County Highway

County Highway A magazine about America in the form of a 19th century newspaper

Hear ye, Hear ye! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Our neighborhoods perfumed with the smell of wood fires and ...
11/13/2025

Hear ye, Hear ye! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Our neighborhoods perfumed with the smell of wood fires and twinkling with festive light, and we are pleased to deliver our holiday issue to your happy homes just in time for the festivities.

In our November-December edition, Chandler Fritz journeys into the heart of American religion at the country’s biggest Christmas pageant, Millan Verma sits down with bigmouth Charley Crockett, Armin Rosen reports on the country’s Medicaid fraud capital, Farahn Morgan attends an Appalachian music festival by and for addicts and the people that love them, and Tama Janowitz tames the ravens on her lonely mesa — plus, an excerpt from Thomas McGuane’s brand new book from Knopf.

As we reflect on another fantastic year together, we want to sincerely thank you for helping us to put out America’s only newspaper — along with a line of great-looking new American books that is helping to put some air back into the tires of American book publishing.

Happy holidays, from ours to yours.

Our publisher Donald Rosenfeld and literary editor Gary Fisketjon enjoyed some walleye fillets at Murray’s in Minneapoli...
11/07/2025

Our publisher Donald Rosenfeld and literary editor Gary Fisketjon enjoyed some walleye fillets at Murray’s in Minneapolis last night, preparing to present Panamerica’s 2026 titles to our fine distribution partners at Ingram/Consortium. For you book club members, know we have much more coming to you soon. And to those who have yet to sign up to receive all the stories that are too long to fit in the newspaper, you can sign up to receive our books the moment they come out of the press via the link in our bio. Cheers to the printed word.

“Now picture a Caucasian hick in his early twenties, hayseeds in his socks, with a 60s Canadian haircut and a Maoist-iss...
10/31/2025

“Now picture a Caucasian hick in his early twenties, hayseeds in his socks, with a 60s Canadian haircut and a Maoist-issue canvas proletarian man-purse, moving to NYC to pursue a literary career without a college degree, or high school diploma, friends, or work experience outside the Forest Products industry. The choice might seem imprudent, but such decisions, like going fishing, or on a crusade, are never rational.”

— Ted Mann, on Ted Mann in “Eight Dollars”

Ted was a kind, modest, ever-curious man, with a wicked sense of humor that was somehow always deeply humane. We loved working with him. Today we’re celebrating what would have been his 73rd birthday. We’re honored to have published his You Only Live Once column through the years, which is now free to read on our archive — link in bio.

“Dust storms seem antique, a feature of the 1930s. Back then they almost had personalities and rap sheets. The black Kan...
10/28/2025

“Dust storms seem antique, a feature of the 1930s. Back then they almost had personalities and rap sheets. The black Kansas duster that descended on the Texas panhandle on April 14th, 1935, was said to have inspired Woody Guthrie to write, ‘So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.’ Dust storms extended from earth to heaven like God’s wrath and came in different colors — red from Oklahoma, dirty-yellow from the clay of Texas and New Mexico. The storms blew for hundreds of miles and left dust on the streets of Chicago and the ships of the North Atlantic. Mechanized farming, the First World War, farmers plowing fencerow to fencerow, and drought combined to produce the giant dusters. But the storms of the thirties never caused multi-vehicle crashes because there weren’t multilane interstates back then, and on the roads that did exist people generally did not drive 75 miles an hour.”

Ian Frazier drives 3,000 miles to report on a 71 car pileup in Sherman County, Kansas, where he also stumbles upon the forgotten small-town stories of the High Plains. Read all about it in our current issue — only in County Highway, only in print.

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

“One evening, he got the idea to organize a grand baptism, to make all his disciples go swimming in the lake below. He l...
10/24/2025

“One evening, he got the idea to organize a grand baptism, to make all his disciples go swimming in the lake below. He led the charge, naked, tearing down the slope at top speed, and only once he was in the water did he turn around horrified and start roaring and waving his arms to turn the others back. The pond was a cesspool.
How long was Tristan alone in Amsterdam? Neither Shelly nor James remembers exactly. What they do remember is Juliet, or ‘Couch,’ as James snickered, Tristan’s girlfriend. She was a trainwreck, a disaster magnet just as potent as Tristan. Juliet flew in from the US and rented a studio apartment. Having returned from Amsterdam in the summer of ’94, Tristan moved in with her. The apartment was behind the place Contrescarpe, at 74 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, the same building Hemingway had once lived in. A plaque by the entrance quoted A Moveable Feast: ‘Such was the Paris of our youth, when we were very poor and very happy.’”

In our current issue, Adrien Bosc resurrects the story of punk novelist Tristan Egolf, author of “Lord of the Barnyard.”

Art:

“My team’s job was to make sure no beetles were on board our planes when they landed in California or in Florida, citrus...
10/03/2025

“My team’s job was to make sure no beetles were on board our planes when they landed in California or in Florida, citrus-growing states, lest the beetles destroy the world’s orange juice industry.
We had nets buttoned and velcroed and tied and draped over all apertures. We had eyes on the boxes as they crawled up their belts.
And we had our poison gas. At daily morning meetings, our immediate supervisor, Wes, would scoff at inhalation-related safety concerns: ‘Vehicle safety, now, that’s serious. But these masks, boys, they’re just to satisfy local laws and regulations. If you get overheated and no one’s looking, take ’em off, that’s my advice.’
Wes would snort a line of pale yellow insecticide powder off his desk, or spray it from an aerosol can right into his mouth, to demonstrate how harmless it was. I wonder where Wes is today.
Where we love, we also hate. Where we hate, we harm. Where we harm who or what we love, we seek to repair the harm we have done. I did not begin by loving Japanese beetles. Our acquaintance began when I agreed to kill them for money. I am sorry for what I did.”

It’s hard to explain what it’s like being a young boy in Kentucky with long hair; even harder to explain the guilt of thousands of small deaths. J.D. Daniels laments his time as a beetle exterminator in this tell-all confessional.

Art: Sun-Times/Historic Images

“The weekend’s 102 competitors, representing sixteen states and seven countries, gathered along the edges of the Lumberj...
10/01/2025

“The weekend’s 102 competitors, representing sixteen states and seven countries, gathered along the edges of the Lumberjack Bowl, an outdoor arena built around an inlet of Hayward Lake used by nineteenth-century loggers as a holding pond for trees. Arranged proudly in their red shirts with numbered backs, they formed a panoramic image of health, vitality, and cheer as a silver-haired officiant logrolled across the cove to light the torch. Thus began the opening ceremonies.
The dignity of athletes has long made me loathe to be a writer — they discipline mind and body for just one flash of greatness, while I destroy myself to type 500 words a day. Now I crept among them, trying to steal their life force. I cracked one of the dozen beers warming in my backpack as the crowd in the bleachers rose for the national anthem, sung by a local quartet, the Pinery Boys, whose combined age looked to be roughly 300. A couple of beats too late, my hand floated to my heart. One day soon, I pledged, I would become a good person.”

In our current issue, our favorite FIB Meaghan Garvey reports on the 65th Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, Wisconsin, with a backpack full of warm Hamm’s.

Art: Sam Vanallemeersch

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13775

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