Elon’s Boring town

Summary

Today, Explained: Elon’s Boring Town – Episode Summary

Release Date: June 20, 2025 | Hosts: Sean Rameswaram & Noel King | Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network

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1. Introduction

In the episode titled "Elon’s Boring Town," Today, Explained delves into Elon Musk's ambitious project to establish Snailbrook, a company town in Texas intended to serve as a utopian living and working space for employees of his various enterprises, including The Boring Company and X (formerly known as Twitter). Hosts Noel King and senior correspondent Ronnie Mola explore the current state of Snailbrook, juxtaposing Musk's utopian vision with the on-ground realities.

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2. Elon Musk's Vision for Snailbrook

Noel King introduces the concept by highlighting Elon Musk's plan to build Snailbrook outside Austin, Texas:

• Noel King [00:01]: "Snailbrook is not a town just yet. It is currently under construction outside of Austin. The builder, one Elon Musk, says Snailbrook will be a company town for employees of his boring company and X and etc. He has plans for it to be, quote, utopian."

Ronnie Mola offers a counterpoint to Musk's optimistic outlook:

• Ronnie Mola [00:31]: "Which, I mean it's got a long way to go, it's got a lot of rough edges and it's definitely nothing that you would call like a utopia. So far it's just 15 trailers."

This sets the stage for a critical examination of Musk's endeavor.

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3. On-Site Observations: Snailbrook Today

Ronnie Mola takes listeners on a virtual visit to Snailbrook, providing a ground-level perspective of its current state:

• Infrastructure and Amenities:

  • Residential Area: Consists mainly of 15 gray and tan trailers, supplemented by minimal amenities like a small pool and a gym.
  • Commerce Center (Hyperloop Plaza): Features makeshift stores, including a "boring bodega" described as a tiny Whole Foods, a candy shop, and a yet-to-open barbershop.
  • Recreational Facilities: Includes a pickleball court and a playground, though the latter shows signs of neglect with broken equipment.

• Community Life:

  • Low Population: The area remains sparsely populated, with increased activity only during lunch and post-work hours.
  • Maintenance Issues: Local reports indicate ongoing maintenance problems, such as unsafe playground structures requiring temporary fixes.

Ronnie encapsulates the contrast between Musk's grand plans and the town's modest beginnings:

• Ronnie Mola [03:29]: "It's supposed to be this sort of live work utopia. We're going to create an ecological paradise."

However, the reality falls short of this vision.

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4. Historical Context: Company Towns in America

To provide context, the episode features insights from Price Fishback, a Regents and APS Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, specializing in company towns:

• Origins and Purpose:

  • Price Fishback [16:04]: "Why were the heads of companies creating towns for their employees in the first place?"
  • Historically, company towns were established to house workers in isolated locations, ensuring a stable workforce and integrating living and working spaces.

• Positive Aspects:

  • Community Building: Successful company towns like Endicott, New York, provided quality housing and amenities, fostering long-term community stability.
  • Economic Integration: Companies offered above-market wages and affordable housing, attracting families and reducing employee turnover.

• Negative Consequences:

  • Labor Strife: Centralized control over essential services heightened tensions, as seen in the Ludlow Massacre, where conflicts between workers and company authorities led to tragic outcomes.
  • Monopolistic Practices: Companies could exploit their control over housing and services, leading to inflated rents and limited employee freedoms.

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5. Potential and Challenges for Snailbrook

The episode critically assesses whether Snailbrook can evolve into a thriving community:

• Housing Plans:

  • Current Status: Primarily trailers with plans to build 110 single-family homes, though details on ownership and pricing remain unclear.
  • Affordability: Trailers rent for approximately $800/month, below the local median but offering limited living space compared to typical regional housing.

• Amenities and Services:

  • The delayed establishment of essential services like the Montessori school, which currently accepts only 16 students despite initial promises to accommodate 50, indicates slow progress.

• Regulatory Hurdles:

  • Despite relocating to Bastrop County for its lenient regulations, Musk's projects still encounter bureaucratic challenges, including permit delays and environmental compliance issues.

• Community Integration:

  • Price Fishback [25:03]: "If you're out in the middle of nowhere... it's another thing entirely if you're saying, let's go to the farm, this farmland in the middle of nowhere."
  • The remote location poses challenges in attracting and retaining employees, who must uproot families away from established communities like Austin and nearby Bastrop.

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6. Expert Insights from Price Fishback

Price Fishback provides a nuanced analysis of both historical and contemporary company towns, drawing parallels and distinctions with Snailbrook:

• Success Factors:

  • Good Employer Practices: Companies that offer competitive wages, affordable housing, and quality amenities tend to foster successful, stable communities.
  • Community Autonomy: Transitioning from a company-controlled environment to an independent town can lead to sustainable growth and longevity.

• Challenges for Modern Company Towns:

  • Changing Workforce Dynamics: With increased mobility and remote work options, the necessity and appeal of company towns have diminished.
  • Regulatory Environment: Modern regulations and community expectations make it more complex for companies to exert the same level of control as in early 20th-century company towns.

• Future of Snailbrook:

  • While Musk has the resources to potentially transform Snailbrook into a vibrant community, success will hinge on his ability to implement sustainable practices, foster a sense of community, and navigate regulatory landscapes effectively.

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7. Conclusion

"Elon’s Boring Town" offers a comprehensive examination of Elon Musk's Snailbrook project, highlighting the disparity between his utopian aspirations and the current underdeveloped reality. Through firsthand observations and expert analysis, the episode underscores the complex legacy of company towns in America and questions the viability of such a model in today's socio-economic climate.

As Snailbrook remains a work in progress, its future will depend on Musk's commitment to building not just infrastructure, but a genuine community that transcends the shortcomings of historical company towns.

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Notable Quotes

• Noel King [00:01]: "Snailbrook is not a town just yet... He has plans for it to be, quote, utopian."
• Ronnie Mola [00:31]: "It's got a long way to go... it's definitely nothing that you would call like a utopia."
• Ronnie Mola [06:10]: "He has plans for it to be... an ecological paradise."
• Price Fishback [17:29]: "Well, I think the key to the circumstances goes right is that the employer is a good employer."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Today, Explained provides valuable insights into the resurgence of company towns through the lens of Elon Musk's Snailbrook project. It serves as a thoughtful exploration of historical precedents, current implementations, and the future potential of integrated living and working communities in the modern era.

Transcript

[Noel King]

If you open your maps app and you type in Snailbrook, Texas, you will get nothing but a prompt. Do you maybe want Scenic Brook, Texas or Springbrook, Texas? Snailbrook is not a town just yet. It is currently under construction outside of Austin. The builder, one Elon Musk, says Snailbrook will be a company town for employees of his boring company and X and etc. He has plans for it to be, quote, utopian.

[Ronnie Mola]

Which, I mean it's got a long way to go, it's got a lot of rough edges and it's definitely nothing that you would call like a utopia. So far it's just 15 trailers.

[Noel King]

Coming up on Today, explained Elon Musk takes us back to the days of the company town. Whether we care to go or not.

[Ronnie Mola]

I don't see the draw personally to wanting to go out in the middle of nowhere and then live in a tiny trailer. This is the way it feels to move through summer in Lululemon Iconic Align Softness without the front seam for our smoothest look and feel ever, summer won't know what hit it. Stretch your limits in the non stop flexibility of the new Lululemon Align no line pant in select stores [e-mail] with a Venmo Debit card. You can Venmo more than just your friends. You can use your balance in so many ways. You can Venmo everything. Need gas? You can Venmo this. How about snacks? You can Venmo that. Your favorite band's merch? You can Venmo this or their next show? You can Venmo that. Visit Venmo Me Debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license by Mastercard International, Inc. Card may be used everywhere. MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply.

[Noel King]

It's today explained. I'm Noel King. Ronnie Mola is a senior correspondent at Sherwood News who recently took a trip to Texas.

[Ronnie Mola]

So Elon Musk, you know, leader of like six businesses, has been steadily moving those businesses to Texas over the past few years. I'm excited to announce that we're moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas.

[Noel King]

The Boring Company has 20 jobs open in the Austin area. It's hiring for everything from engineers to accountants to crane operators.

[Price Fishback]

Musk has officially decided to move the X headquarters from San Francisco to Central Texas. Of course, several of his companies already have buildings here in Central Texas.

[Ronnie Mola]

It turns out that he wasn't really moving it to Austin, Texas. He was moving it to the county of Bastrop and this rural area in Central Texas. It's about 45 minutes outside Austin, give or take on the traffic. And now he's been building this company town next to SpaceX and next to Boring Company and next to X. It's called Snailbrook, kind of in the middle of nowhere. It's supposed to be this sort of live work utopia. We're going to create an ecological paradise.

[Price Fishback]

Here on the car because we're out on the Colorado River. It's going to be great.

[Ronnie Mola]

It's got like a center of commerce and you know, different businesses and things like that. Different attractions for the workers. So I decided to go down there and check it out.

[Noel King]

Is Snail Brook living up to Elon Musk's vision for it?

[Ronnie Mola]

Absolutely not. I mean, it's got a long way to go. When you get to Snailbrook, when you drive either from Austin or from Bastrop Town, all of a sudden you start seeing these giant buildings and these are factories for Elon Musk's companies. There's the SpaceX Starlink facility, which is going to be over a million square feet. There's these metal buildings for the boring company. And then behind the Boring company, behind this chain link fence that's obscured by these green slats, that's where the entire residence of the town is so far. There you'll find, you know, 15 or so gray and tan trailers, a little pool, a gym. And it's mostly empty most of the time. Then there's the like the center of commerce there. It's called Hyperloop Plaza. That's got two different giant metal buildings, kind of like you'd house livestock in. One of them is where the stores are. That's where the boring bodega is. I described it as sort of a tiny Whole Foods. You could get drinks with Adaptogens or the olive oil that everyone uses on Instagram.

[Noel King]

The squeeze bottle ones.

[Ronnie Mola]

The squeeze bottle ones. So there's also a pickleball court and a playground. It also appears to be residential grade playground stuff. So something you'd buy at Walmart or Target. It's always broken. The locals were telling me like when I was there, a ladder going up. One of the structures had been broken and they put a two by four on it to kind of keep it together. There was a bolt coming out of another one, so it was like really shaky. You could shake the whole thing and you know, and you'd get sunburned because there's no sunshade. There's a candy shop for some reason in addition to the Bodega, like as if you needed more snacks. His and hers barbershop. But I tried to get my hair cut but it wasn't open any of the times I was there. And I tried to make an appointment online and it said they were not available. They're also building a pottery studio. This is an approximation of what I guess he thinks a town is like. There's gonna be a doctor's office there, entertainment area which is really just a couple of TVs and some Nintendo Wiis. And you know, I just went and hung out in there.

[Noel King]

Are there people there?

[Ronnie Mola]

So not many, huh? Especially in the morning, not many. Gets a little bit like slightly more trafficked around lunch and after work. As far as, you know, signs of life. Not too many, at least not yet.

[Noel King]

Is the idea that the town is under construction. We're still building it, but at some point people will move there. Like what is the actual plan to populate this place?

[Ronnie Mola]

I mean it's always hard to tell. You know, Elon Musk and his companies would not talk to me. SpaceX declined to comment. And then boring company and X didn't respond to comments. But presumably they are going to eventually build those 110 single family homes that are not trailers. But in the meantime I've found other plans that show they're going to build another 20 homes, but those look like they're going to be trailers as well. You know, something you could throw up very quickly that isn't very permanent, that's cheap and easy, you know. He's also building a school there. There's a Montessori school that they finally got permits to open at long last. And you know, originally they said they were going to accept 50 students, they're only accepting 16. So like this is supposed to eventually be a place where the people who work at his companies can also live and go out with their kids and send their kids to school and you know, go get a beer afterwards or go to the food truck or go to maybe a restaurant or get primary care. But it's very much a work in progress and these things sort of take time. But Elon Musk has more money than God and you know, he started this back in around 2021. You know, if he wanted to he could put up some houses. You know, what was so interesting to me is I'm looking across from this broken playground, you know, with the two by four sistered against the ladder to keep it, you know, to keep your kids from falling through. And across the way you see the starlink facility where they're manufacturing satellites that go into outer space and that allow people around the world to get, you know, high speed Internet access. And to the other side of the playground is the boring company which is supposed to like, you know, it's tunneling company that, that hopes to do nothing less than, quote, solve traffic and transform cities. So you've got these really like big ideas, big things happening and you know, and then just like a really rinky dink, underbaked town there.

[Noel King]

There is a long and very interesting history of company towns in America. I remember reporting from Oneida, the silverware maker a few years back. And what I recall were that there were these nice little houses that in the 40s and 50s and 60s the had owned, I believe they'd either got them at a really good price or been given them the 110 homes that Elon is building here. Is he incentivizing his workers by selling them at a good price? Like what, what is the, what is the advantage to living there?

[Ronnie Mola]

So we don't know yet. He hasn't built them, he hasn't said. We know that. We know that the, the trailers rent for about $800 a month, which is less than the median rent in the area. But it's also a lot less than you would get if you were paying the median rent in the area. Yeah, if you paid the median rent, you would get a nice house and not just, you know, a two bedroom trailer with not much else. So we don't know. I also visited some other company towns, including Endicott, New York which was founded in the early 1900s for a shoe factory. And there they built these like really nice big houses for the workers there. And the workers could buy those houses at cost. And you know, they made thousands of these and it was really like a pretty successful company town. And partly I think that's because the workers were able to have and keep housing, you know, regardless of whether they worked at the shoe company. And a lot of those houses are still up to this day. And I think, you know, have just like stayed in families for generations and have really been important for, you know, the ongoing success of that town. So we don't know what Elon Musk would do with these 110 homes, whether he would sell them, whether what price they would be. But as it stands, you could pay a little bit less for the trailers, but you're also getting a lot less than you would in the rest of the area.

[Noel King]

So these days in this economy, one can own and run a company and not build a town for the company. It's pretty common. Does building a town for boring and Tesla and X. Does building a town like Snailbrook figure into Elon Musk's business goals?

[Ronnie Mola]

So one of the reasons why he's building this town, I believe, is because he wants to be able to attract and retain good workers. Right? You. You can't uproot your whole family and have them move across the country from California for nothing. It's one thing if you're saying you're going to Austin, which has a lot of cultural cachet and, you know, it's a known entity. It's another thing entirely if you're saying, let's go to the farm, this farmland in the middle of nowhere. So he's wanting to have draws. You know, okay, we have inexpensive housing or we have this great Montessori school or X, Y, and Z. So I think part of that is to get people to work at his companies. Part of it might be just burnishing his own ego. You know, having your own town is a pretty big deal. Presumably someday, if this town does develop more, he could incorporate it and then, you know, the laws would be more on their side even. But as it is, I mean, the regulation, everyone told me that the regulations in Basrop county are pretty lax. So, you know, he moved there because the regulations were less tough and stringent than they were in California. And. But even though they're lacks in, in Basarab county, he's still run up against them. Like, he's always fighting with the county because they're not like, doing things in the correct order or not getting the correct permits, that sort of thing, or, you know, or dumping storm wastewater in the wrong place. That's, you know, that sort of thing. So even in this lenient environment, they've run up against the regulation.

[Noel King]

Do you think that Snailbrook has the potential of becoming a thriving town as it stands?

[Ronnie Mola]

I, you know, I wouldn't move to Snailbrook. Bastrop. The town is lovely. It's got all of this sort of like, old west charm. It's a small town outside of Austin that's lively and fun. So Bastrop town I would consider moving to. I don't see the draw personally to wanting to go out in the middle of nowhere and then live in a tiny trailer. I actually talked to one of Elon Musk's neighbors. It's a man who moved there about 10 years ago, and he has got a nice house on 10 acres. And since then, Elon Musk has moved in and bought property basically on three sides of him. And you know, he had this like, it's up on a hill, he's got this great view. But where he used to look at cows, he's now looking at SpaceX's Starlink facility, this big white monolith of a building. And you know where you used to hear birds, you just hear constant beeping. I was interviewing him on the patio outside of his house and it was just incessant beep, beep, beep. So in a way it's like the worst of all worlds. It's like it's rural but without the rural beauty. If you're living in Snailbrook and then it's absolutely not Austin, Texas, and it's not a quaint, charming downtown like Bastrop Town.

[Price Fishback]

Is.

[Noel King]

Ronnie Mola of Sherwood News coming up. Sixteen tons. And what do you get? The second half of the show.

[Price Fishback]

Of course.

[Noel King]

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[Otisham]

Support for the show today comes from Greenlight. It's an app and a debit card situation that helps your kids learn how to save, invest and spend wisely. If you're trying to like, you know, help your kids learn how to save, invest and spend wisely, they do it with games if you're wondering. The app also includes a chores feature where you can set up one time or recurring chores. Maybe it's a good way to get your your kids to do the chores. I wouldn't know. Don't have kids do my own chores. But our colleague Otisham might.

[Ronnie Mola]

The app is really easy to use. The interface is very simple to look at. My kids can go in, they can okay this is how much spending I have. This is how many chores I've done this week for my allowance for the parent. There's a separate section for each child. So you know, like how much your older one has saved versus your younger one.

[Otisham]

You can start your risk free greenlight trial [e-mail] explained. That's Greenlight.com explained. To get started. Greenlight.com explained.

[Price Fishback]

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[Otisham]

This is Today Explained.

[Price Fishback]

So I'm Price Fishback. I am the Regents professor and APS professor of Economics at the University of Arizona.

[Noel King]

And you have some amount of specialty, I'm told, in company towns.

[Price Fishback]

I do. I wrote a dissertation and a bunch of articles about company towns and company housing and violent strikes and all sorts of things like that.

[Noel King]

Why were the heads of companies creating towns for their employees in the first place?

[Price Fishback]

Well, so there was a really nice article written in the Bureau of Labor Statistics bulletin back in 1919 by a guy named Leifer Magnussen. And so he'd done a survey of about 213 companies that had towns. And so one of the major reasons they had, and what he talks about in the article is isolation, is you're just out in the middle of nowhere. And if you're out in the middle of nowhere, there's, there's nobody else that's going to really come and build something. And if they do come and build something, like build housing or create a store, then they're going to have pretty much monopoly and then you're going to run into problems where they're going to charge high prices and high rents and now you have to pay higher wages to get people to come.

[Noel King]

Huh.

[Price Fishback]

And so, you know, it's kind of made sense to vertically integrate the whole thing and just, you know, you're out in the middle of nowhere, you need housing, you need these things. And so let's just build it and bring them there.

[Noel King]

It's a lot of power for the company.

[Price Fishback]

Yes, it can be.

[Noel King]

And if the company is just trying to do the right thing and build housing so that they can get employees there. Okay, so how did things go right and how did things go wrong? With the initial company towns.

[Price Fishback]

So you have all sorts of different types of employers. Some of them are very community minded and things like that and have other guys just trying to make money. And so the range of conditions in company towns was pretty wide. A lot of times they're trying to get started. So if they're trying to hire 100 employees or 200 employees, they need to build housing pretty quickly. And so it's usually pretty much the housing looks pretty much the same. They try to design the towns and things like that, and then they try to improve things. The good employers try to put in things like YMCAs and swimming pools and they have a baseball team and things along those lines. But they also, you know, they're also providing the sewers and the store and the housing. And also a lot of times they're providing the security as well.

[Noel King]

Are there any American towns that started as company towns? But we don't know that there are.

[Price Fishback]

Actually quite a few, because usually what happens is that the town starts out as a company town and then say what happens is another mine moves in nearby, or maybe three or four mines moves by, move in nearby. And then what happens is you develop an independent town in and amongst all the company towns. And so that allows you to expand. And so probably a number of towns in West Virginia that weren't too deep into the mountains actually became independent towns, actually building off of the fact that there were several company towns around. And once you get that kind of situation, the company often sells off the housing.

[Noel King]

There are a couple of perils here. The company has a lot of power. The town is often isolated. In early American company towns, what sorts of negative consequences did we see?

[Price Fishback]

Well, I think one of the biggest problems is that the possibilities of labor strife go up.

[Noel King]

Oh yeah.

[Price Fishback]

And one of the reasons is, if you just think about it, normally if you're mad at your grocer, you're mad at your grocer, but that doesn't influence your attitude towards your employer or your landlord or something like that. But if your landlord, your grocer and everybody else and the policeman are all hired by the company and also the hospital or the medical doctors and stuff, well then if you're mad at one, you're mad at everybody. Most of the towns actually didn't have bad experiences necessarily, but you do get situations where things just really go badly. Ludlow's situation in Colorado in 1913 and 1914 was an example where Standard Oil owned the town. It was a coal mining town and things. And they actually was a pretty Nice town, actually, if you look at it, they had a lot of nice amenities and things along those lines, because usually big companies actually provided better amenities. And then they started. They had a strike. And after about six weeks, the company wanted to bring in other workers, which meant that they pushed workers out of their houses. And so that's always a really bad situation, as you can imagine. And then you have, like, pickets and people are protesting and stuff. And you could be there and you could have a car backfire, and all of a sudden people start shooting.

[Noel King]

And.

[Price Fishback]

And then it goes really badly from there. And so then they had a situation where eventually they called in the troops, and the troops, they actually ended up attacking a mining tent town. And, like, 13 women and children died in a fire. I mean, it was just horrible. That was known as the Ludlow Massacre. So that's kind of like the worst thing that can possibly happen.

[Noel King]

What are some examples of when it goes right and what tend to be the circumstances when it goes right?

[Price Fishback]

I think the key to the circumstances goes right is that the employer is a good employer. And I think that happens in a lot of different cases. They actually, you know, they're paying wages above market wages. One of the things that they. That the employers liked about having the company town is that they. They thought they would get more stable employees. They attracted more married, married families and things like. And so if you can get away from kind of a bad situation where everybody's a bachelor and they're moving around all the time, that's. Usually you can find those kind of towns, and they have really lousy housing. But the ones that are relatively permanent sometimes lasted 50, 60, 70 years. Just depended on how long the mine would last or how long the relationship would last. And Oneida worked well because, you know, it's kind of like a. It was a religious group, and they were all pretty similar. So the more similar they were, the more likely they were to agree on everything that was going on. And I think the owners were the leaders. Matter of fact, the CEO probably was hired by a lot of the people who were employees of the town.

[Noel King]

It sort of seems at this point that company towns in 2024 couldn't really be that successful. But maybe I'm wrong. It seems like we have more choices now. We have cars now, so even if you're out in the boon, you can drive to the city for work. Is this a thing independently of what's happening in Texas, which we'll talk about in a minute, is this a thing that still happens?

[Price Fishback]

Well, I Think so, to some degree. I mean, so you have mining towns, you still have mining. Mining operations here in Arizona and other places. Right. And so, you know, so they're opening up new mines and redoing old mines and stuff. And a lot of, a lot of the towns around Southern Arizona, for example, they grew up relatively close to the mine, but weren't necessarily part of the mine itself. Right. And Tucson is close enough that you could commute from Tucson, commute from Nogales and other kind of places. And so having the automobile really helps. And then on top of that, I mean, particularly for something like SpaceX, where it's a lot of engineers and things, a lot of them probably can just zoom in or whatever and come in occasionally. It just depends on what they're actually producing on the site and what kind of skills those people need.

[Noel King]

Now, let me ask you a question. Elon Musk. A lot of what Elon Musk does is interesting for various reasons. He does seem to have an enormous ego. And so the idea that he's building a company town seems somewhat about the company and the need to do it and somewhat about him. Does a company town need a charismatic founder?

[Price Fishback]

Like, I don't think it needs one. I mean, I think the better company towns, you know, Rockefeller and Standard Oil and steel companies and the number of coal companies, they had owners who were very religious. Right. And they felt like they were building a community and all sorts of things. And then, you know, it really hurt the reputations when you had these labor strife and things like that. But a lot of them felt like they were making their workers better off. They were paying above normal wages. Their rents were typically low in these places. And so you do have like these charismatic people or people who believe that they're doing good things and they're helping their workers and doing things along those lines. And so I can see how Musk would kind of like to do that kind of thing. He seems to like to dabble in everything. I wish he'd just make better batteries so we can improve.

[Noel King]

Now, our reporter in the first half of the show, Ronnie Mola, tells us that at the moment, Snail Brook is not particularly impressive, not a particularly impressive place, but it's early stages. When you look at what Elon Musk does and is. Do you think that he could make this into something?

[Price Fishback]

Well, certainly. I mean, if, if he's really planning on having SpaceX be there for quite some time, I imagine they're going to build good quality housing and they're probably. And these days, you can build good quality housing in nice neighborhoods and have it be variable as well. It depends on who he's trying to house and how expensive it is. And, you know, one of the questions is he building the housing and going to sell it, or is he going to build it and have people rent it? And then once you once the community is close enough to Austin that all sorts of other things are going on, then he'd sell the housing to people, because that's typically what happens in those kind of settings. Well, I think that the company town was really important for developing areas that were relatively isolated. And then what happens is in a number of places where the activity actually expands and you have the same kind of things around it, or you have complementary industries that develop, then what happens is the company town becomes a thriving town that's independent. They sell off the housing and everything goes along. So I think that's a feature of it. It's not how every place developed, but it's certainly how isolated places developed. I think.

[Noel King]

Price Fishback of the University of Arizona, Victoria Chamberlain produced today's show. It was a rerun. Matthew Collette edited, Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christensdotter engineered. And Laura Bullard is our fact checker. I'm Noel King. It's today.

[Ronnie Mola]

Sam.