Chapter Sixteen - The Highways That Cut Us

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Highways That Cut Us

IF YOU WANT to see what happened to Dayton, pull up a map.

Zoom out.
Look for the scars.

US-35. I-75. And the spurs and connectors around them.
They slice through the city like surgical incisions, concrete scalpels dropped straight through the heart.

Most people think highways are just roads. Progress. Commutes. The price of speed.
But here?
They were weapons.

When the federal government passed the Highway Act in the 1950s, they weren’t just trying to connect cities, they were trying to reshape them. And in places like Dayton, that meant targeting the neighborhoods that mattered the least to people in charge.

Which meant:
Black neighborhoods.

West Dayton got hit the hardest.

Families who’d lived in the same houses for generations were told to move, eminent domain.
Homes bulldozed. Churches leveled. Businesses erased.
All to make room for efficiency.

The new interstates didn’t just pass by. They cut through.
And once the roads were built, the damage was permanent.

Communities that had once been walkable, tight-knit, and self-reliant were now splintered. Literally. You couldn’t walk to your cousin’s house anymore without dodging on-ramps. A five-minute drive became a twenty-minute bus transfer. Your kid’s school was on the other side of a six-lane wall.

It was city planning as segregation.
Not with signs, with infrastructure.

And the suburbs? They got new exits. Smooth lanes. Easy access to downtown.
Meanwhile, the neighborhoods that got carved up were left with the noise, the fumes, the traffic, and no way out.

This is what people mean when they say the system was built this way.
Because it was.
Literally.
With cement.

Some of those highways are still being expanded.
Still growing like roots through a tree that’s already split.

You want to know why Dayton feels disconnected?

Because someone disconnected it.