Cable, who teaches conservation and park management at Kansas State University, says he co-authored the book with Luann M. Cadden to "help people see beyond the billboards" and appreciate the history and landscape of the Show-Me State's central corridor.
The book (available on University Press of Kansas for $15.95) has a chapter for each mile marker on the interstate. In addition to explaining how various towns and creeks got their names, it also delves into Missouri's unfortunate abundance of billboards and other, um, roadside attractions.
Our colleague David Martin at The Pitch in Kansas City sums it up for us:
This is actually the professor's second foray into Midwest travelogues. His first book was about I-70 in Kansas, where he says Missourians prefer to drive at night to avoid the bleak, pancake-like landscape.At mile marker 182, Cable and Cadden address the issue of chronic roadside advertising. The authors blame lax Department of Transportation guidelines for the fact that billboards are three times as common on Missouri's interstates as they are in neighboring states. "From an aesthetic standpoint, anything that would be done to reduce those numbers would obviously help people see the landscape," Cable says.
Points along the interstate that Cable finds especially appealing are, moving from west to east, Arrow Rock, a once bustling river town; the area near Rocheport, where the interstate crosses the Missouri River; and Graham Cave State Park.
It should be noted that Cable is not as crazy as he sounds. His trips across the state from Kansas often passed through St. Louis and continued to up to Chicago.
