randomtowns

[randomtowns]

Moving Forward & Roggen, Colorado

For the sake of keeping things fresh and not pigeonholing myself into doing something I can’t keep up with, since I no longer have the job where I am stuck in front of a computer for 8 hours per day but with very little work to do, I’m changing the focus to actually be on random towns that I travel to, and not just random towns from years ago that I may not remember. It’s going to be towns that I find interesting but also have pictures for.

Roggen, Colorado is a partial ghost town along Interstate 76 east of Denver. It has one exit - Exit 48 for “Roggen” and leading to a county road that heads directly south for only a few miles before ending at State Highway 73 - with no services beyond a small gas station and run-down motel that appears to be used as an apartment complex now. Each of these services - a gas station and motel - are mirrored on the south side of the interstate, but are both long-abandoned. Though the gas station is completely wrecked, with pumps long gone, no doors or windows, and an interior filled with debris, the motel has been fenced off, though overgrown, seems to be still salvageable to some degree. Roggen’s misfortune is from a number of factors related to transportation: increased reliability and fuel efficiency in automobiles, and the decline of passenger railroads. Roggen’s most prominent, visible for miles around, is its enormous grain elevator, still used today and a primary source of employment for the area.

I last drove through Roggen on a US 6 road trip in March 2020. It was the morning that Colorado shut down all restaurants due to the Coronavirus, but gas stations were still open. Roggen is at the end of a stretch of the old highway that has not been maintained and left to go to dirt. In fact, when I drove it that morning, a grader was working on it for the start of the spring and summer (most roads need grading every year, after the snow has melted).

A nice page on Roggen with history and more photos, including some historic.

Sign for the still-open motel on the north side of the interstate

Roggen grain elevator

Old highway alongside the interstate, approaching the Roggen exit

Abandoned gas station at the Roggen exit

Sign for the abandoned motel on the south side of the interstate

Old storefronts along the old highway now used as dwellings

Abandoned motel, with “Prairie Lodge” sign

[randomtowns]

25 Worst, Rebutted

Continuing the list from the previous post. In that previous post, I found most of the towns on the USA Today list to be not deserving of their place. There seemed to be a particular bias against Georgia. Others were expected, and others were obvious given their statistics. All of these trends continue for the top 25 worst places to live as follows. Let’s get started with more Georgia bashing...

Avon Park, FL Been there? No

Avon Lake is one of a string of towns along US 98 south of Orlando. It features several housing developments from the 1950s, where unchecked land speculation created networks of streets plotted in otherwise undesirable stretches of land, offering housing sites with little or no infrastructure just on their location in Florida. Coastal Florida is one thing, but its inland is another entirely. It’s an agricultural region, with cattle ranching and timber vital regional industries. That sort of industry often creates what exists here: a large community of poor with just a few in the wealthy ownership classes. The article points to Avon Park's nearly 20% unemployment rate, and that 1/3 of its residents are below the national poverty line. Its also adjacent to a bombing range that bears its name.

Lawrenceville, GA Been there? Yes

Lawrenceville is a bit of a microcosm of how the Atlanta suburbs, particularly in Gwinnett County, have changed in the past 20 years. It developed as a bedroom community for the city early on, with its easy access to freeways, but gradually saw an influx of African-Americans and Latinos, changing the dynamic of the area and bringing down housing values. Lawrenceville now has a poverty rate of over 21%, and the article likely zeroes in on the town due to its higher cost of living being so close to Atlanta, and it has one of the highest median home values for any town on the list.

Winton, CA Been there? No

Winton is a small, unincorporated town located on the railroad tracks between Merced and Turlock. Like many towns in the region, it’s majority Latino (71%) and is focused on agriculture. The article points to its high 20% unemployment rate and its staggering 24% poverty rate. Looking on StreetView, it looks like a nice enough town, with well-kept middle-class homes and no real signs of blight. Even its downtown area looks pretty healthy. I couldn’t find much info on why Winton has such poor numbers, so it would be interesting to talk to people to find out what’s going on here.

Phelan, CA Been there? Yes

Yes, there had to be at least one town from this region on this list. Maybe I’m just not getting it, but the High Desert region north of San Bernardino, anchored by Victorville, has always seemed like such an awful place to live. Phelan is a network of unzoned neighborhoods etched into the desert, centered on a couple of strip malls north of Highway 138. Phelan’s median home price is the highest on the list, at over $200,000. It’s too close to the Inland Empire to reap the benefits of cheap desert land. People come out to buy acreage and to not live on top of one another. But there are few services, as pointed out by the article, and it’s still a poor area, with an 18% poverty rate.

Robstown, TX Been there? No

Robstown is a small town just outside Corpus Christi. Robstown is 93% Hispanic, most of them poor, as it has a 41% poverty rate, one of the highest on this list. Robstown has several colonias on its fringes. Colonias are federally-recognized neighborhoods, usually in incorporated areas, where housing is substandard and infrastructure, such as clean water, is lacking. Robstown is also reported as having a crime issue, something that was disputed formally by city officials, which seems to have caused the mention of it to be removed, but its ranking mostly unchanged.

Douglas, AZ Been there? Yes

Aw, Douglas... It’s an isolated border community in Cochise County. Yes, it’s a dumpy town with a lot of abandonment. And the article points out that it’s poor, with a 29% poverty rate. Douglas was an important mining and railroad town through much of the 20th century. In the later part of the last and into this century, the community saw an economic boom from the Border Patrol and the influx of retirees. But this is waning, and the town is estimated to have lost 8% of its population in 2018. Douglas’ fortunes may have changed.

Buenaventura Lakes, FL Been there? No

A large neighborhood south of Orlando and east of Disney World that has been lumped into its own CDP. The area looks nice enough, with sweeping suburban streets lined with middle-class homes, several parks and even a library branch. But the article points out the tough realities: the median income here is well below the national rate while its proximity to Orlando means its cost of living in relatively high. The article points to a lack of supermarket access, but I counted two on the north side of the community and two to its south, including a Publix. This may seem like the town is undeserving, but the crime rate here is also 49% higher than the national average. The neighborhood is heavily Hispanic, with 44% reporting Puerto Rican heritage and 69% reporting speaking a language other than English in the home. This is not the first time we’ll see the Orlando area on here.

Chaparral, NM Been there? Yes

I remember reading about Chaparral years ago. The author had heard about the community, and drove through it, noting the menacing looks he received from people and the run-down nature of the community. It’s a small community etched into the Chihuahuan Desert north of El Paso, just over the state line. Its proximity to Fort Bliss likely means it’s largely reliant on it for employment. And its straddling of both state and county lines means that services are likely lacking, particularly police protection. But the article points to a sobering fact: the poverty rate here is over 43%, the highest on the list and making it one of the poorest places in the country.

Immokalee, FL Been there? No

Unlike its neighbor, Lehigh Acres, who also makes an appearance on this list, Immokalee is an agricultural community established as a railroad town in the 19th century. Immokalee has continued to grow as local tomato farming has flourished, but the town remains horribly poor, with a poverty rate of 42%, which makes it potentially the poorest town in Florida. The population is just 3% white, with the majority (70%) being Hispanic. This is made more ironic by the location of Ave Maria, a newer, very wealthy, Catholic planned community, started by the founder of Domino’s Pizza, just a few miles south of Immokalee. The town additionally sits adjacent to Seminole tribal lands, and they’ve put in a casino on the south side of town.

Lancaster, SC Been there? No

We had to have at least one South Carolina town on the list. Lancaster sits between Charlotte and Columbia, well east of Interstate 77. Andrew Jackson, the controversial president more associated with Tennessee, was born here. With a university campus and a number of historic sites, it seems like Lancaster would be okay, but it is horribly poor. The article lists a 34% poverty rate, a 15% unemployment rate, and points out that half of the town’s residents live on less than $31,000 per year.

Micco, FL Been there? No

Coastal Florida on the list? The article seems to hit Micco on its opioid death rate. The income levels are somewhat misleading as it’s largely a retiree community, with a median age of 69, and mostly composed of mobile home communities, including the massive Barefoot Bay development at the CDP’s northern edge. Most of the community is a few unrelated neighborhoods, with its commercial core along Highway 1. Brevard County in general is known to suck, but I’m not sure that Micco should be singled out as the suckiest.

Berea, SC Been there? Yes

Located just northwest of Greenville, Berea seems like any suburban area, with a mix of middle-class and mobile homes. The article mainly hammers on the 25% poverty rate, and with a reasonable median home price, that does potentially cause issues. In driving through (I believe this is the location of the Walgreens where the cashier seemed horrified that I was buying condoms), I recall it being a little run-down, but not particularly poor. But there may be more going on here than what’s in the numbers or what can be seen from the roads.

Laurinburg, NC Been there? No

Laurinburg sits near the South Carolina state line about 50 miles southwest of Fayetteville. Despite being an education center, with the Laurinburg Institute preparatory school and St. Andrews University located within town, the article points out that the town is flush with poverty. Over 1/3 of its residents are below the poverty line, and the unemployment rate sits at 14%. Additionally, the town has had a long streak of stagnated growth, growing less than 1% between 2000 and 2010, and losing an estimated 5% of its population between 2010 and 2018. The town seems to have crime issues as well, with above-average rates. Until 2019, the town regularly appeared on “most dangerous towns” lists for North Carolina.

Beverly Hills, FL Been there? No

Beverly Hills is a small CDP of mostly a namesake neighborhood located about 90 minutes north of Tampa, between Highways 19 and 41. The crime rate is slightly elevated, the unemployment rate is above average, and the poverty rate is very high, at 28%. Looking at the median home value plus a general StreetView scan, I think this has to do with the late 2000s real estate crash hitting this isolated exurb particularly hard, and it’s just had a slow but steady comeback. Low home values are going to inevitably attract lower-income people, and lower-income people often mean elevated crime rates. This doesn’t seem to be a particularly bad town though, especially when you consider how generally awful this mess of sprawl that oozes north from Tampa is in terms of quality of life. So I don’t know why this area was singled out. Residents seem to agree, as an article published in response to this in a local paper printed incensed responses from local officials and a valid general criticism of these lists.

Silver Springs Shores, FL Been there? No

Located just outside Ocala, the CDP is mainly a neighborhood. The article again points out high unemployment and a poverty rate also above 28%. And I think the same is happening here: a hard crash in home values and a slow recovery has depressed the community, resulting in elevated crime (making recovery harder) and a lower income rate. On StreetView, it’s easy to see that there are still a number of abandoned homes in the area, with others appearing run-down or not maintained. Again though, it’s a little unfair to single out a downtrodden neighborhood in a crappy part of Florida, so I don’t know that this needs to have its place in the search engine dynamic ruined by this appearance.

Shady Hills, FL Been there? No

The article may just be trying to prove my point about the rural counties north of Tampa being particularly crappy. Unlike nearby Beverly Hills though, I think this one is a little more deserving. There are A LOT of abandoned and dilapidated homes in this area. A lack of zoning and sensible development has left the area all over the place in terms of what’s around, but it’s mostly small houses and mobile homes. The article doesn’t like its elevated poverty rate (ironically well below that of both Beverly Hills and Silver Springs Shores) or lack of services, and points out a slightly elevated drug death rate. I don’t know that anyone is going to be upset about its place here unless they are trying to sell local property.

La Homa, TX Been there? No

Let’s get off the Deep South’s back and go back to bashing poor sections of Texas. 38% poverty and 14% unemployment are striking without the context of the region. La Homa is a CDP on the western edge of the Rio Grande Valley’s urban area. It’s pretty much all colonias (see Robstown above), but appears to mostly have running water, trash collection, and paved roads. The population is over 97% Hispanic. If you’re familiar with this region, then none of this will be particularly surprising. The Valley is a tremendously poor region of mostly recent immigrants and first-generation citizens. Services are few, economic opportunities fewer, and it’s a pretty depressing place to live, it seems.

Conyers, GA Been there? Yes

Conyers is a majority-black suburb of Atlanta and the county seat of Rockdale County. Its place on the list mostly seems to be due to its poverty rate, at 30%, and it’s slightly elevated median home price, which means that it’s likely a large portion of residents are spending way too much on rent. In fact, the article also points out that the homeownership rate in Conyers is just 28%. It’s a small, middle-class bedroom community, but it also has a sizable retail district with its place on Interstate 20. It doesn’t seem particularly poor or particularly bad for Georgia. In fact, its location among pine-covered hills is attractive. However, it does have a crime problem, with a rate more than double the national average, but mostly elevated by its property crime rate.

Golden Valley, AZ Been there? Yes

This is a rough area. Like a few other communities on this list, Golden Valley is less town more than a lot of roads laid out haphazardly across the empty desert and parceled out. You can build pretty much what you want and live how you want out here, in this community 90 minutes or so from Las Vegas and just west of Kingman. Driving the back roads is a little scary due to the area’s reputation as a meth production hub. There’s good people out there, of course, but there are also people who would kill you for your shoes. The article mainly knocks it on its unemployment and poverty rates, and points out its isolation. And it is really is isolated. There are a couple of gas stations and other businesses along Highway 68, which bisects the CDP, but residents are entirely reliant on Kingman.

Poinciana, FL Been there? No

I’ve never been to Poinciana (it’s out there), but I’m familiar with it. It’s the largest community on this list, at over 67,000 people, but it’s still an unincorporated CDP of subdivisions etched out into the swamplands south of Orlando. And what a distance to Orlando: it’s a minimum 1-hour drive into town, on roads that are constantly plagued with traffic. But I mainly know Poinciana for its place as the poster child of the late 2000s housing crash in Florida. A small retirement community up to that point, Poinciana was heavily developed just before the crash, with most construction being large houses. The values plummeted, and people left when their underwater mortgages were foreclosed on. The homes were resold to poorer, mostly non-white residents, while the wealthier found homes in areas closer in. But the article points to the area’s lack of services as its main issue. For almost 70,000 residents, there is a Walmart, a Publix, and a small Latino-focused supermarket, surrounding by just a few restaurants along a single strip of roadway. This puts residents at the northern end of the community at a minimum of 5 miles from any sort of retail businesses. To make things worse, the main route north out of Poinciana is a two-lane toll road.

Irondale, GA Been there? No

Irondale is a far-flung Atlanta suburb, along US 41 just south of Jonesboro. It has a high poverty rate, at 26%, but the article focuses on its violent crime rate, which is significantly higher than the national average. The median home value is likely statistically offset by a huge mobile home park included as part of the CDP, but the home values appear to decreasing as the area becomes less desirable and its distance from Atlanta more of an issue.

Beecher, MI Been there? No

Anyone familiar with Michigan is probably surprised to see that this is the state’s only appearance on this list. But leave it to Flint. It’s not quite Flint: Beecher is a CDP just north of Flint and outside the city limits. However, it’s pretty much suburban Flint. Many of the long-abandoned homes have been demolished, but what’s left are overgrown, empty plots next to small and dilapidated homes. There are well-maintained houses and pretty lawns, but there are also unpaved streets. The article points to its crippling unemployment rate of 23%, one of the highest on the list, and that that rate has been sustained and likely resulted in the 38% poverty rate. But past the terrible weather, the perpetually dismal economy and having to say you’re from Flint, Beecher’s crime rate is at least close to the national average.

Fair Oaks, GA Been there? Yes

The list wasn’t quite done with suburban Atlanta, and finishes its trashing of the region by rounding out each side of the city with a shot at one of its small northern CDP suburbs. Fair Oaks sits directly across the road from Dobbins Air Force Base, stuck between the cities of Smyrna and Marietta. Many of the homes were built before the base, and the base only worked to depress their values. Restrictions on flights over the community have been periodically negotiated, but the small sizes of the homes and its location in the heart of Cobb County has brought in a large number of poorer Latino and African-American residents. With a 32% poverty rate and an excessive crime rate 38% above the national average, only its relatively close proximity to freeways and much wealthier areas to the east make it seem like it has hope still.

Donaldsonville, LA Been there? No

In Louisiana, being a majority African-American town is not a good sign. Not because there’s anything wrong with the people, but it means that racism is going to keep a lot of people away. Historically, it shows that not many people want to live there, especially when it’s a town of this size. Donaldsonville is poor. A 39% poverty rate places it as the poorest place in Louisiana. It’s struggled economically. An industrial and river town, historically, the town has seen little if any benefit from the energy production to the south partially due to the highway configuration, which routes traffic well around the town to use the nearby Sunshine Bridge. Though it’s located along the famous River Road, Louisiana Highway 1, Donaldsonville is too far from the plantations and on the wrong side of the river to be viable as a stop, with its portion taken up by heavy industry, including the nearby ammonia plant.

Yazoo City, MS Been there? No

And you thought that there was just going to be that one little entry from the Mississippi Delta? No, the authors continue their bashing of the South by pointing to the oddly-named town’s embarrassing numbers: 20% unemployment, and a 42% poverty rate. Plus, they point out maybe the worst statistic: 20% of resident households live on an income of $10,000 or less per year. Like most of the area, Yazoo is majority African-American. Well away from the Mississippi River, it doesn’t seem to reap much benefit from its location beyond the typical Mississippi involvement in timber. The downtown area is mostly abandoned, with boarded-up shops, made all the more sad by music perpetually piped in on outdoor speakers. With its Amtrak station and Delta location, Yazoo has attempted to make good on the region’s Blues tourism. But it seems like the generational poverty so famous here is going to stick around for a few more generations, unless someone can offer a dramatic solution.

[randomtowns]

50 Worst... Sometimes

This is going to be a long post, because I’m going to be discussing 50 towns instead of just one.

These 50 come from a USA Today clickbait article titled “America’s 50 Worst Cities to Live” (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/02/29/americas-50-worst-cities-to-live/111367058/). In addition to the obvious ambiguity in “worst,” “cities” also isn’t quite right as it mostly contains unincorporated census designated places. However, it’s not without merit. I remember, as a kid, pouring over the “Places Rated Almanac.” My parents had two of these, from the 80′s, apparently to try and pick a place to live. The almanac used statistics like climate, crime, available of mass transit, team sports, schools, and other publicly-available information to create a score that determined the town’s rating. What was the best? I actually don’t remember, but I recall that, in both editions we had, Yuba City, California was dead last. But my history with this led me to actually scroll through this entire article one night, thinking of why exactly these places had been deemed so deplorable and unworthy of habitation. I’m going to go through each one on the list, and talk about my thoughts on the place, if I’d been there, or reasons as to why the area comes up, in my opinion.

Let’s get started...

Piney Woods, NC Been there? No

Piney Woods is a CDP located just east of the Jacksonville, NC city limits, and directly across the road from the main entrance to Camp Lejeune, most known as a facility for Marines when they are deployed. The area is mostly low density residential, with a mix of middle-class homes and mobile home parks. The article faults it for its poverty rate, unemployment (both slightly above the national average), and lack of public transit. Like any community adjacent to a large military, Piney Woods is going to see many ebbs and flows in its fortunes, and is not going to be a place where most people would want to live. Being a military community means it’s a largely transient area, with few interested in the improvement of the overall community due to the temporary nature of their assignments there. Those who stick around are likely mostly if not totally dependent upon the fortunes of the base.

Oskaloosa, IA Been there? No

Oskaloosa is a town about 60 miles southeast of Des Moines along Highway 163. It’s just far enough to miss out on being a Des Moines bedroom community, but maybe close enough to live within its shadow. The article cites the slightly above-average poverty and unemployment rates again, and points to the home value being half of the national median. There’s an annual regional fair held here, there’s a small liberal arts college (William Penn University), and a couple of companies located here. Originally a coal mining area, it’s possible that Oskaloosa has fell into the trap of a lot of industrial Midwestern towns, where they are unable to move on with a mostly unskilled labor pool.

West Pensacola, FL Been there? Yes

West Pensacola is a CDP with a number of unrelated neighborhoods just west of the city of Pensacola. There is a strip of retail along the major highways, including a number of hotels. It’s mostly a community of small homes in small neighborhoods with medium- to large-sized lots. However, it does include a particularly rough, poor section of Pensacola that is conveniently just outside of the city limits. Additionally, the area is just north of Pensacola Naval Air Station, and the southern boundary of the CDP is littered with strip malls, tattoo shops and low-end motels. It’s likely that a lot of the residents here work at the NAS. The article points out high unemployment, low income, and low home values, all attributable to the above. I’ve stayed here a couple of times, last in 2003, and I recall the area as being somewhat dumpy but not having an overall dangerous feel.

Greenville, MS Been there? No

It’s inevitable that a Mississippi Delta community would come up on the list. The region is notoriously poor, and with a poverty rate of 35%, the article points out that Greenville is the poorest city in the country. It’s the economic center of the area, but it being located in a particularly poor area is going to inevitably doom it to being a poor town.

Moss Point, MS Been there? Yes

Moss Point is at the eastern end of a string of towns along the Mississippi coast. Unlike the other towns though, Moss Point has no beachfront property, and sits directly north of Pascagoula. This likely leads to it having lower home values than those surrounding towns, which was exacerbated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, from which the town has never fully recovered. The article points out that it’s one of the poorest towns in the country.

Middletown, OH Been there? Yes

Middletown sits almost directly between Cincinnati and Dayton. Originally a canal town, it became a steel town in the 20th century, and has seen a similar fate as other steel towns. The article points out that the unemployment rate is just below 10%, and the poverty rate is just over 25%. Medium-sized (Middletown’s population hovers around 50,000) Ohio towns have had a rough time in the late 20th and early 21st century. If it’s not industrial exodus, it’s opioids, and Middletown is not exception to these issues. It’s pretty though, and it’s big enough that there are still nice areas in spite of the problems.

Augusta, GA Been there? No

One of the largest cities I have never been to. But can you blame me? James Brown’s beloved hometown has an awful reputation. Aside from the annual Masters golf tournament, there seems to be nothing to do here. The article points to a 10% unemployment rate and a 23% poverty rate. Like many southern cities, it’s a town of haves and have nots. The western side of town, home to the Augusta National course, features large, well-kept homes on large lots with mostly white inhabitants, but cross the tracks to the south and you’ll find many abandoned homes, or homes with bars on the windows, in a predominately black area. The consolidation of the city and county in the 90′s was meant to stem the tide of flight to the suburbs, and the resultant loss of revenue, but many middle-class residents have instead chosen to live across the river, in South Carolina. While Augusta has seen massive population decreases, North Augusta, SC saw a 20% jump between 2000 and 2010.

Bay St. Louis, MS Been there? Yes

Where Moss Point is at the eastern end of the Mississippi coast, Bay St. Louis is at its western end. You may look at a map and point out that there are communities to the west, but I’ve driven through here at night, and leaving Bay St. Louis is like leaving earth: it’s just dark, trees and bugs until New Orleans. Just like Moss Point, Bay St. Louis was heavily damaged during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and has never fully recovered. The article points to its slightly above-average unemployment rate and its lack of recreation activities. It’s hard for me to judge that but, in looking at the map, it does seem to have few park areas that are not dedicated to sports facilities.

Lithia Springs, GA Been there? Yes

Lithia Springs is a small CDP just off I-20 west of Atlanta. Like a lot of suburban Atlanta, the area was developed with middle-class homes and little thought to zoning, only to be passed on in subsequent housing booms as the city grew. The article points out its lack of access to grocery stores. There is a Kroger at its eastern edge, but it’s strangely just outside of the CDP’s boundaries, which may explain this.

DeRidder, LA Been there? Yes

DeRidder is a small town north of Lake Charles, and is the seat of Beauregard Parish. Just across the Sabine River, in Texas, the region is known as “the pine curtain,” a reference to both its pine trees and its reputation as backward and isolated. DeRidder largely has the same reputation. It’s a logging town, and, likely due to that, it has a high unemployment and poverty rate, as the article points out. The parish’s low population is likely the cause of the lack of grocery stores and recreational options that the article laments.

Denison, IA Been there? No

Denison is a small town about 90 minutes north of Omaha. It sits in a heavily agricultural region, reliant on farming and meat production. The article points to its high unemployment rate, made higher within the last four years, a lack of an educated workforce, and low home values. Denison has emerged as a face of the new Midwest: now at 42% Hispanic. The unemployment increase can be attributed to the Tyson beef plant closing in 2015.

Atmore, AL Been there? No

Atmore sits just off of Interstate 65 north of Mobile. The article points to Atmore’s recent massive drop in employment and its current unemployment rate of nearly 20%. A new casino by the interstate, and some surrounding commercial development, are possibly the city’s plan at getting out of its rapidly declining economic state. As far as small Alabama towns though, Atmore does not seem anymore unsustainable.

Pahrump, NV Been there? Yes

Pahrump is a place you move to when you want to get away from people. Whether you’re a preper who distrusts the government, a retiree just seeking to live on your own terms, or a meth manufacturer, Nevada in general is possibly the most libertarian state, with Pahrump its possibly most libertarian community. The area is a mostly unorganized and random roads running off of just a couple of highways an hour or so west of Las Vegas. It’s close enough that you can still get what you need in the city, but far enough that you don’t have to feel closed in by the city or its housing prices. The article points to Pahrump’s drug issues as its main point of contention, but also its 10% unemployment rate. But it’s a cheap place to live, and its various qualities make it an attractive place to live while on government assistance. The town also features two of the few remaining legal brothels in the state.

Lakeland Village, CA Been there? No

On the more isolated southern shore of Lake Elsinore, against the Santa Ana Mountains, Lakeside Village did not grow the same as its Temescal Valley neighbors did. Interstate 15 has brought both steady traffic and a commuter route to Lake Elsinore, the lake’s namesake town on the other shore, but Lakeland Village seems to have been largely passed up. It has a reputation locally as both crime- and drug-ridden. The article points to its 12.9% unemployment rate, and high commute times.

Makaha, HI Been there? No

An isolated community along Oahu’s western shore, this is the only time Hawaii makes the list. The article points to its high cost of living contradicted by its below-average median income. It also points to its excessive 16.7% unemployment and 28% poverty rates. Its isolation (over an hour from Honolulu on a small, crowded highway) and reputation for having dangerous waves have kept it from being excessively developed like other parts of Oahu, but that also has meant that it has remained poorer than other areas.

Lehigh Acres, FL Been there? Yes

Lehigh Acres actually started as a stereotype: one of those large pieces of swampland where developers marked streets and plots on a map, and then speculators ate up, occasionally building homes with little or no infrastructure available. The area sat as mostly undeveloped until the 2000s real estate boom, and the subsequent crash was particularly devastating on the community, with its poor climate, lack of services, and longer distance to the beach. The article points to the community’s below-average income yet above-average cost of living. Google amazingly has nearly the entire area on StreetView.

Artesia, NM Been there? Yes

A town I actually like. Yes, despite having an oil refinery directly in its center, I’ve always found Artesia to be a charming little town, and a stark contrast to its larger, despicable Estacado neighbors to the north and south. There’s even a little brewpub here, called The Wellhead, that’s been open for many years. But the article reports an elevated poverty rate and lack of access to grocery stores. The latter may be due to the town’s only supermarket being very near to the Walmart Supercenter.

Arizona City, AZ Been there? Yes

Arizona City is a small, isolated CDP stuck between desert and cotton fields just south of Interstate 10, between Phoenix and Tucson. The article points to its above-average unemployment and poverty rates, and residents’ lack of access to both restaurants and grocery stores. But this is a snowbird town, and isolation is typical in places like this. This area just happens to be especially isolated. There is a large Hispanic population here, likely due to the surrounding agricultural industries, which may account for much of the poverty.

Bacliff, TX Been there? Yes

When I lived in Houston in the early 2000s, I would sometimes take drives to this small community along Galveston Bay, to sit by the water, and buy some quick food at one of the places along Highway 146. But it’s been a long time since I’ve been, and the article points out some changes. Bacliff’s above-average poverty may be directly related to the closure of its local chemical plant. The gang activity mentioned in the article is surprising, but it may be due to its proximity to Houston.

Earlimart, CA Been there? Yes

Yeah, okay, Earlimart sucks, I’ll give you that. There was an LA-based band in the 2000s called Earlimart, and the music led me to believe that they just got the name from the sign on the freeway, and never actually stopped here. I would say that Earlimart is the closest thing to a scummy Mexican border town I’ve seen in California. The article points out its staggering 41% poverty rate, above-average unemployment rate, and isolation from services. Despite its population, there are few restaurants here, but that’s largely because locals can’t afford to eat out. I’ve stopped here mainly for its cheap gas, but it’s a depressing little town, even for the low standards of the Central Valley.

Coatesville, PA Been there? Yes

Another steel town that has been forsaken. Meanwhile, it’s just a little bit too far from Philadelphia to be a viable bedroom community. The article points out its high unemployment and poverty rates, as well as its low home ownership rate. It’s hard to pick this as a lot worse than any of the countless similarly-sized towns throughout Pennsylvania, but I suppose the numbers are what puts this over the edge.

Perry, GA Been there? No

It’s strange to see a town right along a major interstate corridor be on this list as interstates often have a way of keeping a town afloat just enough with service and retail jobs. Reading over the article and the numbers, I’m not totally clear on why this one deserves such a high ranking (#29). Its unemployment rate is high, but not compared to cities surrounding this. This part of Georgia blows (the people are great though), but I don’t know why Perry gets such shade.

Bessemer, AL Been there? Yes

Another steel town, and one that has had issues with unemployment, poverty and blight for longer than most steel towns. This is partially due to early white flight, as the city was majority black by the 1950′s, and continues to be so today. A major interstate, close proximity to Alabama’s largest city, and a large water park, are not enough to boost the town out of its perpetual rut. The article points to a high unemployment rate and a very high poverty rate of 28%. However, there’s also an excessive violent crime rate (the highest of any city over 25,000 in 2019) and, it’s not just USA Today that thinks Bessemer sucks: the Wall Street Journal ranked it the worst city in Alabama in 2019.

Stockbridge, GA Been there? Yes

At one point, Stockbridge was a tiny town well outside Atlanta. As Atlanta grew though, Stockbridge became a large part of that city’s rising black suburbs, as African-Americans pushed out of the urban confines into home ownership as red lining and other racist policies were struck down. Based on the numbers provided in the article, it doesn’t seem that bad. My guess is that, like a lot of these poorer suburbs, it looks bad in terms of area housing costs versus incomes. Just like Perry though, I’m not sure why Stockbridge is getting picked on so much here.

Brooksville, FL Been there? No

The seat of Hernando County, Brooksville may be a symbolic center for the county’s issues with poverty, drugs, and crime. The article points to the town’s high unemployment and its low home value, and $49,000 median home value seems especially low for Florida. Then again, there are just not many large homes built in Hernando County in general, and Brooksville may be a more extreme example of that.

WHEW!!! That’s 50 to 26. I’m going to cover 25 to 1 tomorrow to break up the posts. Hope you enjoyed.

[randomtowns]

Covington, GA

As you exit Atlanta from any directions, the suburban sprawl is slow to drop off. Slower than most other regions. And it’s not a constant stream of strip malls and tan, KB homes, like in Houston and Los Angeles. Instead, there are gaps with wooded areas, polluting industries, gravel pits, trailer parks, and real, genuine towns.

Covington is a real town on the edge of that sprawl. While living in Atlanta in 2009-2010, I somehow wound up here on a roadtrip. It looks like a typical Georgia small town, with its ornate courthouse, grassy courthouse square, and strings of fast food and strip malls on its fringes. But the courthouse square is more upmarket, and the courthouse itself is grander. Covington is closer to Atlanta and that brings in some money. Some people who work in Atlanta are willing to brave Interstate 20 each day to provide a slow, small town lifestyle for their families. The eastern suburbs of Atlanta have a bad rep. DeKalb County is a predominately African American, and “majority minority” county. Wealthier white residents have been leaving since the 80′s, when upwardly-mobile minority families began moving in from the city. But the white flight that resulted sunk land values in areas which contributed to the area’s decline. That stigma continues as you go east, and Atlanta’s eastern suburbs remain less developed than in other directions, particularly to the north, which has seen a continual population surge of mostly wealthy commuters, but also job creation, particularly in Alpharetta. Without local job creation, the east side has stagnated, and this has resonated out. Sitting as its own town, Covington is somewhat of breakpoint; where the struggling small towns and the mindless sprawl of unincorporated areas ends and where the wealthier people feel somewhat safer in their choice of settling.

Just north of Covington is the town of Oxford, named for Oxford, England, and home to a campus of Atlanta’s exclusive Emory University. In fact, this was the original campus, and it was only later, as the school grew, that the decision was made to move to create a larger campus while retaining the one in Oxford. This creates an interesting dynamic in Covington, where rural Georgia meets the WASPy wealth of Emory. Oxford is a town only in legal terms, and, driving through, you would likely never know that you were not in Covington.

[randomtowns]

Detroit, MI

Everyone has heard of Detroit. It stood as America’s 18th-largest city in 2010, though it dropped to #23 in the 2017 estimate. The remarkable thing, and the thing that contradicts those that say Detroit is currently in its renaissance period, is that Detroit continues to hemorrhage population. From a high of nearly 2 million in the middle of the 20th century, it now sits at well under half (under 700,000) that. And people are still leaving.

As with much of the urban Midwest, the contradiction of revitalized neighborhoods and positive development coupled with population loss has everything to do with race and class. Marginalized and segregated for decades, Detroit’s mostly black population is leaving when they can while the wealthy white kids from the suburbs move into new condos in the city. The poor can’t afford the new housing in the nice areas, but do not want to live in the bad areas, so they leave. Like most large metro areas in the US, there are poor suburbs, and that’s where some have gone. Others have just left the region entirely, in search of warmer climates and more economic opportunities.

Detroit has unfortunately always rested its hopes and economic vitality on the fate of the auto industry. Ebbs and flows (mostly ebbs) have meant economic insecurity not just for the local population, but also for local municipalities. Detroit’s public services have had a number of high-profile bankruptcies - including of the city itself in 2013 - throughout the years, and once proud surrounding communities, like the small suburb of Highland Park, have been essentially left to rot simply due to a lack of funds needed to keep them viable. There is money in the Detroit area, but it’s almost all concentrated in its northern suburbs. And as that money stays outside the reach of the public coffers, Detroit continues to decline.

Detroit is known for many other negative things, like its portrayal in the movie “8 Mile”, its conspicuously blighted Central Station building, and the notoriety of its “Devil’s Night” tradition where abandoned houses are burned on the night before Halloween. Some like the bad rep and choose to wear it as a badge. But economic investors do not want grit; they want hip, but also family-friendly. It’s a fine line, as the hipster 20- or 30-something wants to feel like they live in a tough, urban neighborhood, but doesn’t want all of the problems actually associated with living in a tough neighborhood, like crime, issues with neighbors, and deficient public services.

Where does Detroit go from here? A lot of people seem to have answers, and their proposals are on TV periodically, but yet Detroit seems to continue to fall deeper into its hole. If anything, I think Detroit is a representation of the racial divide that we, as a country, cannot seem to totally bridge in spite of years of trying. Because the fact is that not everyone is trying, and it’s only going to be everyone trying before anything really moves forward.

[randomtowns]

Chico, CA

It’s an odd name for a town - “boy” - but there are a number of oddly-named towns in California. Manteca translated from Spanish means “lard” while there’s Vacaville to the north (”vaca” means cow) and Salida (”exit”) just to its south.

Chico is a college town. Home to Chico State or, officially, California State University at Chico. The CSU system goes by varying colloquial names. CSU Sacramento is known as “Sacramento State,” while CSU Monterey Bay is known as “CSUMB” and CSU East Bay is just “Cal State East Bay.” Then there’s CSU Fullerton, which is usually just called “Fullerton.”

Chico is in the Sacramento Valley which has a climate that differs quite a bit from the more moderated coastal areas. It gets very hot in the summer, lacking the cool ocean breezes, and tends to get cold in the winter, though it doesn’t often snow in the town like it does in the mountains outside of town. The only time I came through, it was hot. I was returning from visiting Lassen Volcanic National Park, which is mostly inaccessible during the winter due to snow. I stopped in Chico to do some work at Bidwell Perk, a coffee shop just north of the downtown area, and a play on the adjacent Bidwell Park neighborhood. It was early, but the sweltering had already begun, and even the air-conditioned interior was stuffy and uncomfortable. It was also humming with activity. There were the usual laptop zombies, like me, but also a healthy slew of moms in activewear chatting about their stylish clothing choices, middle-aged office workers awkwardly ordering absurdly complicated drinks and a few college students. A lot of people who wanted to talk, and that’s somewhat refreshing to see in a college town coffee shop.

After I left the coffee shop, I took a drive through Downtown, admiring the old buildings and quaint nature of the place. But it was still hot. Most of the college students had left, and it all felt empty; more like a small Southern town than a Northern California city.

At the southern end of town is the Sierra Nevada Brewery and Beer Garden. “Garden” is certainly correct here, as it was surrounded by hop vines crawling up and down the building. After entering through a side hallway, you’re greeted by a huge room fronted by a long, wooden bar. Behind the bar sit some copper kettles, to elicit images of brewing. The reason I go to breweries is because they often have small batch beers on tap, beers that I would otherwise not be able to try due to their limited production and lack of distribution. Sierra Nevada is no different. At this point in time, they were in their early stages of using their self-grown hops. This part of California, due to its climate, is a good area for hop production, so the brewery had started to create a series of experimental hop strains. I had one, supplemented by some soup, which was a poor choice on the hot day. But the food (and beer) was expensive, and the soup would get me through the alcohol consumption long enough to find something cheaper and more substantial.

Chico is not a cheap place. Due to the college and just the fact that it’s in California, housing is expensive. But everything else - from restaurants to public transit - is also expensive. Chico struck me as being similar to Flagstaff, aside from its obvious location and climate differences. The two cities are both public college towns with about the same population (Chico is larger), Flagstaff’s cold and snowy winter is comparable to Chico’s long, hot, humid summer in that they both have unpleasant times of the year, and both have high costs of living. In Flagstaff, it’s difficult to make a living. The housing costs and low salaries (salaries are generally low in Arizona and do not go up much in Flagstaff to make up for its higher cost of living) mean that it’s very hard to live anything but paycheck-to-paycheck. So I imagine it’s about the same in Chico.

I’ve met a few people in California who went to Chico State. They’ve had few things to say about it beyond the general “it was fun.” Chico State is known somewhat as a party school, and I could see it being an attractive place to stick around in your post-college mid-20s (lots of parties, single girls and social opportunities). But I could also see it as being the kind of town where people get stuck. I could see it as being the kind of town where you have a kid and then you want to leave, but you can’t. There are worse places to be stuck, surely, but to eek out the rest of your life with no where to move has always seemed miserable to me in itself.

[randomtowns]

Mesilla, NM

Mesilla is usually referred to as “Old Mesilla” in the Las Cruces area. And it’s often regarded as a part of that larger city but is, in fact, its own incorporated town. The heart of Old Mesilla is its plaza area, a National Historic Landmark District. The plaza is is similar to the plaza in Santa Fe in its design, but, unlike that plaza, it’s quiet. People aren’t rushing around, desperately taking photos. Instead, they stroll, they stop, they sit. It’s likely more representative of the plazas as they existed in this part of the country 150 to 200 years ago. They were more social centers, where people came together, children played, trade was conducted and gossip spread. When you see a plaza like this, it’s easy to imagine

It may have been 2005 when I came here and found a coffee shop where I could stop to use my laptop. I often did this on trips: stopping to use their internet to write and to research my next steps, since cell phone data service was mostly non-existent at that time and Google Maps was not something that was ubiquitous on cell phones as it is today. An hour or so into sitting in the quaint cafe, a band came in, bringing amps, guitars and a drum kit. They played a solo set of a sort of progressive punk. After their set, I talked to one of the members and found out that they were from Montana. I was headed to Montana but did not know where to go. I only had a day or so, and the state’s large size meant that I had to choose one city to visit. She told me Missoula, where they were from. Billings was gross. Great Falls was isolated. Helena sucked. But Missoula was very cool. And it was. Later that week, I spent a night there, at a small motel, and drank at a local bar before walking the streets in the cool evening air. But this was the first stop on this trip, and it was always experiences like this, where I had a great start to a road trip, that let me know that it was going to be a really memorable trip.

[randomtowns]

Nogales, AZ

It’s not often that I feel particularly sorry for people living in some of these towns, but I do feel for the kids growing up in Nogales. Nogales is considered to be, theoretically, one of the safest cities in the country. This is due to the fact that the city has one of the highest per capita rates of law enforcement officials in the country. Mostly Border Patrol. But Border Patrol has been plagued, since its rapid expansion after 9/11, with turnover and job vacancies. And few of those that they do hire want to work in Nogales, and fewer still want to live here. Border Patrol is aggressive about recruiting local kids. Nogales is not a wealthy town by any means, so a Border Patrol salary looks good locally, and the generally bilingual local youth look good to the Border Patrol. It’s the prime example of the new phenomenon of the American border town. A police state has emerged in these cities.

Going to see bands in Tucson, groups of kids from the other Nogales, in Sonora, would often show up, enthusiastically dancing and singing along. They were well-dressed in designer clothes, with gelled hair, new tattoos and piercings. They left the shows in small but nice, new cars. A lot of high school students on the Sonoran side come to Arizona for college, taking it as one of several possible paths. The fact is that Nogales, Sonora, despite having a gritty and somewhat dangerous reputation, is a wealthy city. A lot of people have made a lot of money on the border there, and it’s often hard for Americans to reconcile the fact that many residents on the Sonoran side have no interest in living on the American side. They have a good life; not the squalid poverty that a lot of Americans associate with Mexican cities. It’s easy to look across the fence (”across the wire” as it’s called), at the stray dogs, the unfinished shacks climbing the dusty hills, and the idle men and teens on street corners and imagine it for what the most vitriolic of anti-Mexican sentiment in the US wants us to believe. It makes the Arizona side looks nice. But go into the city and into its wealthy fringe subdivisions, and the Arizona side begins to look less attractive, and more like the dusty outpost it’s been throughout history.

And maybe that’s the problem: instead of living in Nogales, Arizona, Border Patrol should be putting its agents in Nogales, Sonora.

[randomtowns]

American Fork, UT

All the pleading and flailing generalizations that are elicited by the pinched desert flowing south from Salt Lake City can be summarized in a single photograph of a suburban home surrounded by a high fence, blocking it from a bleached strip mall parking lot. There are a string of towns following Interstate 15 in Salt Lake and Utah Counties, but American Fork is the one that sticks out to me more than Springville, Pleasant Grove, Payson, or any of the others, due to its seemingly untraceable association with the likes of the Jared and Jeshua Hess. The names may not immediately be recognized, but “Napoleon Dynamite” should be, particularly for those who were in their 20s and 30s in the late 90s and early 2000s, when the film merged the campy, awkward short film style of editing with the more mainstream gloss, enlightening audiences with a unique style. The film pays homage to Preston, Idaho, a rural, agricultural, and majority Mormon community just above the Utah state line. After the film’s success, a follow-up project was listed on the Hess’ IMDB page, initially titled “American Fork.” It seemed to be intended as mostly a sequel to “Napoleon Dynamite”.

At least, that’s how I remembered it. Looking all of this up though, two things became clear: “American Fork” was produced and then released in 2007; and that it seemingly has no association with the Hesses.

It was a missed opportunity for the Hesses to lampoon suburban Utah as they did with rural Preston, because nothing calls out a cynicism toward our modern American civilization than an wide-angled look at the stubbornly numbered streets of this region. It is a desperate sprawl put up by desperate believers in the American dream; a tantrum of partitioning land due simply to entitlement. Latter Day Saint dogma, to my knowledge at least, does not make an effort to encourage things like cookie-cutter homes on indistinguishable streets cut into the eastern fringes of the Great Basin. “Go forth and multiply” is equally dogmatic for Hassidic Jews. Though, when allowed to do so in their own way, such as in Kiryas Joel, New York (and not shoved into overcrowded urban neighborhoods), build up in vinyl-sided, multi-storied townhomes, scaling steep hillsides with tiny yards on narrow streets. Why has monotheism met the darkest suburbia in such an unflattering way in the towns south of Salt Lake City? It doesn’t seem enough to build a massive Target and a Home Depot in each of these towns (American Fork has both stores), but they must also all feature identically placid streets, ringed by unused sidewalks, and lined with rising concrete driveways approaching huge homes painted in dull, inoffensive colors and fronted by sprinkler-fed green lawns.

It’s unfair to single out American Fork for the sins of an entire metropolitan area, but the town has a name that is easy to remember and its vague association with film history puts it into a larger spotlight.

My trips there have been unmemorable. I often feel asleep in driving between Salt Lake City and Provo. My interest in the elusive novelty of the unknown towns along my trips wains by the time I get to this point in the drive. The interstate is just one long, multilane corridor with periodic vaguely-named exit ramps. The back roads, at least those that run through these towns, are intolerable for excessive lengths of time due to unending traffic signals and almost nothing of interest to break up the drive. Everyone takes the interstate, and that fact is one of the core issues of this valley. If you only build in a line, how long before that line goes from a proud tower, with a solid foundation, to a teetering and crumbling failure, its bricks crashing to the ground below.

[randomtowns]

French Lick, IN

I had never heard of the town when I came across it, in the middle of the night, on a roadtrip through the Ohio Valley. I had seen the spotted green of Hoosier National Forest on the road atlas, and had assumed that, like the national forests of the West, that if I drove far enough into it, I could find dispersed camping and just sleep in my car. I can laugh now but, at the time, stumbling down road after road only to see more houses and dense forest as the hour got more ridiculous was both humiliating and terrible.

There was a weird aura to French Lick in that late night hour. In most small towns, you expect the streetlights, a few cars, and a bar or two to be the only activity. But French Lick was obviously still very alive, and I pulled into the casino parking lot in a sort of marveled state, sleepily making sense of the darkened contours around me that distinguished the landscape from the manmade structures. It’s sort of like when you look toward the horizon and have to squint to discern clouds from mountains. But, yes, there is a casino. That’s actually the main attraction in French Lick, as it’s the only casino in the immediate area, and until 2017, was the only casino in the state that was not either on a riverboat or run by a Native American tribe.

After we moved to Bloomington, I went back several times, and even into the casino once. It was smoky, and though the exterior looked grand and impressive, deliberately reminiscent of the once-grand hot springs that were throughout the town, was drab and dull on the inside. It looked as many casinos in the Midwest do: catering to a different group of people who see Las Vegas not as the tacky tourist trap built up as the city equivalent of a slick conman, but a glamorous stop for the upwardly mobile. The casino wasn’t much because it didn’t have much of a standard to live up to.

Indianans all know where French Lick is. They either like the casino, or they like Larry Bird, and the fact that he’s from here is well known in the state. Indianans’ associations with places often revolve around basketball. The only thing I ever could get out of people there about the oddly-named Loogootee was that the team that the film “Hoosiers” was based on was from there. This only exemplifies the domination that Indiana has over the sport of basketball, with the upper ranks of NBA management full of Hoosiers.

But no one seems to think French Lick is weird, or that it’s a weird name for a town. I think it’s both. Returning in the daylight, you realize how small French Lick, and how out of place the casino is. It’s a beautiful setting, and I can see why people liked to come here in the days of mineral springs. But I don’t see allure today. But, again, I don’t think any of this is intended for me.

[randomtowns]

Gila Bend, AZ

The name is derived from a bend in the Gila River, which runs just outside the town. Don’t bother looking for it though: it’s always dry except for during the heaviest rainstorms in the summer. Don’t bother looking for the town either, at least in a traditional sense. Gila Bend has always been a roadside oasis; a line of services for the roadtripper. Just far enough from Phoenix, and the last chance before a long, hard stretch of Sonoran desert, Gila Bend is mostly motels, gas stations and a quickly rotating collection of sad restaurants.

On one drive across the desert, I ate dinner at the Space Age Lodge, a Best Western property. The building was made to look like a spaceship and featured a gift shop with postcards and various trinkets. The restaurant was a bad diner. I had spaghetti that came with a piece of garlic toast and a salad bar. The harsh iceberg lettuce forced me to abandon after one trip. It was all about $9 before tip. I never ate in Gila Bend again.

Except for the shrimp festival. In 2009, a friend and I drove the back way, Highway 86 through Ajo, to Gila Bend and attended the small annual event. It featured food, music, a petting zoo and an eating contest, which featured a woman and two fat guys trying desperately to peel and eat more shrimp than each other. Because peeling a shrimp takes exponentially more time than eating a shrimp, this event was not interesting and I never found out who won. Gila Bend, for a time, had a shrimp farm. It operated just north of town. However the festival was the only time I had ever been able to actually eat the shrimp from the farm as it just never seemed to be available anywhere in the cities. I had a shrimp poboy and a shrimp taco that, together, cost almost $20. I am very particular about shrimp, demanding the freshness that you get on the Gulf Coast, and this was actually very good shrimp. They sadly closed the shrimp farm several years ago and no longer do the shrimp festival. I’m not sure what Gila Bend is doing now. It still has its truck stops. The Space Age Lodge is still there, along with its terrible diner.

The landscape of Gila Bend is either typical Arizona, or a variation on Arizona, depending on your impression of Arizona. If you think of Sedona or the state’s mountains, then this an atypical place. If you think of the vast, scrubby plains that make the interstates through the state so terribly boring, then this it is what you would expect it to be. The green blob on the map, marking the boundaries of the Sonoran Desert National Monument, make the town seem more interesting; a gateway to a piece of the national park system. But the monument is run by the BLM, who have done virtually nothing in the way of facilities or improvements on this land, and the monument looks exactly like Gila Bend, with some mountains in the middle of it. You don’t know you’re there until you look at a GPS and see yourself within the green mass.

But Gila Bend’s most impressive feature is its most embarrassing. Painted Rock Reservoir lies just north of town. Painted Rock was once a massive sore spot in the Army Corps of Engineers’ library of dams. When the Gila River was dammed to create it in the late 1950s, it displaced an ancient Tohono O’Odham farming community. The residents were moved to a grizzled, dry, artificial village to the south, named San Lucy, which remains a typical humiliation for both our native Americans and for our government’s dealing with them; lined with sad pastel cinderblock homes and streets of stray dogs. After twenty or so years however, the lake was so toxic from pesticide runoff - mostly DDT - that any use of the lake had to be discontinued. Even the campground on the shoreline was closed. Eventually, the lake was allowed to drain, the US government paid the O’Odham tribe a massive settlement, and the Corps of Engineers took over the entire property, including areas that had previously been administered by the BLM. The paved road to the lake has a gate across it, with “No Trespassing” signs on either side. The lake is no longer accessible in any way to the public. Eventually, the dam will be removed, but I think it’s doubtful that Gila Bend will ever be able to move past something like this.

[randomtowns]

Marietta, GA

Bradford Cox is from Marietta. This Atlanta suburb is where that cynicism and self-loathing that’s so vital in the type of music he creates was fostered. It sounded lonely, but I don’t know that it would have been much different in any other place.

In terms of Atlanta suburbs, Marietta is north - in a vague class with the high-end Johns Creek and Alpharetta - but it’s not really north. Marietta is more like Georgia than both the northern suburbs or Atlanta proper are. It’s the seat of Cobb County. My main experience with the town, while living in Atlanta in 2009-2010, was to drive their one Sunday, just to see something new and do something remotely interesting. It took a long time to drive there from Roswell; at least 30 minutes. There are lots of traffic signals to slow you down on roads mostly named after bridges and long-gone ferries that are now wide slabs of suburban concrete that serve massive apartment complexes and various subdivisions of cul-de-sacs, themselves cul-de-sacs without only a solitary entrance on that road. Suburban Atlanta is not that much worse than any other Sun Belt boomtown: Nashville, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte. They all have their demons, and those demons are often in these suburbs.

Of all things to find in Marietta, around its courthouse square, I bought an Australian meat pie. It just reinforced what I already believed about Australian food: it has no flavor. Even Outback Steakhouse takes liberties with its salt and pepper on the steak, which would surely be revolting to most Australians, who expect their meat to taste like meat and nothing more. This meat pie tasted as that: meat, and bread.

There are other strange things in Marietta, things that seem contradictory for a town that really is not that large. There is an air force base but there is also a Civil War battlefield. Next door to the air force base is the secondary campus for a large public university, Kennesaw State. Just up the road, a Six Flags theme park. And dominating it all is Interstate 75. Without Interstate 75, Marietta would likely not exist, or at least would not be so prominent.

Just as in all Atlanta suburbs, there are strip malls, regional shopping malls, endless gas stations and fast food outlets, and innumerable, sprawling houses.

[randomtowns]

Lorain, Ohio

It didn’t help my opinion of Lorain to have it always be gray each time I visited. Northeast Ohio just has this as its default setting, and any sunny weather is just a temporary fluke that will be resolved in just a few hours. Lake Erie, a beautiful jade color in the sun, is a foreboding, soupy swath that stretches infinitely to the horizon. There are rarely ships around Lorain. No one likes to go out on boats when the weather isn’t good, and the few commercial barges - mostly carrying coal - stick to the deeper channels, mostly out of view from the lake’s southern shore.

But it’s not just weather. Lorain is depressing and seems to know it’s depressing. Highway 6 is fronted by former hotels turned retirement homes, and its main street that follows the Black River upstream, Broadway Avenue, is haunted by abandonment and yellowing “for lease” signs. The few people around at the meeting of these two streets seem to be going in for court dates at the local courthouse. Lorain is still the seat of its namesake county. Most people rarely see the insides of courthouses beyond the odd traffic court appearance, where a friendly and empathetic judge shows his or her appreciation for your pleasant demeanor and punctuality by reducing your fine slightly, or even dismissing your ticket on a technicality if you show up in a shirt and tie. Instead, they’re mostly patronized by those caught in the system: the poor, the jobless, the addicted. And those groups all hang out outside seemingly before and after their court dates, usually to smoke. It’s caused me, over the years, to associate courthouses with the contradicting smells of low-quality cleaning products, artificially cooled air, and tobacco smoke.

Shipbuilding left long ago, and Ford closed its plant here in 2005 as part of a larger restructuring. US Steel still operates here. (That’s a sentence I’m sure I’ll have to revise within the next few years.) The steady decline of the steel industry has its larger poster children: Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Detroit. The words “Rust Belt” leap to mind, along with images of crumbling warehouses and idle, rusted machinery. But those are larger cities and can at least mostly absorb the job loss. Pittsburgh, the most heavily reliant on steel for its economic vitality, has bounced back the most. But these cities retain a little bit of hipster and cool culture. The grittiness is attractive to some, and they wear their cities names like a badge of honor and proof of cool.

But then there are cities like Lorain. Lorain is not dead. Lorain is not Gary, Indiana or East Saint Louis. Instead Lorain has been limping along slowly throughout the decades. Lorain is not cool. No one moves to Lorain and then brags about it. It’s just far enough from Cleveland to not be able to take advantage of that area’s great nightlife, but is just close enough to be under its sphere of influence and fails to make its presence known. Most people from outside the region have never heard of Lorain. But it was still the 10th-largest city in Ohio in 2010, and its population has only seen a reasonable decline from its 1970 census peak of over 78,000.

The thing is that it’s a town full of nice people. There are nice houses, some nice parks and I could see it being a nice enough place to raise a family. But the stigma over its head as an industrial town has kept it from finding the same bedroom community fortune of some of its neighbors. As the country continues to deindustrialize, the future is not terribly bright for Lorain. Lorain will, of course, survive, but the thriving it needs (and probably deserves) is likely to remain out of reach.

[randomtowns]

Beckley, WV

In the late 80′s and early 90′s, we lived on a hill on the edge of Johnson City, Tennessee. The hill faced north, away from the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains the region is known for, and looked out over the city (including a great view of the trailer park down the hill). I had a room on the second floor. My Friday nights were spent with my boombox - a small single cassette version about 6″ high and 3′ long - with its antenna raised. The Tri Cities region didn’t have much of a radio market, so there was a lot of frequency space to pick up from outside the area. For those who don’t follow that I should explain: the FCC requires that radio stations keep a certain distance from each other in their frequencies. The distance is determined by the radio stations’ geographic proximity and the power of their transmitter. In areas with large populations, like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, etc., this has led to a mostly full radio network. So, in Los Angeles, if you had a good antenna on your radio, you would likely be able to pick up stations in San Diego. However, because most of the frequencies - FM goes between 88.1 and 107.9 and stays on odd decimals in the US - are already taken by stations in the Los Angeles area, you will not be able to pick up the San Diego stations because the Los Angeles stations are closer and overpower those from San Diego. Even when one of the stations’ signals gets weak, you start to pick up both on your radio and end up hearing nothing intelligible. You often hear this in rural areas, where stations trade control of a frequency as you drive over hills and pass things like buildings and powerlines.

I would mostly pick up stations in southwestern Virginia on those nights. I specifically recall a station in Bluefield, a town on the Virginia-West Virginia border, as something I picked up consistently at night, but never during the day when the light and heat weakened the distant radio signals. I would also get, some nights, a station in Portsmouth, Ohio. I know now that this was likely not from Portsmouth itself (which is over 200 miles from Johnson City) but rather from a repeating transmitter, likely in Kentucky or Virginia. The farthest away I could pick up - and I would typically scan the whole dial each night, trying to find new stations - was Beckley, West Virginia. Beckley is a mid-sized city, not much smaller than Johnson City, located along the West Virginia Turnpike. For years, this is the only way I knew Beckley. On our trips out of Johnson City, we would never go to West Virginia. We would go to Knoxville and Asheville often. We once went to Roanoke and another time to the big city of Charlotte. We even once took a longer roadtrip and drove to Cincinnati. But West Virginia was not on my parents’ radar. They wanted something more dynamic, with better shopping and restaurants. West Virginia offered them nothing.

So it wasn’t until 2009 that I actually got out to Beckley, on my way south toward Johnson City, to revisit my childhood home for the first time in over 15 years. I had spend the two prior nights in a hostel by the scenic New River Gorge. I was the only guest aside from a balding 30-something man, who wanted me to go get drunk with him at a local bar, and slept naked in a front room separated by only by a curtain. West Virginia did not impress me. It was pretty, but the towns seemed depressing. Charleston, its capital, seemed full of itself. People were dressed just a little too nicely, and the sushi restaurant I had gone to, as somewhat of a lark, was run by Chinese people and vastly overpriced. But Beckley is a large presence on the state map, and I wanted to stop before giving up on the state.

I arrived in town at the tail end of a street market. A few crafts vendors were still out, but the band was packing up. It looked to be a lively and enjoyable spot. I found a bar that served food. It was a weird hour, something like 2:30, but I hadn’t eaten lunch. There were just a couple of people inside apart from the bartender, who was cheery and smiley but did not ask me any questions aside from those to clarify my food order. After a few minutes, a younger man came in. He stood out from his tattoos, piercings, and style of dress. The older man at the bar perked up and greeted him: “Hey, Cincinnati!” The man sat next to me. I didn’t look up and remained quiet. When the bartender returned, I asked a question about the beers. I do have to establish myself as a snob wherever I go, so asking about different beers is a great way to do that. I chose to abstain, but Cincinnati next to me said, “That one isn’t that good anyway.” I chose to ignore him, pretending not to have heard him, or maybe just not realized that I was being addressed. He took the hint.

It seems like somewhat of an innocuous story, but I think about that a lot. I could have had a really interesting conversation with a guy who probably understood Beckley much more than I ever will. But now I still don’t really understand the town. After finishing my food, I left him at the bar, got in the car, and continued south. I’ve never been back.