J D BALLAM: THE PLACE THAT CHANGED ME ; When They Built a Motorway through the Appalachian Mountains in Maryland, Harmony Was Disrupted and a Way of Life Was Lost

Barrell, Sarah, The Independent (London, England)

Harmony, the town where I was born in 1963, is a farming community in the Appalachian mountains. During my childhood Washington DC, just 60 miles north, felt a world away. When I left, at the age of 25, the place had changed fundamentally.

I grew up in a village with unpaved roads, which has now been subsumed into the commuter belt. A motorway was built and, seemingly overnight, the town quadrupled in size. Water and electricity reached places they had never been before, roads were widened and, along with this, the extraordinary nature of the countryside, its sheer remote beauty - deep forest, wild animals and intense silence - all but vanished within one generation. …

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Publication information: Article title: J D BALLAM: THE PLACE THAT CHANGED ME ; When They Built a Motorway through the Appalachian Mountains in Maryland, Harmony Was Disrupted and a Way of Life Was Lost. Contributors: Barrell, Sarah - Author. Newspaper title: The Independent (London, England). Publication date: August 27, 2000. Page number: 8. © 2009 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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