WORLD HISTORIOGRAPHY LINK

Stephen B. Goddard’s Getting There describes the struggle between the transportation technologies of road and rail that took place in the twentieth century.  In it the victory of automobiles over trains is understood to have been aided by the federal government and private business interests in the United States.  Goddard compares this trend to that observed in Europe, where governments focused as much on public transit using trains as they did on automobile infrastructures, and therefore were able to create today’s more efficiently “transported” societies.  His history underscores the inevitability of change but highlights the ways in which politically and economically expedient choices affect such change.

In relation to the construction of Route 9 in Middletown, Getting There makes inescapably clear the fact of national interest in highway-building in the twentieth century.  It also illustrates on a grand scale the transition from rail to road, which resembles the transition that took place a century earlier from waterway to railroad in places such as Middletown.  In so doing, Getting There makes Route 9 a kind symptom of a greater movement; a national trend; and not a fault of Middletown’s own short-sightedness or lack of imagination.  In this way, there is no villain in the story of Middletown’s estrangement from the Connecticut River.  Instead, all Middletown can do is try to pick up the pieces and put back together its rich cultural heritage and seafaring identity – it can hold no one accountable for its losses. 

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