We had the privilege and pleasure of being graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s, working with Peter Hall and Ann Markusen on understanding the impacts of defence and military spending on regions in the United States. But our studies covered much more than Cold War spending – and misspending – in America. Peter Hall and colleagues in the Department of City and Regional Planning were focusing on the tremendous societal and economic changes underway around the world, and economic restructuring that dominated research and discussions was particularly evident in nearby high-tech Silicon Valley. Those roads led to defence and military spending and analyzing and understanding the divergent impacts that had on US regions. Here we reflect on those years of research that culminated in publication of The Rise of the Gunbelt and on the many side trips, alternative paths and back alleys that lay along the way.