One thing that stood out to me in the Voyant visualization was how often the word river appeared in the St. Louis article. At first I didn’t think much of it, but it actually makes sense when you consider that St. Louis developed as a major port along the Mississippi River. The river has historically been central to the city’s economy and growth. In contrast, the Edwardsville article mentioned the word university much more often. This reflects how important Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is to the city’s identity, since the university plays a major role in the local community and economy. Overall, using Voyant helped me see patterns in the texts that I might not have noticed through close reading alone. The visualizations made it easier to identify which themes appear most frequently in descriptions of each city. At the same time, distant reading has its limits because word frequency alone does not explain the full meaning or context of the text. To fully understand how these communities are represented, distant reading works best when combined with closer analysis of specific passages. Even so, this exercise showed how digital tools like Voyant can provide a useful starting point for exploring how different places in the St. Louis region are described.