“Our sprawl-mania is ecologically unsustainable, causing dangerous depletions of natural resources from topsoil to water,” Stegall wrote in 2009 for the political website Front Porch Republi ...

Front porches, she adds, served as spaces for convening and sharing information, and even as an unofficial neighborhood watch ...

Situated on a plain in the shadow of the stark rise of the nation's mightiest mountain range -- earning it the moniker the "front porch of the ... is an unassuming American small town.