The Gone Cold Podcast may contain violent or graphic subject matter.

Listener discretion is advised.

Although U.S. Highway 80 once stretched from Savannah, Georgia, all the way to San Diego, California,

it never quite cemented its way into pop culture the way Route 66 did. Strange since the road connected the

Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and cut straight through archetypal southern countryside and big cities

alike, such as Dallas, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona, over its 2,600 or so miles of pavement.

There might not be a song about Highway 80 that's been a hit record by different artists

in multiple decades like that other route, but the road was instrumental to the future of

many small towns, nonetheless. Towns like Longview, Texas, located for the most part in Gregg County,

about 125 miles east of Dallas. Highway 80 is singularly responsible for spurring the growth of what

was the small cotton farming and lumber-producing town. Before the road was paved

straight through the heart of Longview in the 1920s, there were only around 2,000 residents

and industry was down. By the end of that decade, the population more than doubled, and with it,

new revenue and economic development.

A couple hiccups in Longview's economy aside, East Texas oil field discoveries in the early

1930s led to even more growth and carried the town out of the Great Depression.

The next couple decades, Longview boomed, and by 1969, it was a thriving

city that headquartered businesses like Eastman-Codak Chemical Division, and was home to a large

Schlitz brewery and bottling plant. The population at that point had reached about 45,000.

For the first 24 days of 1969, the local stories that made the front page news of the Longview News Journal consisted of the first baby born in the city that year.

The downtowner Motor Ends hosting of the 11th annual convention of the Texas

United Press International editors, and the announcement of the approval of a dog leash

...