The one-room building contained a table with a porcelain top and a hide-bottomed chair, both sitting under an unfrosted light bulb hanging from the ceiling on a long cord, and Obie went in and scraped dust and fallen dirt-dauber nests off the table with the side of his hand.

NEWYORKER: Idols

"We have a great eight-lane freeway where the on-ramps and off-ramps are kind of like dirt, " Levin says.

NPR: Broadening the Reach of Broadband

Now comes dirt-cheap Wi-Fi and a host of other off-the-rack wireless wonders.

FORBES: The Cheap Decade

Today, when he's not in Los Angeles, Mr. Nitze, 41, lives three hours away on an entirely different type of frontier: on the outer edge of civilization north from Palm Springs, off a 1-mile-long dirt road in the remote, rocky high desert of Southern California.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat

The two were believed to have gone off trail near Holy Jim Trail, a tree-lined dirt path along a creek that leads to a waterfall and is popular with day hikers.

NPR: 1 Calif. Hiker Still Lost, 1 Found And Recovering

Two sedans with big, brightly painted, carefully hand-built model airplanes lashed to their roofs were turning off the road onto the dirt track.

NEWYORKER: The Kingpins

Internet-based phone systems are dirt cheap, include unlimited calling, and offer digital features that are impossible to pull off on your antiquated network.

FORBES: Message In A Bottle