Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway

The Rust Belt. The Great Lakes. Appalachia. Ask any American what they know about these regions and they'll tell you they've got their share of problems. There's poverty, economic hardship, a sense of desperation, the feeling that time has passed them by.

That's the stereotype, anyway. And there's some truth to it. But there's also a rich and still palpable history around here that the locals are beginning to learn to celebrate. Things weren't always like this, you see. Once upon a time, places like Upstate New York and western Pennsylvania were the hotbed of the American dream. Once upon a time, millions and millions of people, many of whom had started out penniless, toiled and made lives for themselves in places like Buffalo where great shiploads of grain were unloaded onto canal boats and railroad cars and sent onward to market; places like Pittsburgh where the night sky was lit bright by the fiery ovens at countless steel mills whose product was literally the stuff that built this country; places like the coal fields of West Virginia where, braving notoriously perilous working conditions, valiant miners descended deep into the bowels of the Earth to extract the fuel that fed the American industrial machine. Once upon a time, there was almost unthinkable prosperity here. Yes, the factory owners got filthy rich, but the lowly laborers, too, struggled and organized for their rights and, with the victories they earned, saved money and built brighter futures for their children and grandchildren. For an all-too-brief moment in history, everyone had a piece of the pie.

Come along with us as we take a road trip through this once and future wonderland. Come along with us as we retrace the same route followed long ago by pioneering motorists in the early days of long-distance automobile travel, people fortunate enough to have borne witness to America's so-called "Rust Belt" at the zenith of its glory. Come along with us... on the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway.