Transportation Shapes Our Lives

When I was a kid, some of our family vacations were spent driving U.S.Route 36 from Ohio to Kansas to see my grandparents. It was a two-day drive out, visit for two days, and drive two days home. On one of those visits, my mom gave my brother and me paper and pencils with instructions, “Go see your Great Grandma, ask questions about her life, and take notes.”

Chris and I walked the sidewalk from Grandma and Grandpa’s house, right on Route 36, down the street, and crossed the road to Great Grandma’s little apartment. I was probably around second or third grade. I have no idea what we asked her. I still have my little hand written notes - I took very few. Ironically, the only thing I remember from that conversation is the very thing I wrote down: Great-Grandma moved from Colorado to Kansas as a child in a covered wagon.

That blew my little-kid-mind, and I have to admit, still amazes me a bit today. I knew someone who travelled in a covered wagon!

As an adult, Great Grandma would travel the country by train to see her grandkids and great-grandkids. I bet she was close to 90 when she stopped to see us one time, coming back from seeing other family on the east coast.

Can you imagine the changes she saw in her lifetime? Covered wagons, trains, cars, airplanes, spaceships… landing on the moon!

As I recently returned from a road trip and just this week finally booked the flight for another adventure, I’ve been reminded of the changes in transportation over time and, with work projects, reminded how transportation affects our lives probably more than we realize.

If you read David McCullough’s book, The Pioneers, you read about Sumerill’s Ferry. On February 14, 1788, Rufus Putnam and the other pioneers reached Sumerill’s Ferry in western Pennsylvania on the Youghiogheny River. Here they spent a couple months building the boats that they would then float the rest of their journey, eventually to the Ohio River and down to what is today known as Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement in Ohio.

Those Rivers served not only as transportation thoroughfares for the final miles of the westward expansion to open the Northwest Territory, but the Ohio River served as an important boundary shaping our history and our lives.

Sumerill’s Ferry was also known as Simeral’s Ferry. If you’re new to this newsletter, the real Creighton Cabin was built by my great-great grandparents, James and Catharine (Simeral) Creighton. Catharine’s grandfather would have been seven years old at the time Rufus Putnam and the other pioneers stopped by his family’s ferry and tavern in 1788.

Simeral’s Ferry today is known as West Newton, Pennsylvania. It grew over the last couple of centuries with the coming of the railroad. The dam system in the rivers also helped the town to grow.

When the railroad went out, West Newton declined greatly. But, transportation once again brought new life into the town as they converted those old rail lines to bike trails. The Greater Allegheny Passageway (GAP) breathed new life into the area, bringing new businesses that now serve cyclists. In a 2019 study, the GAP had a $121 million impact on the region.

In my current county, where my line of Simeral’s eventually settled north of Marietta, Ohio, the railroads also built towns. Towns built up around stops on railroads. One such town, now called Shadyside, built up around the train stop. Prior to the train, other towns had tried to build in that vicinity but failed after only a few years. Shadyside has now lasted for over 100 years.

The little village where I live only has a little over 400 people. There is one main business today. The railroad used to cut through the middle of town. Back then we had stores, hotels, restaurants, cleaners, and even cigar “factories.” It was a pretty self-sufficient little town.

Until interstate 70 was built three miles north.

After interstates were built, railroad usage decreased. Once the train was gone, these little towns became shells of themselves.

A couple other towns in our county lost industry over the years, but I’d argue that the final “nail in the coffin” was caused by transportation changes. When the state routes built bypasses and no longer took travelers through downtowns, it killed the little shops and restaurants.

Everything has become about the mode of transportation and its speed rather than the people.

First we had downtowns where, if you drove to your downtown rather than walked from home, you could park once and walk to run all your errands. You could walk to the bank, your insurance agent, the meat shop, the bakery, and go to the shop to get other ingredients like flour.

Once we had more cars and could go further, we built malls. We could drive to the mall, park in a huge, ugly parking lot, walk a long ways to a gigantic building and then walk inside from shop to shop to shop.

But I don’t think I ever saw a mall with a grocery story in it. So, after you bought all your clothes, maybe shop for furniture, maybe watch a movie at the theater in the mall, then you’d still have to drive to another location, park, and then get your groceries. You’d have to go somewhere else to see your insurance agent and go to the bank.

Was that really progress?

I remember when I stayed a couple months with my grandparents in Kansas. I would walk to town to pay all their bills. I could walk one block to the grocery story for all their food needs. I walked to the bank. I could get about anything else I needed at the Ben Franklin in town. If I needed a book, I walked to the library. When my grandpa was in the hospital, I walked a mile across town to visit him. I loved that ability, convenience, and sense of community that gave me.

We are finally realizing what we have lost in our communities and downtowns as transportation has been allowed to control our lives instead of us controlling our transportation. Transportation is just another form of technology. As with other technology, we are realizing there are sometimes unintended consequences. Just because a technology allows us to do something, doesn’t mean we should do it. To the best of our abilities, we should control technology rather than technology controlling us. (We have to make sure the technology is not in the driver’s seat. Pun intended.)

I remember visiting Telluride, Colorado several years ago. I was amazed at the importance of the pedestrian in that community. It was fabulous! We could walk to anything. At a street corner, you barely had to look both ways, because the pedestrians had the right-of-way in the true sense of the word. Cars really did stop! The people controlled the technology rather than the technology controlling the people.

I now have people who want their council members to close streets to cars, to create pedestrian streets. They want the people to be more important than the mechanical transportation. They want to create that place where people can walk and gather safely on streets to do their shopping. (This has been done in other countries and we’ve started seeing it happen in some larger U.S. cities.)

I suspect transportation has more impact on our lives and our communities than we realize. We like to point at a business or industry coming or going that caused growth or downturns in our communities, but we forget about transportation and how it has shaped our lives. We need to remember that transportation is another form of technology. It’s a tool that will likely have unintended consequences. Do we want to choose our opportunities or do we want the consequences to direct us?

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Yes, this is an oversimplification of transportation and its effects, but I hope it just gives you food for thought. I just never thought about how much my own life revolves around transportation until recently.

How have the changes in transportation over the years affected your life? Do you feel a mode of transportation dictates your life or do you use it as a tool? Do you see any unintended consequences affecting your life, positively or negatively?

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash