Please Don’t Feed the Buffalo: Reflecting On Our Roadside Cultural Landscape

Since this photo was taken, a neighboring apartment complex has added new units.

by Dana A. Goodwin

What is wrong with this picture? Let's set the stage... This image was taken from the parking lot of the Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City, which is located next door to the new Kohl's, which is located next door to the new Michaels, which is located next door to the new Bed Bath & Beyond.  An apt image, it shows a blatant disconnect between the growth and development patterns along US-31 and the disappearing vernacular landscape that once existed.  What was previously the picturesque Oleson buffalo farm, with its quaint associated structures, is now a barely functional buffalo pen as it is encroached upon by new housing developments, a junior high school, and numerous new big box blemishes along this major transportation corridor.  The most recent additions to this scene, just across the street from this location, are the new Lowe's and the new Walgreens.  Once a historically uninterrupted viewscape from atop the surrounding hills, the view now includes a huge glowing florescent blue "LOWES" sign, most likely visible from space at night.  Indeed, just over a century ago, this scene was vastly different.  Large white pines once completely covered and graced the landscape.  The pines were so large and far enough apart, it is said, that one could ride a horse through them at a quick pace. 

A dynamic and ever-evolving cultural landscape, this corridor has kept apace with various technological innovations throughout the years.  The automobile, a relatively new introduction, inherited the existing farm-to-market roads that grew up alongside the railroad tracks only after the turn of the century.  As Kevin J. Patrick notes in his Transportation Corridors: The Development and Spatial Structure of Roadside Cultural Landscapes, "Our long-distance, 20^th century auto roads are reactionary, serving population centers which (have) grown up along the trackside . . . using routes originally dictated by the railroad route."  Indeed, trails that once began as footpaths and trading networks for Native Americans evolved into distribution routes for the lumber and cherry industries flanked by farms and grazing pastures, and now into what we see today -- mostly personal automobile use and its material manifestations.  Forest to agricultural to increasingly urban land use.

The contemporary roadside along US-31 is the product of what Patrick calls "auto-oriented accretion."  The mostly commercial structures clustering alongside the route are functionally redundant, having duplicated many of the services provided by Downtown Traverse City, and have forced many previously existing businesses to close their doors.  Stores and services that have departed downtown Traverse City in recent years include the Stage-Milliken department store, Ben Franklin, The Stereo Shop, Oleson's Grocery, Selkirk's, and New Moon Records, just to name a few.  In other words, what we have is an inherent planned obsolescence.  As our downtowns are bypassed, they are left to reorient themselves as "historic," catering to auto-bound tourists to sustain themselves.   

When we step back and increase our field of vision to include not only the physical amalgam of past and present landscapes evident alongside our major transportation corridors but also the agents that have fostered these changes, we find that our control over our local economy and local identity has perhaps been transferred to distant corporate headquarters.  The effects of this transfer are evident and can be seen in the homogenization and the increasing sense of placelessness occurring nationwide.

However constantly evolving and changing our roadside cultural landscape may be, what remains constant is our community's collective ability to affect that change.  For better or worse.   When we study the landscape, we are, in a sense, looking in the mirror, revealing a great deal about ourselves, our society, economy, and our way of life.

Dana A. Goodwin is a historic preservationist and photographer. She lives in Traverse City.