Ohio Farmers and Land Use Regulation, 1938-‐1963

Conference Paper for New Paths in the Environmental History of North America and the Ohio Valley October 9, 2015

Ohio Farmers and Land Use Regulation, 1938-1963

Angela Shope Stiefbold University of Cincinnati

Farmers have played a significant role in shaping the environment of North America and the Ohio Valley. Through the nineteenth century most of America’s population was in some way involved in the clearing, draining, fencing, plowing, planting, grazing, and harvesting of much of the nation’s land. American culture celebrated farmers as the grassroots foundation of American democracy, praised for their independence and industriousness. Many farmers considered themselves stewards of the land. Yet by the mid- twentieth-century there was a significant change in the relationship among farmers, land, government, and the nation’s rapidly growing and cities and suburbs. Particularly striking is the change in farmers’ opinions about government regulation of the private use of land through local zoning ordinances.1

1 Zoning ordinances are enacted at the local level and divide a community into geographic districts, or zones, and specify the uses permitted in each zone—residential, industrial, commercial, etc. Zoning also regulates the density of development, minimum lot sizes, height limits, and other locational characteristics. Central to the debate over enacting zoning is whether it is worthwhile to give up the freedom to use one’s property however one whishes, for the protection zoning offers to prevent one’s neighbor from using his or her property in a way that might prove problematic. Ideally, a community prepares a comprehensive plan to guide their future growth and development, and uses zoning as one of many tools to implement it. However, in many communities only a zoning ordinance is adopted, and is used as a de-facto plan for future development. Zoning was first introduced in cities. The Ohio legislature passed enabling legislation permitting cities and villages to enact zoning ordinances in 1923. Townships, however, did not receive authority from the state to enact zoning ordinances until 1947. Historians have documented early twentieth century motivations for enacting zoning in both urban and suburban areas to be twofold. First, there was a desire to keep nuisance uses away from residential neighborhoods. Second, by controlling the location and density of future development, communities could logically and

Debate over rural zoning enabling legislation proposals put before the Ohio State

Legislature and the contests for adoption of rural zoning ordinances at the township level reveal much about how the relationship between farmers and non-farmers changed over the middle decades of the twentieth-century; how suburban development affected farmers; and how they responded to the challenges it posed. It indicates that Ohio’s farmers were pro-actively engaged with the problems of suburban development, involved in the state and local debates over how it should be regulated, influenced the direction and form of suburban development, and ultimately the impact it had on the environment.

Historians, Suburbs, and Farmers

Historians usually tell the story of post-WWII suburbanization as a movement from cities outward into suburbs. According to the familiar narrative, families moved away from crowded and dilapidated urban neighborhoods into newly built subdivisions on the rural- urban fringe, where they lived in single family detached homes with yards; they established new communities; and they led efforts to enact local laws, like zoning, that would keep their new neighborhoods from developing the problems they left the city to escape– industrial pollution, corner saloons, and slums inhabited by the poor.2

efficiently plan for expansion of public water and sewer systems, roads, and schools, keeping their costs, and therefore taxes at lower levels. 2 Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 2003); Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1985); Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850-1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Jon C. Teaford, Post-Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge

But there is one aspect of urban expansion this familiar story overlooks. Most cities were not growing into uninhabited, ungoverned territory. The lands immediately around most cities had long served as a metropolitan hinterland, where farmers raised vegetables for urban markets; ran dairies to supply urban residents with milk; and had nurseries to grow the trees, flowers and shrubs sold to landscape urban and suburban streets and yards. Depending on the part of the country, this urban fringe may have also included small, subsistence farmers, or farmers raising commodity crops for the national market.

Rural residents established communities that included schools, churches, festivals, and traditions, and in many places, including Ohio, township governments provided rural areas with basic public services. These pre-suburban residents must have some role in in the story of suburbanization.

To date, only a few historians have considered suburbanization from this viewpoint. Possibly the best-known work to take this perspective is Of Cabbages and Kings

County by Marc Linder and Lawrence Zacharias.3 They provide a thorough investigation into the social context and economic calculus of late nineteenth-century suburban land development in Kings County, New York—now the borough of Brooklyn. Their work emphasizes the agency of the rural resident in regard to their economic and social relationships with the city; their positions on local regulations and infrastructure that might facilitate or hinder suburbanization; and their ultimate decision about when to convert or sell their land out of agricultural use. Examining whether Ohio farmers

Cities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Zane Miller, Suburb: Neighborhood and Community in Forest Park, Ohio, 1935-1976 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981). 3 Mark Linder and Lawrence S. Zacharias, Of Cabbages and Kings County: Agriculture and the Formation of Modern Brooklyn (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999).

demonstrated similar agency will provide evidence as to whether Linder and Zacharias’s conclusions are valid in other times and places.

A few recent studies have looked at how New Deal approaches to managing agricultural production and agricultural land use may have influenced the mid-twentieth century practice of land use planning in suburbanizing areas, but they have only begun to delve into this question.4 Considering the experiences of all parties involved in the transition from rural to urban, including farmers and farm organizations, could better explain some aspects of suburbanization, such as the resistance of farmers to plans and regulations initiated and proposed by cities or regional organizations, as well as the objections of residents of outlying areas to being annexed into cities. A close investigation over time of the full context of Ohio farmers’ relationship with urban areas and their residents, as well as with planning and zoning, may better explain the current reluctance of some rural areas to utilize planning and zoning.

In a recent historiographical essay on the state of planning history, Rosemary

Wakeman encourages more study in two areas. First, she indicates a lack of research on the actors outside the professional planning arena who had an impact on the implementation of planning, including activist groups—this could include farm organizations. Second,

Wakeman believes that there needs to be more consideration of planning as a sign of modernity. A relationship between planning and modernity may play a role in when and where planning is implemented, and how ideas about rural areas, suburban areas, and

4 Jess Gilbert, “Democratic Planning in Agricultural Policy: The Federal-County Land-Use Planning Program, 1938-1942,” Agricultural History 70, no. 2 (1996): 233-250. Jess Gilbert, Planning democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). According to Fukuo Akimoto, this rural program included innovations that were then adopted into the practice of planning for urbanizing areas, “The Birth of ‘Land Use Planning’ in American Urban Planning,” Planning Perspectives 24, no. 4 (2009): 457-483.

technological progress are interrelated.5 Studying Ohio farmers provides evidence about the validity of this hypothesis.

Voices of Farmers

Ohio’s agriculturalists have consistently been active participants in local and state government. Throughout the twentieth century the state’s Agricultural Extension Service and the Department of Rural Sociology at the Ohio State University were active researchers and educators in rural farm life. Ohio’s farm community was particularly well organized politically and represented by a number of advocacy organizations, the two largest being the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and the Ohio State Grange. These organizations were very effective at grassroots organization and education, as well as at lobbying the state legislature. Reviewing their publications provides insight into the thinking of Ohio farmers about what issues were important to their lives and how they were able to translate that into action at the state level.6

The Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and the Ohio State Grange were, and still are, organizations with similar purposes and methods. In addition to developing marketing and purchasing cooperatives, both groups included as part of their mission educating their members about the issues of the day and lobbying the state legislature and federal

5 Rosemary Wakeman, “Rethinking Postwar Planning History,” Planning Perspectives 29, no. 2 (2014): 153-163. 6 The opinions of Ohio farmers were by no means uniform, and not all farmers belonged to these two groups. The Ohio Farmers Union was a smaller organization that was, at times, at odds with these two larger associations. However, I have not been able to obtain evidence of the Ohio Farmers Union’s stance on rural zoning and planning.

government on behalf of their membership.7 Each organization had county chapters, which were then comprised of smaller neighborhood groups. These smaller groups met monthly at farmers’ homes to discuss educational information provided to them by the state organization, as well as to consider solutions to local problems. They then reported back to the state level on their activities and concerns. Both the Grange and the Farm Bureau stressed the independent and democratic nature of these groups, which, according to Carl

R. Hutchinson of the Farm Bureau’s Education Department, “are giving people a type of neighborhood experience in which they are learning to work with others on a basis of mutual interest …[and] are restoring the democracy of the earlier American community.”8

Their independence was important, because “they are quick to sense ulterior motives; to impose on their freedom is to invite resentment.”9 Two-way communication was important to both farmers and their leadership when it came time to promote state legislation important to agricultural interests. It allowed dispersed rural voices to be represented by effective state level lobbyists, while at the same time farm leadership could rally many voters to contact their local representatives on important issues. It also provides assurance that the policy positions taken by these organizations were representative of their membership.

Newspaper articles provide a glimpse of the discussion that occurred at the local level when it came time to adopt zoning ordinances in townships. This reporting included voices of a broader range of rural residents. Articles in local papers documented the actions

7 William Turner, Ohio Farm Bureau Story 1919-1979 (Columbus, OH: Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, Inc., 1982). 8 Carl R. Hutchinson, “Ohio Advisory Councils Cultivate Democracy,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, October 1942, 27. 9 Ibid.

of neighborhood Farm Bureau and Grange chapters in discussing and promoting the adoption of zoning. They also reported on opposition to zoning, presenting the contrasting opinions of farmers who were at odds with the views of the state Farm Bureau and Grange and opposed zoning.10

A Change in Attitude

Ohio farmers underwent a drastic change of opinion about land use regulation through zoning between the late 1930s and the early 1960s. Statements from their journals about zoning illustrate this shift. In 1939, two bills were proposed in the Ohio State legislature having to do with the use of rural land. One proposed to regulate billboards along highways and the other would have allowed for zoning in townships. Edwin J. Barth, the Legislative Representative of the Ohio Farm Bureau, writing in the Ohio Farm Bureau

10 The commercial database, Newspapers.com, provided access to articles in 38 Ohio newspapers during this time period: The Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) 1853-1947; The Circleville Herald (Circleville, Ohio) 1923-1979; Columbus Evening Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) 1877-1969; The Coshocton Democrat (Coshocton, Ohio) 1842-1956; The Coshocton News (Coshocton, Ohio) 1946; The Coshocton Tribune (Coshocton, Ohio) 1862-1945; The Daily Jeffersonian (Cambridge, Ohio) 1954; The Daily Reporter (Dover, Ohio) 1933-1977; The Daily Times (New Philadelphia, Ohio) 1865- 1968; The Delphos Courant (Delphos, Ohio) 1947-1962; Delphos Daily Herald (Delphos, Ohio) 1869- 1954; The Evening Independent (Massillon, Ohio) 1930-1976; The Evening Review (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1885-1977; The Journal News (Hamilton, Ohio) 1890-1977; Lancaster Eagle-Gazette (Lancaster, Ohio) 1915-1974; The Lima News (Lima, Ohio) 1884-1948; The Logan Daily News (Logan, Ohio) 1935-1977; The Marion Star (Marion, Ohio) 1877-1975; Marysville Evening Tribune (Marysville, Ohio) 1936-1962; The; Marysville Tribune (Marysville, Ohio) 1893-1951; The Middletown Journal (Middletown, Ohio) 1926-1950; The Newark Advocate (Newark, Ohio) 1882- 1977; News-Journal (Mansfield, Ohio) 1891-1977; The Piqua Daily Call (Piqua, Ohio) 1890-1977; Portsmouth; Daily Times (Portsmouth, Ohio) 1858-1970; The Press-Gazette (Hillsboro, Ohio) 1939- 1977; The Richwood Gazette (Richwood, Ohio) 1891-1952; The Salem News (Salem, Ohio) 1906- 1977; The Sandusky Register (Sandusky, Ohio) 1949-1968; Sunday Times Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) 1928-1959; The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) 1923-1977; Times Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) 1924- 1959; Washington Court House Record-Herald (Washington Court House, Ohio) 1937-1977; Wilmington News-Journal (Wilmington, Ohio) 1879-1977; Xenia Daily Gazette (Xenia, Ohio) 1882- 1977; The Zanesville Daily Courier (Zanesville, Ohio) 1852-1944; The Zanesville News (Zanesville, Ohio) 1865-1946; The Zanesville Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) 1923-1959.

News praised the success of the organization’s lobbying to kill those two bills. He equated governmental control of building and land use to policies a dictator like Hitler would enact.11 In the late 1930s, governmental control of land use was anathema to farmers. They believed that they, not government, knew best about the future use of their land.

However, not quite twenty-five years later, the editors of the Ohio State Grange

Monthly added a special note, after an article written to explain rural zoning, calling it “a sound service to your children and grandchildren!”12 On the February 1963 editorial page of the magazine, the first bullet point on a list of items the Grange favored was, “Local zoning to limit use of good land for nonfarm purposes.”13 Why was there such a shift in the position farm organizations held regarding zoning for rural areas? Two key things had changed between 1939 and 1963: compromise on provisions of the rural zoning enabling legislation and a change in the economic and social relationships between farmers and suburbs.

Enabling Legislation

In the 1930s and early 1940s, several bills to enable rural zoning in townships were introduced to the Ohio legislature, proposed by representatives of the state’s cities and their surrounding counties. 14 Their goal was to implement zoning in townships that bordered urban areas as a tool to manage the suburban growth that was occurring around

11 Edwin J. Barth, “Summary of Regular Session of 93rd General Assembly,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, July 1939, 13. 12 John B. Mitchell, “A Challenge…Rural Zoning in Ohio,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, October 1963, 5. 13 “Your Grange Works For You,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, February 1963, 4. 14 In Ohio the bill that ultimately gave townships the ability to enact zoning called this practice “rural zoning.” This and the term “township zoning” tended to be used interchangeably in Ohio in the 1940s-1960s time frame, and I do the same in this paper.

Ohio’s cities. From their perspective, rural zoning was to be a regionally coordinated effort best administered by the growing city, the county, or by a regional agency that coordinated across municipalities in a metropolitan area.15

But farmers and township leaders were not willing to relinquish authority to regulate local land use to city or county government. In 1944 Edwin J. Barth of the Farm

Bureau wrote that zoning was unnecessary because local and state health authorities had recently passed building codes that were adequate to regulate rural construction.16 In

1946, while highlighting the legislative accomplishments of the Ohio Farm Bureau, D. R.

Stanfield, assistant legislative director of the Ohio Farm Bureau, gave zoning as an example of a bill the organization had helped “kill” because it “would regulate, hamper, harm and block farmer action.”17

Rural residents considered townships to be the most responsive and democratic level of government, but they were also in frequent opposition to urban areas in the political arena. Rural and urban interests clashed over state funding priorities, rules about taxation, and in this time period they also disagreed about the best apportionment method

15 Michael Simpson, People & Planning: History of the Ohio Planning Conference (Bay Village, OH: Ohio Planning Conference, 1969): 15, 38-40, 48. 16 Edwin J. Bath, “Keeping Our Laws On the Level,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, December 1944, 8. 17 D. R. Stanfield, “Legislation…is Your Business,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, October 1946, 5. He went on to lay out a ten point Ohio Farm Bureau legislative program, as follows: “1. Better Rural Schools; 2. Expansion and Protection of Cooperatives; 3. Improved Rural Health Services; 4. Better Farm Marketing; 5. National Fertilizer Program; 6. Extension of REA Lines [electrification]; 7. Conservation of Natural Resources; 8. Improved Rural Telephone Service; 9. Strip Mine Regulation; 10. Expanding Foreign Trade.” Along with efforts to assure that government spending remained reasonable and rural taxes low, this set of priorities was consistent through the rest of the decade.

for legislative districts—rural areas wanted district boundaries based on geography, while urban areas called for them to be based on population.18

In this atmosphere, metropolitan-area proponents of township zoning were only able to get enabling legislation passed by the Ohio Legislature when, in 1947, they crafted a compromise bill that took rural viewpoints into account. This bill contained provisions that made it acceptable to farmers—zoning could only be implemented by vote of a majority of township residents and agricultural uses and buildings were exempted from regulation.

Ohio Farm Bureau President Perry L. Green endorsed the zoning enabling bill, stating it gave rural areas an optional method of protection from “the evils which are arising” from the construction of “little shacks of houses…built with little or no regard being given to the neighborhood or community.”19 Adoption of rural zoning enabling legislation, which left decision making in the hands of township voters, had a significant effect on how future development was planned and regulated across Ohio. It meant that zoning was much less likely to be a coordinated, regional program, and more likely to be implemented piecemeal, with each individual township prioritizing its own interests when it came to land use regulation.

The passage of the enabling legislation in 1947 did not lead to immediate widespread adoption of zoning in Ohio’s townships. Figure 1 indicates the number of Ohio

18 Carl R. Hutchinson, “Urban Culture Called Enemy of Real Democracy,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, May 1941, 25; Joseph W. Fichter, “Editorial Comments by the State Master” Ohio State Grange Monthly, August 1947, 4; “A Program For Agriculture,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, January-February 1949, 1. Carl R. Hutchinson, “Farmers Grid for Government Action,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, August 1948, 4-5. 19 Perry L. Green, “Facing the Issues,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, February 1947, 8.

townships that adopted zoning each year, out of approximately 1300 townships.20 Zoning was primarily adopted in townships immediately adjacent to urban centers. Into the 1950s

Ohio’s farm organizations did not object to rural zoning, yet they did not promote rural zoning. When the enabling legislation passed in 1947, it was not because the majority of farmers were asking for it—it was not part of the lobbying platform that came from the grassroots. Farm organizations just stopped blocking a measure pushed by urbanizing counties, once its provisions were adjusted to meet their concerns about local control. How was it then that the farm organizations came to advocate for zoning a decade later?

20 Figure 1 Sources: “Seventeen Townships Adopt Rural Zoning,” Ohio Township News, January 1949, 7; “Rural Zoning Needs More Explaining,” Ohio Township News, January 1950, 9; “Rural Zoning,” Ohio Township News, January 1952, 6; “1952 Special Issues,” Ohio Township News, January 1953, 6; “Rural Zoning,” Ohio Township News, April 1954, 13; “Township Elections,” Ohio Township News, November 1954, 15; “Thirty-Three More Townships Adopt Zoning,” Ohio Township News, November, 1955, 9; “More Twps. Adopt Zoning,” Ohio Township News, June 1956, 6; “Township Issues Voted in Recent Elections,” Ohio Township News, June 1958, 7; “Election Results,” Ohio Township News, November 1958, 7; H. R. Moore and W. A. Wayt, Policies and Standards in Rural Zoning (Wooster, OH: Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, 1960), 3; John B. Mitchell, “A Challenge…Rural Zoning in Ohio,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, October 1962, 7. The total number of townships decreased slightly over time because some were annexed by cities.

Endorsing Zoning

During the 1950s, the line between rural life and urban life blurred, in a multitude of ways. In the postwar era, continued and accelerated improvement in agricultural production methods significantly increased farm productivity. Less labor was needed to run a farm, more could be produced from the same amount of farm acreage, and agricultural prices dropped. This led to declining revenues for farms that continued to operate on older methods, decreases in the rural population, and increased amounts of capital necessary to run a successful farm—to purchase machinery, fertilizer, seed, and more land. Successful farms were business enterprises, not subsistence homesteads. Many young people left the family farm to live in urban areas, and many farmers took on part- time work in suburban and urban areas. While the number of farmers declined, the population of Ohio’s urban areas and the number of non-farm rural residents was growing, creating a shift in the political landscape of the state (see Figures 2 and 3). 21 These trends were reported in the farm journals, and discussed by local Farm Bureau and Grange groups. 22

21 Figures 2 and 3 Source: Mervin G. Smith and John B. Mitchell, “Urban Areas Continue to Show Growth,” Buckeye Farm News, March 1964, 52. 22 Wade H. Andrews, “Neighbors, New and Old,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, February 1955, 7; “Part-Time Farming Increasing in Ohio,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, June 1956, 30; "Ohio's Farming Future," Ohio Farm Bureau News, July 1956, p. 10-11.

Figure 2: Ohio Population, Rural and Urban. Figure 3: Ohio Rural Population, Farm and Non-Farm.

In January of 1962, Ohio Farm Bureau News ran an article about the changing times

in rural communities. It described the employment of members of a neighborhood farm

bureau council from Palestine, a small community about 45 miles northwest of Dayton,

Ohio. Originally, the eight farmers who were members had all been full-time farmers. Yet

by 1962 only one received all his income from the farm; the other seven supplemented

their farm income with full- or part-time nonfarm jobs or businesses.23

Modernization was an important lobbying point for the farm organizations during

the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. They pushed the state and federal government for full

electrical and phone service in rural areas, better rural schools and rural health care, and

improved roads to connect them to markets in cities. Growing use of the automobile made

life easier on the farm, because it reduced distances to town and made it easier to get to

centralized and consolidated schools and health care. Telephone service, radio, and

23 “OFBF Advisory Councils Discuss Changes in Ohio’s Rural Communities,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, January 1962, 32.

eventually television also reduced perceived distances and differences between residents of cities and farms.24 These same improvements were part of what made rural living possible and attractive for more and more non-farmers.

With growing numbers of farmers and their children working at least part time off the farm in suburban or urban settings, and nonfarm workers becoming a larger portion of the rural residential population, the interactions between farmers and non-farmers increased. Both occupied the same geographic space, yet their interests and concerns were not always the same. The idea that rural living was the ideal has a long history in America.

In 1945, the Grange published an article that stated, “the farm is the native habitat of the family,” and endorsed “the ‘one foot on soil and one foot in city’ type of living as greatly advantageous to the family when adequate cash income is secured from work in industry or commerce.”25 But as suburban development became more prevalent in formerly agricultural areas in the 1950s, farmers worried about the effects it was having on their communities—politically, socially, and economically.26 The influx of nonfarm residents required more infrastructure—roads, sewers, schools—which cost money, and the primary source of funding, real estate taxes, fell most heavily on large landowners—farmers.27 The role that new non-farm residents would play in township social and political life was also a topic of discussion. On the one hand, some farmers felt that as growing numbers of non- farmers moved to the countryside, they “take very little responsibility for the community,”

24 Study Shows Farmers Catching City Cousins,” Ohio Farm Bureau News, May 1958, 26. 25 “Man’s Relation to the Land,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, December 1945, 13. 26 Everett F. Rittenour, "A Look Ahead," Ohio Farm Bureau News, January 1954, p. 12-13; Wade H. Andrews, “Neighbors Old and and New,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, February 1955, 4. 27 "Farm Real Estate Taxes" Ohio Farm Bureau News, October 1956, p. 10-11..

and do not join the Farm Bureau, Grange, or other existing local groups.28 Yet others saw things a bit differently, and worried about new residents becoming involved, brining their suburban interests to local government, and eventually outnumbering and outvoting farmers.29 Figure 4, published in Ohio State Grange Monthly in 1962, shows the suburban counties in which growth was occurring most rapidly.30

Farmers wanted to keep nuisance uses like landfills, junkyards, and nightclubs away from their homes. They worried about high-density low-quality residential development, particularly trailer parks, coming into their communities. New homes were necessary to accommodate workers drawn to jobs at new industrial facilities locating on the outskirts of urban areas, but they also often led to overcrowded schools and sewage disposal problems that affected nearby wells and required expensive private or public improvements to resolve.31 In 1959, residents of northern townships of Pickaway County, south of Columbus, found themselves with a significant increase in trailer parks because, as reported in the Circleville Herald, “This acute problem was thrust upon Pickaway County when surrounding counties passed rural zoning laws against trailer courts.”32

28 Everett F. Rittenour, "A Look Ahead," Ohio Farm Bureau News, January 1954, p. 12-13. 29 Wade H. Andrews, “Neighbors Old and and New,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, February 1955, 4. 30 John B. Mitchell, “Ohio Is Growing,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, September 1962, 9. 31 “Future of County, Topic of Letter,” The Evening Independent (Massillon, OH), February 11, 1960, 16; “Rural Folks Warned about Disposal Problems,” Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, February 24, 1960, 24; “3-Way Zone Design for Wilson Township Needs,” Wilmington News-Journal, April 20, 1961, 1. 32 James L. Smith, III, “Rural Zoning Proposals Strike at Trailer Courts,” The Circleville Herald, June 11, 1959, 1.

Figure 4: Percent Population Change of Ohio Counties, 1950-1960.

In the late 1950s the entire United States population seemed to realize that suburbanization was a snowballing reality. Construction of the interstate highway system was underway. Suburban sprawl, and the problems that came with it, was addressed in the

national media.33 An increased awareness that substantial growth of non-farming uses in rural areas was occurring led Ohio farmers to change their opinion about zoning. In 1963, the Ohio Farm Bureau’s annual adopted policies stated that, “The rapid decentralization of both population and industry, along with the growth of our Interstate Highway Program, is creating problems which make the consideration of rural zoning a matter of urgency.”34

This growing consciousness was also fostered by the research done at the Ohio State

University by members of the Rural Sociology Department. They studied and wrote about changing rural demographics and suburbanization, information that was disseminated to farmers in articles published in local newspapers and the Farm Bureau and Grange journals. Additionally, rural sociology professors and agents of the state’s Agricultural

Extension Service made presentations to county and local farm groups to discuss both the changing economics and demographics of Ohio’s rural areas, as well as what the agricultural community could do to retain some control over these changes, including implementing rural zoning. Newspaper articles from the 1950s and early 1960s document that numerous local Farm Bureau and Grange groups discussed zoning, petitioned their township to initiate the process to implement rural zoning, and that farmers were included on and often were leaders of rural zoning commissions.

33 “Urban Sprawl,” Fortune, 57 (January 1958) 102; William H. Whyte, Jr., “A Plan to Save Vanishing U.S. Countryside,” Life, 47 no. 7 (August 17, 1959) 88. 34 John B. Mitchell, “Ohio is Growing,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, September, 1962, 9.

Farmers Influenced Suburbanization

By 1962, approximately one-fourth of Ohio’s townships had adopted zoning. 35 Most of these communities were located in the counties directly affected by rapid suburban growth, as shown in in Figure 5.36 Zoning was embraced as a tool to contral non-farm development in Ohio at a time when farmers were experiencing change from many directions. In the 1950s and 1960s there were few other means by which a township could guide or regulate its future development. While cities, villages, and counties could establish planning commissions, Ohio townships had not yet been granted that authority by the state. Nor could they develop and enforce subdivision regulations, a power the state had bestowed to counties for unincorporated areas. Townships had minimal taxing authority and revenues, and could not proactively invest in infrastructure, such as improved streets, sewers, water systems, parks, or other public facilities that would attract development to one area of the township over another. And it would be many years before the Ohio legislature invested some townships with home rule powers similar to those held by municipalities. In the early 1960s, in townships where the urban-rural fringe was creeping ever further outward, many farmers were proactively endorsing zoning as a way to maintain some control over change in their community.

35 John B. Mitchell, “A Challenge…Rural Zoning in Ohio,” Ohio State Grange Monthly, October 1962, p 6-7. 36 John B. Mitchell, “Zoning Concerns All Rural People” Buckeye Farm News, April 1962, 16.

Figure 5: Rural Zoning in Ohio Townships, January 1962.

It is clear that in Ohio farmers played a role in the manner by which suburban development was regulated. They were influential in the outcome of the debate over state enabling legislation and about who would adminster rural zoning—counties or townships.

Rural farmers opposed any loss of local control and blocked enabling legislation for rural zoning until township voters were given veto power over any zoning proposed by a county for their community. This limited the potential for development of multi-municipal metropolitan plans and land use schemes, as objection to a coordinated zoning ordinance by a majority of any one township in the region could thwart implementation. Instead, land use planning remained largely fragmented across the state.

While suburban development had to be a pressing concern before farmers were willing to relinquish land use rights for zoning protections, they were encouraged to act before significant land use change came to their community. In many Ohio townships zoning was not something brought in by non-farm residents. Rather, farmers organized committees to petition their township trustees to study and implement zoning in anticipation of future suburbanization. Farmers believed that zoning would protect their communities and mitigate the potential for future problems; they increasingly embraced it during the late twentieth century.

By 2006, fifty-nine percent of Ohio townships had adopted zoning.37 The efforts of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, the Ohio State Grange, and their members reveal that farmers were pro-active participants in regulating suburban development. The pattern of

37 Jennifer S. Evans-Cowley and Meghan Zimmerman Gough, “Land Use Planning and Zoning in Ohio Townships,” Journal of Extension, 44, no. 4 (August 2006), 4RIB5, http://www.joe.org/joe/2006august/rb5.php.

development of Ohio’s rural-urban fringe was not produced solely by land developers or suburban residents moving out of the city. It was also influenced by the rural farming community and the choices they made in adopting zoning ordinances to guide non-farm growth in their townships.38

38 This is a condensed version of a longer paper written in a research seminar at the University of Cincinnati. It was the culmination of the first phase of research toward my dissertation. Further inquiry will include looking more deeply at the interrelationships of farm organizations and state and national government in the realm of promoting land use planning and regulation. I plan to look further at the role played by the Ohio State University’s Rural Sociology Department, the Ohio Agricultural Extension Service and the US Department of Agriculture, as well as the national Farm Bureau and Grange organizations. I would also like to compare Ohio’s experiences with that of other states to determine if other farmers became similarly involved with the regulation of suburban development. Ultimately, I hope to explore how former farmers brought the cultural inheritance of rural, agricultural, America to the suburbs. In the mid-twentieth century there was a substantial migration from rural farms directly to suburbs—what values and attitudes did the people raised on farms bring with them, and how did this culture affect the way America’s metropolitan areas developed? Among the questions I am thinking about are: To what degree did the legacy of growing up on a farm influence the demand for a suburban home with enough land for a garden, rather than a yard-less apartment or row home? Did the sense of independence gained running a farm and relying on a close-knit rural community influence the desire to keep government small and local? How did the uncertainties of crop yields, commodity prices, and market demand cause farmers to think about land sale as a major source of wealth and income, and how did this affect land use regulation and home ownership? And when, why, and how did agricultural land preservation programs emerge as part of the environmental movement? I hope that by looking into these questions I can contribute toward a more nuanced explanation of twentieth century suburbanization.

Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES

Archival Collections Carl R. Hutchinson Papers, Ohio History Connection’s Archives/Library. (Director of Education, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation) Ohio Planning Conference, Ohio History Connection’s Archives/Library. Douglas R. Stanfield Papers, Ohio History Connection’s Archives/Library. (Director of Legislation, later Executive Vice President, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation)

Journals Ohio Farm Bureau News, 1936-1963; name changed to Buckeye Farm News, 1963-1964 Ohio State Grange Monthly, 1938, 1943-1963. Ohio Township News, 1937-1964.

Published Documents Guitteau, William B. Ohio’s Townships: The Grassroots of Democracy. Toledo, OH: The Toledo Printing Company 1949. Moore, H. R. and W. A. Wayt. Policies and Standards in Rural Zoning, Research Circular 89. Wooster, OH: Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, 1960. Smith, Herbert C. Rural Local Government in Ohio. Columbus, OH: School & College Service, 1940.

Newspapers The commercial database, Newspapers.com, was searched on the terms “rural zoning” and “township zoning” for the years 1947-1963. The database included access to 38 Ohio newspapers during this time period: The Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio) 1853-1947; The Circleville Herald (Circleville, Ohio) 1923-1979; Columbus Evening Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) 1877-1969; The Coshocton Democrat (Coshocton, Ohio) 1842-1956; The Coshocton News (Coshocton, Ohio) 1946; The Coshocton Tribune (Coshocton, Ohio) 1862-1945; The Daily Jeffersonian (Cambridge, Ohio) 1954; The Daily Reporter (Dover, Ohio) 1933-1977; The Daily Times (New Philadelphia, Ohio) 1865-1968; The Delphos Courant (Delphos, Ohio) 1947-1962; Delphos Daily Herald (Delphos, Ohio) 1869-1954; The Evening Independent (Massillon, Ohio) 1930-1976; The Evening Review (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1885-1977; The Journal News (Hamilton, Ohio) 1890-1977; Lancaster Eagle-Gazette (Lancaster, Ohio) 1915-1974;

The Lima News (Lima, Ohio) 1884-1948; The Logan Daily News (Logan, Ohio) 1935-1977; The Marion Star (Marion, Ohio) 1877-1975; Marysville Evening Tribune (Marysville, Ohio) 1936-1962; The Marysville Tribune (Marysville, Ohio) 1893-1951; The Middletown Journal (Middletown, Ohio) 1926-1950; The Newark Advocate (Newark, Ohio) 1882-1977; News-Journal (Mansfield, Ohio) 1891-1977; The Piqua Daily Call (Piqua, Ohio) 1890-1977; Portsmouth; Daily Times (Portsmouth, Ohio) 1858-1970; The Press-Gazette (Hillsboro, Ohio) 1939-1977; The Richwood Gazette (Richwood, Ohio) 1891-1952; The Salem News (Salem, Ohio) 1906-1977; The Sandusky Register (Sandusky, Ohio) 1949-1968; Sunday Times Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) 1928-1959; The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) 1923-1977; Times Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) 1924-1959; Washington Court House Record-Herald (Washington Court House, Ohio) 1937- 1977; Wilmington News-Journal (Wilmington, Ohio) 1879-1977; Xenia Daily Gazette (Xenia, Ohio) 1882-1977; The Zanesville Daily Courier (Zanesville, Ohio) 1852-1944; The Zanesville News (Zanesville, Ohio) 1865-1946; The Zanesville Signal (Zanesville, Ohio) 1923-1959.

SECONDARY SOURCES

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Gilbert, Jess. “Democratic Planning in Agricultural Policy: The Federal-County Land-Use Planning Program, 1938-1942,” Agricultural History 70, no.2 (1996): 233-250. Gilbert, Jess. Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1985. Kruse, Kevin. White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Lapping, Mark B., Thomas L. Daniels, and John W. Keller. Rural Planning and Development in the United States. New York: The Guilford Press, 1989. Lichter, Daniel T. and David L. Brown, “Rural America in an Urban Society: Changing Spatial and Social Boundaries,” Annual Review of Sociology 37 (2011): 565-592. Linder, Mark and Lawrence S. Zacharias. Of Cabbages and Kings County: Agriculture and the Formation of Modern Brooklyn. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999. Meck, Stuart and Kenneth Pearlman, Ohio Planning and Zoning Law Cleveland: Thomson Reuters/West, 2009. Miller, Zane. Suburb: Neighborhood and Community in Forest Park, Ohio, 1935-1976. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981. Simpson, Michael. People & Planning: History of the Ohio Planning Conference. Bay Village, OH: Ohio Planning Conference, 1969. Sugrue, Thomas. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Teaford, Jon C. City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850- 1970. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. Teaford, Jon C. Post-Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge Cities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Turner, William. Ohio Farm Bureau Story 1919-1979. Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, Inc., 1982. Wakeman, Rosemary. “Rethinking Postwar Planning History,” Planning Perspectives 29, no. 2 (2014): 153-163. Walbert, David. Garden Spot: Lancaster County, the Old Order Amish, and the Selling of Rural America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Wortman, Roy T. Progress and Parity: The Ohio Farmers Union, 1910-1982. [Gambier, OH?]: privately printed, n.d., ca. 1983.