As the New York Times explained in 2017, Pennsylvania’s “Gas Vegas” sprang up because of an obsolete law. Breezewood is a deliberately awkward transition between Interstate 70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where they (almost) meet. Back in the 1950s, as I-70 was being built, a law prohibited spending federal funds to channel drivers directly from a free road to a toll road. The law was later overturned, but to comply with it, highway planners designed a looping interchange that lets drivers avoid the turnpike if they (hypothetically) want to. From this constant stream of slow-moving traffic, a mega-rest-stop was born.
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[...] the idea that the photo is placeless is, to be blunt, nonsense. As others have pointed out before me, the setting is instantly recognizable as Breezewood and only Breezewood. Far from being “Every Town, U.S.A.,” Breezewood is a weird, improbable blip of a place. It’s what an architect might call a unique urban condition—a churning mini-city where the population nearly turns over every hour. (For this reason, and for the place’s sheer, unembarrassed honky-tonk, I’m a Breezewood fan.)
Nor is the photo’s composition a lucky accident. Edward Burtynsky is a famous photographer, the subject of a New Yorker profile whose work is in the Guggenheim. He took the picture in 2008, as part of a project called Oil that became a book of the same name.
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Getting such a striking image of the place took a lot more work than most meme-sharers might realize. Burtynsky told me he spent three days in town scouting vantage points and setting up the shot. He often shoots from helicopters, but here he relied on an earthbound rig.
“I’d rented a four-wheel drive and a scissor lift that had the ability to take me up 80 feet,” he recalled. “I was just driving around everywhere with it, hiking it up and looking for the point of view. I kept trying and trying, and no, no, no. Eventually, near the end of the second day, I found this motel slightly up on a hill. And in the parking lot of the motel, if I hiked [the lift] up and used a slightly longer lens, which adds to the compression, I was able to create the shot.”
We used to drive through Breezewood on our way to family glamping trips in my teens. It's definitely a very unique place. There are certainly places like it, I mean most towns built around a...
We used to drive through Breezewood on our way to family glamping trips in my teens. It's definitely a very unique place. There are certainly places like it, I mean most towns built around a highway have the massive glowing signs, tons of restaurants and gas stations, etc. but Breezewood takes it to whole other level. To say Breezewood is indicative of American highway towns is like looking at LA/Chicago/NYC and saying they're indicative of all US cities and that's just not the case.
But it makes complete sense that it's the way it is. It's essentially the halfway pit stop between Pittsburgh and the Harrisburg/York/Hershey/Lancaster area. It's also right in the path of anyone going toward Pittsburgh from WV, VA, or MD. And more importantly the weirdness of the PA Turnpike outlined in the article.
From the article:
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We used to drive through Breezewood on our way to family glamping trips in my teens. It's definitely a very unique place. There are certainly places like it, I mean most towns built around a highway have the massive glowing signs, tons of restaurants and gas stations, etc. but Breezewood takes it to whole other level. To say Breezewood is indicative of American highway towns is like looking at LA/Chicago/NYC and saying they're indicative of all US cities and that's just not the case.
But it makes complete sense that it's the way it is. It's essentially the halfway pit stop between Pittsburgh and the Harrisburg/York/Hershey/Lancaster area. It's also right in the path of anyone going toward Pittsburgh from WV, VA, or MD. And more importantly the weirdness of the PA Turnpike outlined in the article.