Maps of infrastructure.

Americans have been fighting over "internal improvements" from the very start. The look of "infrastructure" has changed over the centuries.

Today, I look at maps of infrastructure.

From the earliest days of the republic there were political fights were over the difficult problem of transporting goods between the coastal cities back and forth to the interior of the growing country. George Washington and the Federalists favored building network of post roads, turnpikes, canals, and waterway improvements. In the early Republic, and until development of a rail system, goods moved primarily by water. The Democratic-Republicans generally opposed "internal improvements" being paid by the federal government. It was an issue of sectional equity (one region forced to help another), government ideology (the power of the federal government), and who pays (improvements were paid by tariffs, which tended to help states with manufacturing in the North and hurt agricultural states in the South.)

It is still the same fight. Improvements unite the country and assist commerce, but they help some people more than others and they are expensive. The definition and look of infrastructure has changed over the centuries. Today's post is a map of a few of them.

Goods still move by water. The Columbia is navigable into Idaho, the Mississippi Valley is a major network, and Gulf and Atlantic coasts have Intracoastal Waterways.

This map of the Railroad system, looking at freight tonnage, puts Kansas City and Chicago in the center.

This map below shows volume of freight by weight within the continental U.S.--green for Rail, blue for inland waterway, red for the interstate highway system. The heavy green line shows coal moving from the Powder River coal fields of Wyoming toward coal plants in the east. The thickness of the lines reflect relative volumes. The thickness of the blue line shows how significant Mississippi and Ohio River barge traffic remains. Goods still move by water.

Natural gas moves primarily by pipeline. The central node of transfer is around Cushing, Oklahoma, a small town in north-central Oklahoma. A network of major pipelines meet there and there are storage facilities. Energy prices are set by the price of West Texas Intermediate or Light Sweet Crude oil delivered to Cushing.

Below is the U.S. Interstate Highway system, the network every reader experiences.

Below is a map of major fiber optic trunk lines.

Below is a more comprehensive look at fiber optic and other long distance connections. There are multiple nodes of connection. Dallas is a bigger center than I had expected.

Below is the route map for Delta Airlines. Its infrastructure is a mix of public airports and private facilities at airports. It centers on Atlanta.

Trail systems are infrastructure.  

The map below is a map of 54 universities doing significant International University Research Ventures, defined as universities that have created significant partnerships abroad. This would attempt to measure American leadership in knowledge globalization. Those centers are is concentrated on the east and west coasts.

In the midst of the Civil War, the U.S. established a funding mechanism for spreading knowledge of farming, mining, manufacturing and other useful arts through public universities. 

Military bases are part of the American infrastructure system. Most states have an active air force base in them. California and Texas have several.

Here is a map of American electrical power generators. Notice the remaining significance of federal investment in the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The United States has three power grids, not one. This is the interstate highway system for electricity.

The federal government sponsors research laboratories.

My overall point is a simple one, and I enjoy maps. 

Americans have a "mental map" of what infrastructure means--beginning with roads, and bridges, and then maybe for people with an historian's eye, canal building in the early republic.

Infrastructure is more than that. In a world where value is created in design studios and is transported electronically, and where the real threats to American security may come in a hacker's innocuous-looking email and not from an invading tank force,   what constitutes infrastructure has evolved. Some of it is buried, some of it is not at all visible to the passer-by, and some of it is invisible.