there, unless they're confident of their survival skills." This…
Front Page The Birth of U.S. Highway 50 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 The lame duck period of the American presidency, originally a four-month span between an election and the formal transfer of executive power, is largely a vestige of the poor condition…
Front Page Rural Liberation 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 Highway 50 transects regions of extreme rurality and metropolitan centers alike on its path across America. Perceptions of an urban-rural divide between the two dispersive regions has always been an…
Front Page Maps and Legends 21 Sep 20234 Nov 2023 Before 1926, highways existed conceptually as independently-named auto trails, created and partially maintained by private organizations and routed along existing roads. Auto trail organizations produced signage and maps exclusively featuring…
Front Page The Ladies Resort to the Ocean 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 From a geographic perspective, Highway 50 either begins or ends in Ocean City, Maryland, converse with its west-coast counterpart, Sacramento, California. In both cases, the highway's termini have wandered over…
Front Page The Greenbelt Experiment – America’s First Modern Suburb 21 Sep 20232 Mar 2025 Pushing east across the Potomac Basin, just before reaching Washington D.C., Highway 50 brushes past Greenbelt, Maryland, one of three original Greenbelt project towns instituted by the New Deal’s Federal…
Front Page The Zero Milestone 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 In nearby Washington, D.C. proper, Highway 50, along with its longitudinal counterpart Highway 1, share the honor of lining the National Mall between the United States Capital and Lincoln Memorial.…
Front Page Opening Appalachia 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 Highway 50's route from the Potomac basin into Appalachia follows the course of one of America's oldest formal wilderness roads, the Northwest Turnpike. Following a rare east-west trace transecting the…
Front Page Ohio River Valley 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 As Highway 50 descends from the Appalachians into the Ohio River Valley, its course straightens to interconnect a series of small historic cities on its course to Cincinnati. The highway’s…
Front Page C.R. Patterson and Sons 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 Compared to earlier transportation models of rivers, canals, and railroads, the highway system democratized access to travel and migration. The highway experience for black Americans, however, was marked by challenges…
Front Page Hillbilly and Race in the Queen City 21 Sep 202313 Mar 2025 The next city Highway 50 meets heading westward is Cincinnati, Ohio, coined "the queen city" for its sublime features since at least 1819. Highway 50's course through Cincinnati mostly clings…
Front Page Outlaw Moonshiners vs. the Ku Klux Klan 21 Sep 20234 Nov 2023 Highway 50 leaves Cincinnati along the course of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway, the westernmost branch of the eastern railroad network at the time of its creation in 1857. This…
Front Page The Real McCoy 21 Sep 20234 Nov 2023 Music was only one of many narrative art forms shaped by the highway network. The efforts of one writer, Paul Henning, shaped much of the national imagination of rural life…
Front Page The New Santa Fe Trail 21 Sep 20234 Nov 2023 Few states started with poorer roads than Kansas, with its colloquially-known two seasons of sand and mud. Kansans, dependent on the farm-to-market economic pipeline, overwhelmingly supported the national highway concept.…
Front Page Cisco Clifton’s Fillin Station and Utah’s Uranium Boom 21 Sep 20234 Nov 2023 Widespread enthusiasm for America's “Central Pleasure Route” did not endure, as controversy over Highway 50's potential place in the 1956 Interstate Highway System, which offered some communities a Faustian pact…
Front Page “One Must Imagine Sisyphus High on Benzedrine…” 21 Sep 202313 Mar 2025 ** Movie spoilers ahead ** 1971’s Vanishing Point, starring Barry Newman and filmed mostly on or near Highway 50, is a nearly-forgotten masterpiece critiquing the counterculture values of the late-hippy…
Front Page California’s Gold Rush 21 Sep 202317 May 2024 The nearby nexus point of California’s modern history lays just north of Highway 50's passage across the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. A sawyer named James Marshall discovered gold at the…