>>20309950Both and the interstate highway system making most of these places irrelevant. Palestine, TX SHOULD in theory be a prosperous place, and likely it was at one point since it has a railway line running through it and its all of an hour's drive from Dallas and to the east of it as well so it should be prime real estate for suburban development. The railway line was almost certainly its lifeblood back until the 1950s-60s and even without checking demographics I'd bet this is when the population and economy peaked, 1950s onward the interstate highway system just merked all of these rail adjacent places as people just started using it instead of riding the train. Globalization just exported almost everything except agricultural and specific industry you can't really justify outsourcing like concrete companies.
80% of the country looks like Palestine TX, its fucking grim, only recently have the cities themselves suddenly started dying and begin the slide into Kensington Philadelphia / Skid Row tier insanity. If you want to blackpill yourself just get the street view and just start looking at random towns in the midwest/plains, its just hollowed out husks with just a lawyer, pawn shop and maybe if they're lucky a bail bondsman, the rest of the commercial space is just dead.
