The Cost of the Roads I’ve Traveled: How Interstates Changed Every Place I’ve Lived

The Cost of the Roads I’ve Traveled: How Interstates Changed Every Place I’ve Lived

By a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

One of my earliest memories is of standing in the kitchen of a derelict house.

The kitchen table was still there, and so were the pink-flowered curtains. A breeze pushed them inward through a broken window, causing them to flap like living things. I was appalled. I couldn't understand why anyone would simply walk away from their home. When I asked what had happened, I was told the freeway had made them leave.

Before the interstate system, the United States was a loose constellation of cities, towns, and rural communities connected by a patchwork of highways. When Eisenhower, then a young officer, crossed the country with the 1919 Army Convoy (I wrote about that trip here: The Army Motors Across America), he saw firsthand how poor the roads were. And decades later, during World War II, he saw how Germany’s autobahn gave them enormous logistical advantages while England and France struggled with bombed-out, inadequate road networks.

Those experiences shaped him. When he returned home, he championed a modern highway system; an efficient, high-speed, and nationwide system. And as someone who regularly drives the interstates he helped build, I’ve seen just how deeply those roads changed the face of the country.

What I witnessed in Utah as a child was actually unusual. Rather than using sweeping eminent domain, Utah planners intentionally routed portions of the interstate away from established neighborhoods and businesses. The goal was to spare communities from demolition, but the unintended consequence was economic abandonment. As commerce migrated to freeway exits, the small homes and mom-and-pop stores along the bypassed highways slowly declined. Eventually, some were simply left behind, like the derelict house I wandered into as a child.

The effects in Denver, Tulsa, and Roanoke were far more direct.

In all three cities, large neighborhoods were razed to make way for the highways. Much of this occurred during the same era that federal housing and anti-poverty programs were being rolled out, programs that were underfunded, inconsistently administered, and often built on assumptions that urban renewal meant clearing out older or poorer neighborhoods.

The result: the interstates disproportionately cut through marginalized communities.

Denver managed to leverage its position as a crossroads city. Growth followed the freeway corridors, and although the wounds remain, particularly in areas like Elyria-Swansea, the city ultimately expanded rather than shrank.

Tulsa did the same. The Inner Dispersal Loop became a defining feature of the city’s infrastructure. However, the choice to run it through Greenwood left a deep and lasting scar on a community that had already endured the unthinkable trauma of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Roanoke, however, struggled. I-581 splits the city into two, and planned expansions were never completed. Neighborhoods near the corridor lost housing, lost walkability, and lost momentum. And because the city never fully capitalized on its location as the crossroads of the Blue Ridge Mountains, or its proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Trail, it has remained fractured. Instead of unified revitalization, Roanoke ended up with a half-finished freeway, stalled development, and an ongoing debate about how to repair the damage.

The only place I’ve lived where the interstate was both wanted and planned for was Northwest Arkansas. A scattering of small towns in the Ozarks, the region used the interstate to knit itself together. Growth followed quickly, helped, of course, by Walmart, Tyson, and J.B. Hunt. The interstate arrived later here than in other regions, allowing planners to avoid some of the early mistakes made in other cities.

Every place I’ve lived was shaped, improved, or injured by the interstate system. In some towns, the interstates offered lifelines. In others, they cut the heart right out.

And for every "toll" the freeway takes on a city, it takes a quieter, more personal one from us.

Once you begin to follow the interstates, to chase opportunity, to move when life calls, you become shaped by them, too. Your memories scatter across exits and overpasses. Your childhood, your friendships, your identity become threaded along the long, straight line of the map.

And maybe that’s why I keep turning down the exits. The interstates tell one story about America, but the back roads tell the one I’m actually interested in: how places change, how they endure, and what gets left behind when progress moves too fast.

I like to remember that every place has a story, including the ones left behind when the interstate came through.

xoxo,

a.d. elliott

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller based in Tontitown, Arkansas.

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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