Article – Blognuson

📰📹 Bulldozers are only slightly slower than atomic bombs

The simple, straightforward story presented here by Dorothea Lange and Pirkle Jones is an understatement — purposely and understatement. Under the swelling pressure of a skyrocketing birth rate, places for people to live and water for crops and factories has become critical. Perhaps understatement is the better way to show that bulldozers are only slightly slower than atomic bombs; or that the nature of destruction is not altered by calling it the price of progress.

To witness population inflation of such proportions that ways of life are uprooted, fruiting trees sawed down, productive land inundated and bodies already buried force out of the ground is to realize that as life teems so does death. And that man is the active agent of both.
Aperture magazine, 1960

📰 Why is it called “Skyline Blvd”?

Article, History

There were few all-year residents. The Mountain’s main use was light recreational, primarily summer use. Why, then, was Skyline Boulevard built in 1924 if there was no one here to demand it? Amazingly, the first urgings came from the military. The thinking ran like this: “With a good road down the ridge, we can quickly place heavy armorments anywhere best suited to stop a Pacific Coast invasion.” They thought invaders would have difficulty fighting uphill against well positioned artillery. They called it the “Sky-Line.”
They Called it the “Sky-Line” [Kings Mountain Online]