Forgotten Lands, Places and Transit

Block 61 at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie has a rare quality that I'm always seemingly chasing: the feeling that something important used to be here… and that the land is still deciding what to do with it. Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie is a federally protected prairie reserve near Wilmington, Illinois, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Established in 1996, it is the first national tallgrass prairie in the United States and serves as a major ecological restoration project on former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant land, which served the war efforts of both World War II and the Vietnam War. The name chosen was “Midewin,” derived from the Potawatomi word referring to a traditional society or gathering of healers. Today's blog focuses on the Block 61 trail to the east; which in many spots feels less like a nature hike and more like an archaeological survey of the Cold War. Men only want one thing. The thing: Step inside and the temperature drops. Sound flattens. The curved...

As  the third word in our name implies, we are just as interested in highway infrastructure as abandoned railways, yet we have never tried to make a map of abandoned highways. The reason for this is simple; roads are very rarely abandoned in their entirety.  Take Route 66 for example, much of the original route is still able to be traversed today, and plenty of what is not is simply used for local connections. It's why we likened the current state to the Ship of Theseus . Whereas the longest abandoned railroad is hundreds of miles long (depending on how you define what is the longest, each one is still over 100 miles), the longest stretch of abandoned highway I can think of offhand is the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike , about 12 miles in length (ironically, owing its existence to the never-completed South Pennsylvania Railroad ) Laurel Hill Tunnel in 1942 , part of the abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike. Arthur Rothstein photo, US Library of Congress. It's been too difficult t...

The Ship of Theseus is a classic philosophical thought experiment that asks whether an object that has had all of its parts replaced over time is still fundamentally the same object.  The problem takes its name from the ship that Theseus, a legendary Greek hero, used to sail to Crete to slay the Minotaur. Bing AI Image The story goes that after returning to Athens, Theseus' ship was preserved by the Athenians, who gradually replaced all of its parts as they decayed over time. The question then arises: if all of the parts of the ship have been replaced, is it still the same ship? Or is it a new ship altogether? The Ship of Theseus problem has puzzled philosophers for centuries and raises fundamental questions about the nature of identity and change. Is identity based on the object's material composition or on its function? If all of an object's parts are replaced, does it lose its identity and become a new object? These questions have real-world implications beyond philosop...

US Route 66 was one of the original US Highways , being designated in 1926 along with the rest of the original routes. But before its designation, there was a tremendous controversy over its numbering, as there were over numerous highways early on in the system's creation. Because of this, you almost got your kicks on Route 60. Missouri Highway Map, c.1926 showing the proposed US-60 through the state. Like with any government project as vast and complex as the US Highway System, it is the product of numerous compromises and debates over numberings, routings, alignments, costs, and numerous other whims of those in Congress who ultimately approved the system. In the early 1920's, the named Auto Trails were giving way to a network of then-modern highways to connect the nation through automobiles as the railroads had done decades earlier. 1926 Illinois State Highway Map , showing US-66 as IL-4 still. By 1928 , US-66 was added to the map. The numbered system would have the longes...

Save 15 Miles or More Off Your Railroad Mileage By Switching to Nuclear! If you think the words "nuclear" and "railroad" shouldn't exist in the same sentence, you're probably not the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in the early 1960's. When we think of nuclear bombs, we typically associate them as weapons, since the vast majority are used in military circles, but with the nuclear age came the potential to use these weapons not as deterrence or the annihilation of humanity, but rather construction projects.  Just one year removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis , in 1963 the AT&SF wanted to harbor this technology to re-align their railroad near Ludlow, CA , as well as Route 66 and the brand new Interstate 40 , and save about 15 miles off of the mainline right-of-way. Map of the proposed nuclear blasting and re-alignments. Public domain image via Atomic Skies The idea was to straighten the Santa Fe mainline between Needles and Barstow, as well as...

While the history of Route 66 is extremely well documented, both by myself and other transportation historians and bloggers, its child routes don't often get the same amount of attention. Of course, none of these routes had anywhere near the impact of 66 on our culture, but I think each one has a bit of interesting discussions about them to blog about. US Route 66 had seven spur routes from 166 to 666, with two different 366's in existence at different points in history, although none of these roads' legacies came close to that of its parent, with the possible exception of the infamous Devil's Highway , which necessitated a numbering change to US-491 in 2003. While Route 66 itself has a fairly bloody and dark history that isn't as discussed as much in nostalgia, so too does a few of its spur routes. EB US-166 assurance shield. Alex Nitzman photo. The poor engineering and high speeds of US-666 were the actual catalysts of the fate of the Devil's Highway, and a...