The Rural Towns Project Podcast
In the Rural Towns Project Podcast, Dax Jacobson combines his day job as a business professor with his love for the rural American West he grew up in. He talks to the people who are actually trying to make a living in - and to the researchers, artists, and others inspired by - the rural towns of the American West. He hopes to help himself and others understand the past, appreciate the present, and positively impact the future of rural towns and the American West.
The Rural Towns Project Podcast
Arimo, Idaho: Cameron Blevins (Historian and Author) on His Book "Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West"
In this episode, I chat with Cameron Blevins, a history professor at the University of Colorado Denver. Cameron recently wrote the fascinating and important book, Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West. I loved this book and was thrilled to have Cameron on the podcast to talk about the outsized but often overlooked role the US postal service played in the settling of the American West. We talk a lot about the history of rural post offices but we also talk about the Pony Express, the mythology of the American West, the role of government in rural America, how UPS and FedEx now rely on the rural postal network for last mile package delivery, and the return of the village post office idea in rural America. We end, as always, with the Road Trip Music Question - and I learn that Cameron asks a similar question to his students!
The Rural Towns Project Newsletter is live! You can sign up here: http://ruraltownsproject.substack.com The newsletter includes thoughts on each week's podcast episode (including Road Trip Music) as well as highlights from what I’ve been reading, thinking, researching, and learning about rural towns, entrepreneurs and small businesses in the American West.
If you want to find out more about me or the Rural Towns Project, please go to https://www.ruraltownsproject.com/
Podcast music: “A Happy Day” by codemusic, http://www.jamendo.com, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/