History
Long-form writing about American cities — their histories, contradictions, and what makes them tick.
Rain City Rising
Lumber, fish, airplanes, and the particular genius of turning gray skies into gold
Lumber, fish, airplanes, and the particular genius of turning gray skies into gold
Rain City Rising
Lumber, fish, airplanes, and the particular genius of turning gray skies into gold
The city clings to hills between two bodies of water, Puget Sound to the west and Lake Washington to the east, the whole improbable settlement built on land so steep that early residents strung cable ...
The Dream of the Nineties
How a coin toss, 200 feet of rain, and a generation of California refugees built America's most self-conscious city
How a coin toss, 200 feet of rain, and a generation of California refugees built America's most self-conscious city
Invented Before It Existed
A planned capital, a headless namesake, and the quiet ambition of the City of Oaks
A planned capital, a headless namesake, and the quiet ambition of the City of Oaks
The Butcher Baker
How a quiet Anchorage baker hunted women in the wilderness—and almost got away with it
Robert Hansen was a man of contradictions that should have been visible but somehow weren't. By day, he ran Hansen's Bakery in downtown Anchorage, a respected small business that made breads and pastr...
On the Bed of a Vanished Lake
Forty below, biblical floods, and the stubborn midwestern insistence that this is a good place to live
The city sits on the absolutely flat bed of a lake that hasn't existed for ten thousand years, Lake Agassiz, which at its peak was larger than all the Great Lakes combined. When the glaciers melted th...
On the Bed of a Vanished Lake
Forty below, biblical floods, and the stubborn midwestern insistence that this is a good place to live
Forty below, biblical floods, and the stubborn midwestern insistence that this is a good place to live
The Last Frontier City
Strip malls, moose calving in backyards, and the strange normalcy of living at 61 degrees north
Anchorage is not what people imagine when they imagine Alaska. They imagine glaciers and grizzlies and vast emptiness, and Anchorage has all that within a few hours' drive, but the city itself is stri...
The Last Frontier City
Strip malls, moose calving in backyards, and the strange normalcy of living at 61 degrees north
Strip malls, moose calving in backyards, and the strange normalcy of living at 61 degrees north
Mile High Hustle
Gold, silver, oil, weed, and the peculiar alchemy of turning mountain proximity into money
The city sits exactly where the Great Plains end and the Rocky Mountains begin, the transition so abrupt it looks like a mistake, like someone drew a line and said flat stops here, vertical starts now...
Mile High Hustle
Gold, silver, oil, weed, and the peculiar alchemy of turning mountain proximity into money
Gold, silver, oil, weed, and the peculiar alchemy of turning mountain proximity into money
Sunshine and Hustle
Strip malls, strip clubs, and 300 million hand-rolled cigars that built a city in Miami's shadow
Tampa is not Miami, and the distinction matters. Miami is glamorous and Latin and looks toward the Caribbean; Tampa is scrappier, more Southern, oriented toward the Gulf of Mexico and the interior of ...
Sunshine and Hustle
Strip malls, strip clubs, and 300 million hand-rolled cigars that built a city in Miami's shadow
Strip malls, strip clubs, and 300 million hand-rolled cigars that built a city in Miami's shadow
The Air-Conditioned Dream
Five million people, eight inches of rain, and the absolute conviction that engineering beats ecology
The city exists as an argument against nature, a sprawling defiance of every signal the Sonoran Desert sends about human habitation. The summer temperatures reach 120 degrees, heat so extreme it groun...
The Air-Conditioned Dream
Five million people, eight inches of rain, and the absolute conviction that engineering beats ecology
Five million people, eight inches of rain, and the absolute conviction that engineering beats ecology
The Dream of the Nineties
How a coin toss, 200 feet of rain, and a generation of California refugees built America's most self-conscious city
The city sits where the Willamette River meets the Columbia, two great waterways converging at the edge of the Cascade Range, the geography so obviously strategic that settlement was inevitable. But P...
Zion in the Desert
Temple spires, tech startups, and the question of whose place this is now
Brigham Young stood at the mouth of Emigration Canyon in July 1847, looked out at the valley below, and declared "This is the place." It was not an obvious choice. The Great Salt Lake was undrinkable,...
Zion in the Desert
Temple spires, tech startups, and the question of whose place this is now
Temple spires, tech startups, and the question of whose place this is now
Pikes Peak or Bust
Megachurches, missile silos, and the evangelical Vatican hiding under 14,000 feet of granite
General William Jackson Palmer founded Colorado Springs in 1871 as a resort town for wealthy tuberculosis patients, a place where the dry mountain air and sunshine might cure what medicine could not. ...
The Will to Exist
No river, no harbor, no geographic excuse—just 180 years of deciding to matter anyway
The city rises from the prairie with the confidence of a place that willed itself into existence, towers gleaming in sunlight so bright it feels like a statement of intent. There's no harbor here, no ...
The Will to Exist
No river, no harbor, no geographic excuse—just 180 years of deciding to matter anyway
No river, no harbor, no geographic excuse—just 180 years of deciding to matter anyway
The Swamp That Worked
Reversed rivers, inverted skyscrapers, and the stubborn insistence that this swamp is exactly where a great city belongs
The city was never supposed to be here. The land was swamp, a fetid marsh where the Chicago River oozed backwards into Lake Michigan, the whole area so low and wet that the first settlers built on pil...
The Swamp That Worked
Reversed rivers, inverted skyscrapers, and the stubborn insistence that this swamp is exactly where a great city belongs
Reversed rivers, inverted skyscrapers, and the stubborn insistence that this swamp is exactly where a great city belongs
Invented Before It Existed
Red clay, research parks, and a city named for a man who never visited
The city was invented before it existed, drawn on maps as a perfect circle with the capitol at its center, a planned capital for a state that had only recently decided to be a state at all. This was 1...
Meeting of Waters
Flour mills, frozen rivers, and the particular satisfaction of surviving January
Flour mills, frozen rivers, and the particular satisfaction of surviving January
Meeting of Waters
Flour mills, frozen rivers, and the particular satisfaction of surviving January
The city rises from the meeting of waters with the modesty of the Midwest, which is to say it announces nothing while accomplishing everything. Two rivers converge here—the Mississippi driving south w...