People could travel farther and they did. By the mid 1900's, rural people were driving to larger towns and cities to sell their produce and buy their discounted goods. When the small town merchants were bypassed, work was not plentiful as before. Increasingly, sons and daughters drove to larger towns and regional cities and they didn't come back. Many of America's towns can't even be found at all.
Some people call that 'progress'.
It was completed in 1964 at the cost of 36 million dollars and has meant a great deal toward bringing prosperity to St. Clair County. Many people paid dearly for this symbol of progress, however, for it meant the death of of a 143 year old town. The site of Easonville, which was settled in 1821, is now under twenty feet of water. It is a sad thing when a community this old must be uprooted and moved. There were homes in Easonville over a hundred years old.