BYPASSED

The Interstate Highway System transformed the United States. It connected regions, accelerated commerce, strengthened national mobility, and created entirely new centers of growth. It also redirected the nation's main current of traffic away from older roads-and, in many cities, directly through established communities.
BYPASSED follows the people and places caught in that transformation: Route 66 towns that lost their compulsory contact with travelers; Black neighborhoods divided or demolished by urban expressways; citizens who fought planned freeways; and communities that learned to build new economies beside the exits.
From Seligman and Peach Springs to Overtown, Claiborne Avenue, Syracuse, Memphis, Wallace, and the interchange landscapes that prospered, M. H. Farrow examines both the national payoff and the concentrated local cost of America's most consequential road-building program.
This is not a simple story of progress or destruction. It is the story of how a faster national network changed which communities Americans encountered, which properties gained value, which businesses lost passing customers, and who carried the heaviest burden when a national promise became a local line on a map.