The masthead was designed by Lisa Orth,[3] the first art director of Sub Pop Records, who designed Nirvana's logo and the cover of the band's first album, Bleach. According to Airmail, the magazine is a defense of "the American voice", described by Samuels as "a posture of amazement and receptivity to lunacy, and also a focus on hard facts".[4]
In an interview with Fox News, Walter Kirn said that County Highway "aims to reverse the focus of mainstream journalism from big cities to small towns."[5] On a similar note, Kirn told the Montana Free Press that the magazine "treats everything the way small town or small city newspapers treat their places: without special status or metropolitan privilege."[6] In addition to cultural essays, investigations, and reported features County Highway also has a music section, as their editor's letter describes Americans as "a musical people".[1] According to its publisher Donald Rosenfeld, County Highway will be the periodical representation of Pan American Books. which "will focus on books that the conglomerates tend to ignore".[2]
County Highway is not distributed digitally. It is only available in print by mail subscription, or at about 200 small business locations, mostly in the United States, which include cafes, restaurants, feed stores, record stores, bakeries, bookshops and breweries.[7]