Well, our oldest surviving settlements are far younger than so many in the Old World and some Amerindian cities are much older. Dublin Ireland is over a thousand years old while Santa Rosa as a white man settlement only goes back to 1865 as Aqua Negra Chiquita, "Little Black Water," altho I'm sure that Amerindians lived there at times at least. A railroad connecting Chicago with El Paso was built thru there in the early 1900s, followed by a branch of the Ozark auto trail that became Route 66, then I-40.
John Steinbeck's epic novel,
The Grapes of Wrath, may have never been famous overseas as it focused in part on the The Great Depression and Europe had their own then, but at the same time we had The Dust Bowl in this part of North America largely because of poor farming practices. If tells stories around one family who abandoned their farm in Oklahoma and joined a tragic migration to California. The grandma of the family was quoted as saying
The sun has riz, the sun has set, and here we is in Texas yet, and they only drove across the skinny part we call the Panhandle (where I live) - but the quote has been used by many since. It had to have been a scary trip, following dirt trails west thru the American Desert in 1930s vehicles, camping every night, trying to not break down or starve.
Most western settlements were established a days horseback ride from the next, and have long since vanished with changing times and transportation. My parents lived thru the Depression and Dust Bowl here, surviving on blackeyed peas and whatever else they could grow in spite of the drought. I remember my dad telling me about trips to Lubbock in his childhood taking 3 days and 2 nights round trip even after roads were built; I often do the drive in an hour now. I enjoy exploring famous Amerindian ruins across New Mexico and Arizona, but I also like to visit and photograph white man ghost towns around - if there is anything left to shoot. Gray Mule was a thriving railroad town at one time but now only has one concrete shed and an active cemetery some local families still use. On a recent drive to a business meeting a few counties away, I stopped at a few to shoot pics of two towns hanging on and one dead one:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150357933614009.397966.564344008&type=1 Generally only brick buildings survive time if they are not dismantled to resuse the bricks like many have been, and I wanted to preserve what I could that day.
Power of imagination is a great force.
