ry of
association," and frequently fertilize subsidiary ugliness in the form
of billboards and commercial clutter. Attempts to mitigate the worst
aspects of this have had some effect, but have not been widespread or
strong enough to keep up with the growing numbers of cars and the
growing demand for facilities on which to operate them.

[Illustration]

Much could be done at the local level to erase roadside
ugliness--Loudoun County, Virginia, is again a shining and rare example
of a place where the right thing has been done. But more of the trouble
comes from higher up, for it involves the routing and design of the
super-roads, and stubborn considerations of strict engineering
efficiency have usually tended to prevail over esthetics and such
things, despite growing objections. Regardless of their beauty as roads,
the sheer quantity of strip concrete Americans require nowadays is a
basic problem. It has been said that an extraplanetary observer at first
glance might well conclude that this continent was populated primarily
by large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains. Certainly in many
places nowadays the earth is beginning to look as if it were arranged
for the bugs rather than for the brains, if that is what we humans are.

[Illustration]

When the bugs die they go to junkyards. These many-colored necropolises
occupy wide acres of land near every center of population in the region,
occurring quite commonly along the main entrance highways to neat and
historic towns. Their stark and extensive ugliness has made them the
subject of much high-level investigation, most of which has sought to
make their conversion into usable scrap metal a profitable process.
Undoubtedly this will be achieved sooner or later, but in the meantime
the old cars, together with a wealth of other discarded items in
roadside fields and along fencelines and stream channels throughout the
Basin, form a scabby legacy from the recent past, and a less esthetic
"scenery of association."

Major electric powerlines and other utilities routed arrogantly with
only straight-line distances in mind, up hill and down dale and with
their cleared rights-of-way kept brownly dead with herbicides, can
intrude starkly on the beauty and mood of historic or pleasantly natural
landscapes. In the name of public service, private utility companies in
all the Basin States have wide powers of condemnation as emerged to view
recently when the Potomac Edison Company