AA-2026-60FD79
On the image
A road crew or highway department has cut straight through a hillside, exposing the raw geology and leaving a scar that will take decades to heal, if ever. The fresh cut is still pale and unstable, barely colonised by anything except a few pioneering weeds and the smallest trees, while the forest above and to either side remains dense and undisturbed. This is the landscape of the interstate-highway era in its infancy—the moment when Americans decided that smoothing the terrain mattered more than preserving it, and that engineering could overcome geography. The bright asphalt road curves away at the base of the cut, leading somewhere important enough to justify obliterating the hillside. The photographer has recorded not the destination but the violence of the getting there, the way a highway cuts through a mountain as casually as a surgeon's blade, leaving the wound open to erosion and weather. In the 1950s this would have seemed like progress; the photograph has caught the exact moment progress looked like destruction.
Visually related — by likeness
Highway Cut, Appalachian Region, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-60FD79. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/highway-cut-appalachian-region-1950s.
@misc{aaAA202660FD79,
title = {Highway Cut, Appalachian Region, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-60FD79},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/highway-cut-appalachian-region-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Highway Cut, Appalachian Region, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-60FD79 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/highway-cut-appalachian-region-1950s ER -
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