Blue Highways: Gallipolis, Ohio

Unfolding the Map

As we cross the Ohio River, and into Ohio, William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) talks a little about the origins of Gallipolis where he stays on what I think is the last night of his Blue Highways journey.  He relates a little of the history of Gallipolis, but as I looked further into it, it seems that the origin of the town came about because of a bit of fraud committed by an unscrupulous French company on some French emigres.  To see where Gallipolis came to be, despite the bad beginning, look at the map.  I wouldn't con you!

Book Quote

"With what was left of day, I crossed the Ohio River into old Gallipolis, a town of a dozen pronunciations, a gazebo-on-the-square town settled by eighteenth-century Frenchmen.  Although a priest once placed a curse on Gallipolis - I don't know why - residents today claim it's the loveliest French village on the Ohio."

Blue Highways: Part 10, Chapter 3

 Downtown Gallipolis, Ohio. Photo by Youngmerican and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Gallipolis, Ohio

It seems that Gallipolis was founded because of that centuries-old American pastime - the swindle.

How many times have you laughed when someone says something like "...and if you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you!"  How about the age-old jokes about selling some rube the Brooklyn Bridge.  Those figures of speech came into our consciousness for a reason.  It appears that there was a lot of swindling going on back in young days of our country.  The reason swampland in Florida became synonymous with swindle is because a Florida land boom in early 20th century led to many people buying land unsuitable for habitation.

Because it was literally a swamp.

Land swindles in the United States are even older than that.  In the 1790s, wealthy financiers convinced lawmakers in Georgia to allow them and their cronies to buy 35 million acres of land for a paltry sum.  The sale was eventually nullified, but not after people got very angry and, I imagine, some Georgia politicians were thrown out.

Of course, the US government swindled many American Indian tribes out of land, as well as their resources.  The Walking Purchase was a land deal in the 1730s, possibly based on forged or non-existent documents, that gave William Penn, and later Pennsylvania, 1.2 million acres at the expense of the Lenape (Delaware) Indians.  In 2003, the Delaware asked for the right to get back 314 acres of that land, and were rebuffed by Pennsylvania.  The case was brought in federal court, and then appeals court, but the Lenape lost each time even though the court agreed that there was probable fraud in the original agreement.  The Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

The New York Times reported in 2003 that a class action suit brought about by 300,000 American Indians claimed the US government cheated them out of $137 billion over 115 years.  The money was made by the government through exploitation of natural resources, grazing rights and timber leases but somehow did not get into the trust fund set up for Natives and administered by the Department of the Interior.  That trust fund, established in the late 1800s, itself may have been the cause of many swindles.  According to the Times, in 1887 individual Indians owned a combined 138 million acres of land, and today only own a combined 10 million acres, with another 45 million acres owned by tribes.

And columnist Jack Anderson, in 1984, outlined a government attempt to push two Shoshone sisters off of their land by arguing in court that their offer to buy the land, even though refused, gave them title to it.  Such an argument, if legal, would certainly make my efforts to buy a house much easier and a hell of a lot less stressful!

In New Mexico, near where I live in Albuquerque, one of the biggest land swindles ever was perpetrated.  Rio Rancho Estates promised a great financial investment for retirement, financial security, and education of children.  The lots were nothing more than barren desert land, with no infrastructure, which the sellers had purchased for $180 per lot and sold for over $11,000 for "residential" lots and $25,000 for "commercial" lots.  The swindle was the basis for David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross.  Surprisingly, today Rio Rancho is the third largest city in New Mexico, and poised to become the second largest in the near future.

American history is littered with swindles, from the claims of snake-oil salespeople to Enron.  It was in the United States that Charles Ponzi found a gullible public to set up an investment scheme that couldn't help but collapse under its own weight.  That we haven't gotten any less gullible is proved by the success that Bernie Madoff had in maintaining his own Ponzi scheme before it collapsed and ruined the lives of many people.  P.T. Barnum supposedly stated that "there's a sucker born every minute," and even though his contribution of this phrase is under doubt, the fact remains that we all are suckers at some time or another.  We give money to street con-artists who prey on our good natures by saying that they need a couple of dollars for gas to get home to their babies, and take our money given in good faith to buy alcohol or drugs.  We allow unscrupulous mechanics to do subpar jobs on our cars, keeping us coming back, before we finally catch on to the scheme.  We allow people into our lives whose sole purpose is to get things for themselves without a thought or care about who it hurts or how it hurts.  I like to think that it's because at heart, we are a good people who care about others well-being.  Sometimes, we unwittingly let a few sociopaths occasionally yank us around, though on bad days I wonder if the sociopaths are the ones who laugh at us as they make millions and accumulate.

And Gallipolis?  How does it fit into this story?  A group of French aristocrats, frightened by events in France (which would eventually lead to the French revolution), emigrated to the United States.  A company called the Scioto Company sold lands in Ohio to French investors.  They were promised a wonderful place, akin to the Garden of Eden.  In 1790, the former artistocracy showed up to claim their investments, only to find that the Scioto Company had never owned the land.  They had nothing.  Fortunately for them, they were able to petition President George Washington, and as a result the Ohio Company sent some people and they built a log cabin settlement for the disillusioned French.  Gallipolis grew out of this initial settlement, founded on a swindle but turned into "the loveliest French village on the Ohio."

The curse on Gallipolis, referenced by LHM in his quote, had nothing to do with the swindle.  A French priest allegedly cursed the town because it refused to turn away from sin.

Musical Interlude

I'm shocked, but I had trouble finding songs about land swindles.  There are songs about con men, however.  Here's an oldie from Golden Earring called Con Man.

And for a perspective on the cons and swindles perpetrated on Native Americans, here's a live performance of Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines doing Jim Thorpe's Blues.

If you want to know more about Gallipolis

City of Gallipolis
Gallia County Chamber of Commerce
Gallipolis Daily Tribune (newspaper)
Wikipedia: Gallipolis

Next up: Ironton, Ohio

Blue Highways: A Radar Station in Western North Dakota

Unfolding the Map

I'm making another educated guess for this post as to where William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) found the radar tower in North Dakota.  How?  I examined Google Earth, found a likely "small flourish of hills" with a "fine, clear lake" beneath them.  I didn't see evidence of a radar tower, so either it was dismantled or because of national security Google airbrushed it out of the satellite photo.  I am going to look at the idea of early warning defense (on multiple levels) by first writing about Martello towers, which LHM mentions in his quote below.  If you want an early warning about where we are located, use your inner radar to locate the map.

Book Quote

"In a small flourish of hills, the last I was to see for hundreds of miles, on an upthrusted lump sat a cube of concrete with an Air Force radar antenna sweeping the long horizon for untoward blips.  A Martello tower of the twentieth century.  Below the installation, in the Ice Age land, lay a fine, clear lake.  Fingerlings whisked the marsh weed, coots twittered on the surface, and at bankside a muskrat munched greens.  It seemed as if I were standing between two worlds.  But they were one: a few permutations of life going on about themselves, each thing trying to continue its way."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 7

This is just a stock photo of a radar system. Photo at Al Arabiya. Click on photo to go to host site.

And this is an image of a Martello tower in Ireland. Photo at Wikipedia. Click on photo to go to host site.

A Radar Station in Western North Dakota

Martello towers.  In entering North Dakota, LHM stops after seeing a radar antenna and calls it a Martello tower of the twentieth century.  Of course, he is writing in the late 1970s or early 1980s as the
Cold War is still raging, and there is still an off chance that Soviet ballistic missiles could appear as blips on the radar screen in a surprise attack.  You might or might not know that North Dakota, along with Wyoming and Montana, houses a number of active-duty missile silos which puts those states on the front lines if nuclear war were to ever occur.   But what really interested me was the term for the radar station as a Martello tower.  I didn't understand the reference, and one of the things I find really exciting about reading is running across a term that I don't know and then trying to discover what it means.

So here's the story about the Martello towers.  They were invented in the mid-1500s at Mortella Point in Corsica.  A small, round tower with very thick walls, they were built to serve as a lookout for North African pirates.  The towers initially served a lookout purpose.  They were garrisoned with a watchman who lit a fire at the top of the tower to signal when pirates were spotted.  This original purpose of the Mortella-type tower (it's name was later misspelled and changed to the Martello tower) is what LHM is referencing when he compares the radar station to the towers.  When I think of this use of the towers, my inner geek is reminded of The Lord of the Rings, when the signal towers are lit to call the Rohirrim to the aid and defense of Gondor.

Later, the Genoese expanded the use of the tower, turning them into small forts that could not only be used for lookouts, but also for defense.  The towers were tough and armed with cannon.  The British attacked the Mortella tower in 1794 with two warships and were unable to reduce it despite subjecting it to two days of pounding from the heavy guns of their ships (the tower eventually fell to a land-based force attacking from the rear).  The impressed British modified the tower design and built a number of them along the coasts of England, Scotland and Ireland to provide defense against a potential threat from Napoleon in France.  France itself built a number of Martello-style towers and again used them for communication and warning through the Chappe Telegraph system (an optical telegraph).

Eventually, the United States built its own Martello towers which can be seen in places like New Hampshire, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and New York City.  The Martello tower is also part of the insignia of a U.S. army infantry regiment.

In the use of communication, it is easy to see how the early use of the Martello tower can serve as a metaphor for today's long-range missile early-warning radar system.  Perhaps, if the combination of early-warning radar is combined with the instantaneous response of the Minuteman missiles in silos nearby, one can also extend the metaphor to the later use of the Martello towers as defense systems as well.  A lot of thought, bolstered by science and engineering, goes into these defense systems regardless of whether they are constructed of stone, morter and wood or if they are constructed of the highest-tech materials.  The idea is simple, provide early warning and defend the heartland.

I also think, however, of the defenses that are more close to home.  Martello towers can be metaphors for the defenses we put up in our own lives.  Security systems guard our businesses, vehicles and homes, providing warnings and defenses against fire, carbon monoxide, radon, and intruders.  Take a home alarm system.  An intruder breaks in, the alarm goes off, a signal is sent offsite to a center which calls police, and hopefully police arrive in time to apprehend the intruder.

How about even closer to home - our own personal warning systems and defenses?  These might be friends or loved-ones watching out for us, our so-called "wing" men or women who might signal that we should stay away from that good looking but unstable or unsavory character.  It might be our own consciences or inner-selves raising red flags about situations that we find ourselves in.  In response we may shut down, go into avoidance or, in desperate situations, launch countermeasures to protect ourselves.

No matter how far we extend the metaphor, we can find Martello towers that we've erected in all parts of our lives if we look.  And regardless of the level of analysis, they can be more or less effective depending on the situation.  Often our towers will give us plenty of warning.  Sometimes our towers will remain strong, holding off the attack.  We'll occasionally be surprised from behind where our defenses are weak.  Every so often a bombardment from something or someone will cause us some damage but at the end of the day, our tower will still stand.  And sometimes, a new weapon that we aren't expecting will render our defenses obsolete until we can upgrade them, usually through the lessons brought about by attack and sometimes our defeat.

In the end, advances in artillery technology rendered the Martello towers useless.  Able to withstand cannon shot because of their thick walls, they were done in by new rifled ammunition which allowed greater accuracy and destruction.  This too might serve as a metaphor.  Our modern Martello towers, our radar stations, are effective only as long as our radar can pick up incoming threats.  It won't be long before our stealth technology will be copied by other countries, and our current Martello towers, our current radar systems, will also become obsolete, at least until a new generation of Martello tower is conceived and implemented.

Musical Interlude

You can't have a post about a radar station, I don't think, without having Golden Earring's Radar Love as a musical interlude.  And it only fits better since the song references driving and is considered by Bill Lamb to be one of his top-10 driving songs of all time.

If you want to know more about...well...Western North Dakota or our nation's air defense system

Air Defense Radar Tutorial
Driving Tour of Western North Dakota
Modern Air Defense Radars
Online Air Defense Radar Museum
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Wikipedia: Ground-Based Midcourse Defense

Next up: Fortuna, North Dakota