If you come from Baltimore following Route 144 westbound, you won’t miss it – it is so different from Downtown Baltimore. And you’ll feel compelled to stop and take a look. It’s quintessential and lovely. A lot of young people are around; they look relaxed and happy. It is history, however, that pops here. Read more For one thing, its main street (Route 144) is part of the first National Road or Cumberland Road to connect the East Coast to the West. Of course, Ellicott City, a mill village then, is very far from the West. Soon in 1820 Congress authorized to extend the National Road that was already built from Baltimore to Cumberland further to St. Louis in Missouri, the “gateway” to the West. By the way, the “gateway” to the West has been the crucible of American history. In The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States, Harvard professor Johnson recounts history of St. Louis from the 1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition all the way down to the 2014 police shooting and death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. It feels like a sequel to White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by the historian Nancy Isenberg. One does get a better understanding from these books – the history of class and racism and history of development (expansion to the South and then the West) are one. The Black Lives Matter protests in summer and the recent Capital Riot are not separate events but with deeply connected roots. The pandemic and an election year merely provided a perfect occasion for them to happen.
