Wiregrass: the Transformation Of

WIREGRASS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOUTHEAST ALABAMA, 1880-1930 Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work describes in this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. _______________________________ William N. Byrd, Jr. Certificate of Approval: _____________________ _____________________ David Carter Lindy Biggs, Chair Associate Professor Associate Professor History History _____________________ _____________________ Aaron Shapiro George T. Flowers Assistant Professor Dean History Graduate School WIREGRASS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOUTHEAST ALABAMA, 1880-1930 William N. Byrd, Jr. A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama May 9, 2009 WIREGRASS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOUTHEAST ALABAMA, 1880-1930 William N. Byrd, Jr. Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. ______________________________ Signature of Author ______________________________ Date of Graduation iii VITA William N. (Billy) Byrd, Jr. was born in Burlington, North Carolina. His parents are William and Karen Byrd. Most of his childhood was spent in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He earned his bachelor‟s degree in history in 1994 and master‟s degree in history in 1996 both from Auburn University. Billy taught American history, world history, and geography at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City for nine years as well as teaching American and world history as an adjunct at Columbus State University from 2002. He currently teaches history and geography at Brookstone School in Columbus Georgia. Billy is married to Laura Walters Byrd. They have two children, Redding and Will. They live in Columbus, Georgia. iv DISSERTATION ABSTRACT WIREGRASS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOUTHEAST ALABAMA, 1880-1930 William N. Byrd, Jr. Doctor of Philosophy, May 9, 2009 (M.A. Auburn University, 1997) (B.A. Auburn University, 1994) 254 Typed Pages Directed by Lindy Biggs The southeast corner of Alabama is popularly known as the Wiregrass. The name was originally inspired by the native grass that pioneers found growing abundantly in the region‟s longleaf pine forests. However, by the mid twentieth century the original forest and the region‟s namesake wiregrass was all but gone from the region. What happened to the wiregrass? The vast forest that confronted the first settlers had been replaced by a new landscape of farms and small towns interspersed by a few remnant patches of forest on hillsides and in river bottoms. Settlers moved into the Alabama Wiregrass at the dawn of the nineteenth century, and Native Americans had hunted in region‟s forests for centuries. However, the period of time stretching roughly from 1880 to 1930 marked an era of almost unimaginable change. The region‟s landscape was utterly transformed. The great longleaf forests were v steadily cleared by loggers. The first lumber operations were small, limited by seasonal labor and slow flowing rivers for transportation. Beginning in the late 1880s railroads replaced rivers as the region‟s avenues of commerce and the lumber business expanded to an industrial scale. The big sawmills cleared the forests and eventually shut down their operations, leaving only stumps. Along with the loggers came legions of farmers. Many were poor families looking for homesteads in the piney woods or among the stumps of the ever-expanding cutover. The farmers faced all of the struggles inherent to agriculture in the late nineteenth century South. Despite sincere difficulties, the small farms of the Wiregrass persisted. Forced from cotton monoculture by the boll weevil infestation, these farmers adopted more viable farming practices. The perseverance of the Wiregrass farmers ensured that the longleaf forests and their wiregrass would not return even though the region‟s biggest sawmills had closed. Industrial lumber and modern agriculture worked in tandem to shape both the landscape and the society of the twentieth-century Alabama Wiregrass. vi Style manual used: The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers, 15th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Computer software used: Microsoft Word 2003 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. 1 CHAPTER 1. ALABAMA WIREGRASS . .9 2. OXEN AND RAFTS: PIONEERS OF THE LUMBER BUSINESS. 23 3. COTTON IN THE WIREGRASS. 52 4. FOREST INDUSTRY COMES OF AGE IN THE WIREGRASS . 84 5. THE JACKSON LUMBER COMPANY . 128 6. FORESTS TO FIELDS . 156 7. MODERN AGRICULTURE IN THE WIREGRASS. 179 EPILOGUE: THE BEAR FARM . .223 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 231 viii LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1. Alabama map with counties . 2 2. Longleaf pines in Covington County Alabama. .14 3. Map of the major rivers of Southeast Alabama. .31 4. The Jackson Lumber Company sawmill at Lockhart, Alabama. 132 5. Jackson Lumber Company pole and piling operation. 138 6. Drawing of a Jackson Lumber Company steam loader . 142 7. Population growth in Wiregrass counties, 1860-1920. 174 8. Boll Weevil monument in Enterprise, Alabama . 180 9. Poland China hogs . 208 10. Corn raised on a Geneva County farm in 1926. 217 11. Coffee County farmer plants peanuts using a mule . 219 ix INTRODUCTION The southeast corner of Alabama is called the Wiregrass. It is a popular and frequently used name for the region. Radio and television stations mention serving the Wiregrass. In advertisements businesses claim to be the best or cheapest deal in the Wiregrass. Even the mall in the area‟s biggest city, Dothan, is called Wiregrass Commons. This relatively distinct name originated in the region‟s earliest days of settlement. It refers to the spindly wiry grass the region‟s first pioneers found growing plentifully under the tall longleaf pines1 that dominated the landscape. As with other geographic regions the boundaries of this area can vary depending on who defines it. For the purpose of this study the region will include modern Coffee, Covington, Dale, Geneva, Henry, and Houston counties of Alabama. Bill Byrd grew up on a farm in the rural Alabama Wiregrass in the 1950s and 1960s. Like many of his neighbors and friends, my father can not recall ever seeing any actual wiregrass. This is not to say he is unfamiliar with the landscape. Quite to the contrary, his youth was spent in close proximity to the land in almost every sense. He spent long hours working alongside his parents and siblings in fields of cotton, corn, or peanuts. As a small child he was sent to round up stray livestock in the woods. In the summer he swam and fished in the creeks and rivers. In the fall he combed the forests 1 The longleaf pine is the official state tree of Alabama. For a comprehensive look at America‟s longleaf forests see Lawrence S. Early, Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 1 Figure 1. Alabama Counties 2 hunting squirrel, raccoon, and whitetail deer. My father spent almost his entire childhood outdoors. How then is it possible that he and many others of his generation who were so intimate with the landscape had not encountered the very plant for which the region is named? What happened to the wiregrass in the Alabama Wiregrass? Answering this relatively simple question reveals a rather complex story of environmental, economic, and social transformation. This dissertation has evolved out of that original question. At the core it is a history of people and the landscape, both shaped in their own way by strong economic and social forces. In many ways the transformation of southeast Alabama follows the “New South” mold; small farmers, rural enterprise, improvements in transportation, a growing urban presence in a previously wilderness area. Mark Wetherington takes on the idea of the New South in his 1994 book The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia. In it he outlines the transformations that occurred in the Georgia Wiregrass region after the Civil War. The Georgia Wiregrass, like its namesake in Alabama, was originally a region of longleaf pine forests and wiregrass. According to Wetherington, the growth of railroads and cities, and the arrival of big timber companies were manifestations of the New South as defined by boosters like Henry Grady. He contends that the New South failed to deliver the prosperity promised by its many boosters. Instead, the opening of the previously isolated region of southern Georgia led to the devastation of the region‟s forests by callous outsider capitalists and the end of the independent and self-sufficient lifestyle of the region‟s antebellum inhabitants. The coup de grace in this tragedy was the arrival of King Cotton. The expansion of cotton cultivation into cutover forest lands 3 purportedly reduced the once proud yeomen of the Georgia Wiregrass to an indebted, politically impotent, class of cotton sharecroppers. According to Wetherington, the idyllic agrarian peace of the antebellum Georgia Wiregrass was shattered, not by the Civil War, but by the two-pronged invasion that followed: northern timber capitalists and cotton obsessed southern farmers fleeing soil exhaustion and erosion in the piedmont. 2 This study of the Alabama Wiregrass follows a different course. The direction for this dissertation comes largely from environmental history. Social, political and economic variables are evident, but in concert with these the landscape plays a key role in the region‟s transformative process. There are a number of impressive works of environmental history that provide appropriate models for studies of regional transformation. Some of the earliest remain the most important. In 1979 Richard White published a brilliant book with a dull title. Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County Washington tracks the course of environmental change and the subsequent social change in a single county of Washington state.

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