NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form
This form is used for documenting property groups relating to one or several historic contexts. See instructions in National Register Bulletin How to Complete the Multiple Property Documentation Form (formerly 16B). Complete each item by entering the requested information. For additional space, use continuation sheets (Form 10-900-a). Use a typewriter, word processor, or computer to complete all items
New Submission Amended Submission
A. Name of Multiple Property Listing Skyline Farms Resettlement Project, Jackson County, Alabama, 1931-1960
B. Associated Historic Contexts
1. The Hoover Administration, 1931-1933 2. New Deal Years, 1933-1941 3. World War II Years, 1941-1945 4. A Controversial End, 1944-1946 5. Community in Post-Project Years, 1946-1960 6. New Deal Design at Skyline Farms
C. Form Prepared by
Carroll Van West, Director; Katie S. Randall, Graduate Assistant; Hallie Fieser, Graduate name/title Assistant; Elizabeth M. Humphreys, Project Coordinator and Architectural Historian organization MTSU Center for Historic Preservation date January 2012 street & number 615-898-2947 PO Box 80 MTSU telephone city or town 37132 Murfreesboro state TN zip code e-mail [email protected]
D. Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended, I hereby certify that this documentation form meets the National Register documentation standards and sets forth requirements for the listing of related properties consistent with the National Register criteria. This submission meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR 60 and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and Historic Preservation. (______See continuation sheet for additional comments.)
Signature and title of certifying official Date
State or Federal Agency or Tribal government
I hereby certify that this multiple property documentation form has been approved by the National Register as a basis for evaluating related properties for listing in the National Register.
Signature of the Keeper Date of Action
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 Skyline Farms Resettlement Project, Jackson County, Alabama Alabama, 1931-1960 Name of Multiple Property Listing State
Table of Contents for Written Narrative Provide the following information on continuation sheets. Cite the letter and title before each section of the narrative. Assign page numbers according to the instructions for continuation sheets in National Register Bulletin How to Complete the Multiple Property Documentation Form (formerly 16B). Fill in page numbers for each section in the space below. Page Numbers E. Statement of Historic Contexts (if more than one historic context is documented, present them in sequential order.)
Introduction 1
1. The Hoover Administration, 1931-1933 1
2. New Deal Years, 1933-1941 3
3. World War II Years, 1941-1945 23
4. A Controversial End, 1944-1946 24
5. Community in Post-Project Years, 1946-1960 26
6. New Deal Design at Skyline Farms 28
F. Associated Property Types 30 (Provide description, significance, and registration requirements.)
G. Geographical Data 46
H. Summary of Identification and Evaluation Methods 46 (Discuss the methods used in developing the multiple property listing.)
I. Major Bibliographical References 47 (List major written works and primary location of additional documentation: State Historic Preservation Office, other State agency, Federal agency, local government, university, or other, specifying repository.)
Appendix
Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: This information is being collected for applications to the National Register of Historic Places to nominate properties for listing or determine eligibility for listing, to list properties, and to amend existing listings. Response to this request is required to obtain a benefit in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended (16 U.S.C.460 et seq.). Estimated Burden Statement: Public reporting burden for this form is estimated to average 18 hours per response including time for reviewing instructions, gathering and maintaining data, and completing and reviewing the form. Direct comments regarding this burden estimate or any aspect of this form to the Chief, Administrative Services Division, National Park Service, PO Box 37127, Washington, DC 20013-7127; and the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reductions Project (1024-0018), Washington, DC 20503. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
United States Department of the Interior National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet
Section number E Page 1 Skyline Farms Resettlement Project, Jackson County, Alabama
E. Statement of Historic Contexts
Introduction
The Great Depression of the 1930s proved to be one of the darkest times in United States history, particularly devastating for America’s farmers. Unemployment was at an all time high as the many affected Americans searched for work and hoped for help. Skyline Farms is remembered as one of the most unique socioeconomic experiments to develop out of this need in Alabama’s history. As part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program, the project aided many farmers and their families in what was likely their greatest time of need. Skyline Farms was a resettlement project, established to provide jobs and social welfare to unemployed, sometimes homeless, farmers of Alabama. Forty-three such resettlement projects were attempted across the United States, but Skyline Farms was viewed by many within the federal government as one of the most successful. Historian David Campbell, president of Northeast Alabama Community College concludes, “It was one of the largest in terms of development, expenses, and national publicity.”1 Originally called Cumberland Mountain Farms, the resettlement project in Jackson County, Alabama, served more than two hundred families at its height in 1936, ending as abruptly as it began less than a decade later.2
Properties at Skyline Farms are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for historical significance in Agriculture, Politics/Government, and Social History; Criterion B for associations with prominent persons in the history of the Skyline Farms resettlement project; and Criterion C for significance in Architecture and Community Planning and Development.
1. The Hoover Administration, 1931-1933
Prior to 1930, Jackson County, Alabama was largely agricultural, but a significant portion of unimproved forest dominated the highland plateaus of Cumberland Mountain and Sand Mountain. Although the Cumberland Mountain land was thickly forested and primarily unimproved, there had been settlers living there since the early 19th century. Education of mountain dwellers was scant, but it existed. The early 20th century schools were generally one-room schools taught by a single teacher who commuted from a nearby town and lived during the week with families of the local community. Two early schools on Cumberland Mountain were the Nila School and the Alto School, both established in 1908. These schools continued operation until 1939 when students transferred to the new school at Skyline Farms.3
1 David Campbell, “Skyline Farms,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1546 (accessed September 22, 2010).
2 The name was changed circa 1936 from Cumberland Mountain Farms to Skyline Farms to avoid confusion between it and Cumberland Homesteads in Tennessee, another resettlement project.
3 Wendell Page, ''One Hundred Schools,'' http://www.wendellpage.com/One Hundred Schools.htm (accessed November 15, 2010).
NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet
Section number E Page 2 Skyline Farms Resettlement Project, Jackson County, Alabama
At the end of the 19th century, Jackson County’s roads consisted of “chunks of limestone and mud holes.”4 At the turn of the 20th century the county sold bonds and built roads in the valley portions of the county.5 However, the county made no progress for improving roadways in the mountain regions, and the mountain roads, which had accommodated travelers on stage coach, horseback, mule, and ox cart for a century, remained in use6 A six mile rail spur, built in 1879 to serve the Belmont Coal Mines, continued as the connection of the Pierce Coal Mining Company’s mining operations to the St. Louis and Nashville Railroad in 1907. However, the railroad spur provided industrial rather than commercial transportation. Initial federal involvement on the mountain began in the early 1930s with construction of a road that opened the “wilderness” land for further development. This road would be instrumental not only to the success of the Skyline Farms project but also to the future success of the mountain community as a whole.
In late 1931, the administration of President Herbert Hoover developed the concept of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) as an efficient way to improve the liquidity of the financial system and to assist troubled banks. Congress created the RFC on January 22, 1932. Then in July, Congress extended RFC’s powers to providing loans to public works projects that also had the goal of providing work relief for the needy and unemployed. The RFC would prove to be the earliest federal Depression-era agency to have major public works operations underway in Jackson County.
Jackson County Probate Judge J. M. Money recognized that the new RFC authority opened an opportunity for his community. He argued that Jackson County needed and qualified for RFC assistance since his public works project—building an adequate road for commercial and agricultural traffic to and over Cumberland Mountain—would also put needy people to work. Funding for the construction came from both the federal government through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and the State of Alabama. Construction began in 1933 and involved the cooperation of the Jackson County Commission, the Probate Judge, and several charitable organizations in nearby Scottsboro, Alabama.7 The project employed 3,500 men and 73 overseers who labored by hand with “…sledge hammers, pick axes, shovels, wheelbarrows…oxen and occasionally dynamite.”8 The workers diligently worked ten-hour days at the rate of one dollar per day, while volunteers provided food and transportation for them.9 This modern road, completed in 1934, cut across Cumberland Mountain from Scottsboro to Paint Rock Valley. It opened the “wilderness” plateau for future development and made Cumberland Mountain an ideal location for one of the future resettlement projects.10
4 John Robert Kennamer, Sr., History of Jackson County, Alabama, (1935; repr., Jackson County Historical Association, 1993), 108.
5 John Robert Kennamer, Sr., 128-30.
6 Ibid, 25-6.
7 Joyce Money Kennamer, “The Rise and Decline of Skyline Farms: Success or Failure?” Master’s thesis, Alabama A&M University, 1978, p. 2.
8 Ibid, 3.
9 Ibid, 4.
10 “Jackson Allocated $350,000 for Colony on Cumberland Mountain,” Jackson County Sentinel, February 28, 1935.
NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet
Section number E Page 3 Skyline Farms Resettlement Project, Jackson County, Alabama
Economic development was even underway before the road’s completion. In June 1934, Two Rivers Lumber and Mining Corporation proposed the Two Rivers Project to create jobs and an industrial village on the mountain through an expansion of the existing timber business made possible by the construction of the Cumberland Mountain Road. Company president, W.S. Douglas told the local newspaper that he wished “to fit in with the great Tennessee Valley development envisioned.”11 Congress had approved the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on May 18, 1933, as part of President Roosevelt’s “First One Hundred Days” of legislation. Envisioned as a “regional development project,” TVA’s initial goals “included flood control, improved river navigation, increased fertilizer production, better agricultural practices, natural resource conservation, industrial promotion, and the generation of public electrical power throughout the seven states of the Tennessee Valley.”12 In the summer of 1934, the company had sawmills in operation and had cleared land but it never completed its plan nor built the industrial village.
2. New Deal Years, 1933-1941
The New Deal program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt took over existing RFC projects in March 1933 and by the end of the year, the administration had significantly expanded the RFC role and scope into agricultural assistance, especially the creation of the Commodity Credit Corporation. RFC finished the Cumberland Mountain Road by 1934, and that development led to the next agenda of Judge Money: to acquire federal support for a subsistence homesteads resettlement project on Cumberland Mountain.
The roots of the federal subsistence homestead program lie in the “back to the farm” movement that had been gaining in popularity throughout the 1910s and 1920s, New Deal social theorists believed that subsistence homesteads would provide the means for people in need of relief to own land and produce their own crops. According to reformers, the best living environment for these depressed rural areas was one in which a family had enough land to produce a garden, raise some livestock and poultry, and then have good roads to provide access to nearby factories where cash wages could be earned.13 Not only would the subsistence homesteads better their physical standard of living but would also make them better citizens. David Campbell argues, “Moreover, citizens of the economically troubled, industrializing nation viewed rural life as idyllic and desirable.”14 In addition, Campbell says, “Roosevelt believed that American cities were housing an increasingly disproportionate segment of the population and wanted to see rural land put to better use.”15
The initial development of the federal subsistence homestead program lay with two agencies. The Federal Emergency Relief Agency (FERA) was established May 22, 1933, with Harry Hopkins as administrator. In Alabama, this agency was often referred to at the state level as the Emergency Relief Agency of Alabama
11 “Lumber Corporation Will Develop Vast Cumberland Mountain Into Homesteads,” Jackson County Sentinel, June, 28, 1934.
12 Carroll Van West, Tennessee’s New Deal Landscapes: A Guidebook (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001), 9.
13 Ibid.,129.
14 Campbell, “Skyline Farms.”
15 Ibid.
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(ERA in state and local newspapers) and had offices in Montgomery. In 1934 FERA launched a Rural Rehabilitation program that also embraced the concept of subsistence homesteads. The second agency developed out of the controversial National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), which authorized the creation of a Division of Subsistence Homesteads, located within the Department of Interior.
Then in 1935, the dual programs were reorganized as the Resettlement Administration (RA), except for three larger projects that were given to the Works Progress Administration, the successor agency of FERA.16 The Resettlement Administration was comprised of two divisions. One division focused on resettlement of suburban communities. The other made up the Division of Rural Rehabilitation and Resettlement, which was the division that administered the Skyline Farms project. Nationwide, the RA’s Rural Rehabilitation Division from 1935-1937 supervised twenty-five original FERA communities and thirty- four original Subsistence Homesteads while establishing another thirty-four RA communities.
In 1937 administration of the subsistence homesteads changed again. The Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenancy Act transferred Resettlement Administration projects to the newly created Farm Security Administration (FSA). FSA, like the Federal Emergency Relief Agency (FERA) and the RA before it, focused its efforts on rural rehabilitation and considered subsistence homesteads as the best way to assist struggling farmers.
The Creation of Cumberland Mountain (Skyline) Farms
Cumberland Mountain Farms was one of the first 25 FERA subsistence homestead projects. In late 1934, as the RFC-funded Cumberland Mountain Road neared completion, Jackson County Probate Judge J.M. Money travelled with eight other county delegates to Montgomery, Alabama, the state’s capital, and argued for one of the proposed federal subsistence homesteads to be developed in Jackson County. Judge Money asked the legislature to consider the county’s rich natural resources, abundance of undeveloped land on Cumberland and Sand Mountains, and the residents’ current condition. A large percentage of Jackson County residents were already on state relief rolls, and most were tenant farmers at best. Money asked for a homesteads project so that Jackson County families could become self-sustaining. He also argued that the short-lived Two Rivers project of that summer had at least prepped some of the mountain’s forests for a homesteads project.17 The proposed Cumberland Mountain project, in addition, could provide new opportunities for the thousands of Tennessee Valley families projected to be displaced by the Tennessee Valley Authority that would also impact Jackson County. Judge Money argued that the people displaced in Tennessee would find northeast Alabama very similar to their homes near Knoxville, thus providing an easier transition for them.
By mid-December 1934, Jackson County received the news that it would be the location of one of three resettlement communities in Alabama; the federal government allocated $350,000 for what was called the “colony” at Cumberland Mountain Farms. Despite the later name change circa 1936 to Skyline Farms, and the seven decades since, residents still refer to the project as the “colony.” Construction began immediately. Two hundred farm families already on the relief rolls of the state’s Rural Rehabilitation Program would be eligible for acceptance to the resettlement community. The project would include 13,185 acres of land and
16 West,128-129.
17 “Birmingham News Reporter Writes of Cumberland Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, December 3, 1936.
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would be for white families only. Gee’s Bend in Wilcox County and Prairie Farms in Macon County were similar rural resettlement communities designated for African Americans in Alabama.
The selection process for families to become part of the homestead project was demanding and included only families already on relief rolls, most of them already living in Jackson County. Among the criteria used were men with farm experience and a willingness to live in a rural community. Men had to be in good physical health and between the ages 30 and 55. They had to be of good character, have no criminal record, and have evidence of a good credit rating before the Depression. The age requirement existed because men of that age group often found it most difficult to find employment, yet they were experienced and mature.18 These men also had families to support, therefore, aiding them with employment would aid their families as well.
While construction of homes and a communal center was underway, a bunkhouse and mess hall were erected for the first twenty-five men employed on the project. The bunkhouse and mess hall are no longer extant. The original plan was that these twenty-five men would stay and work throughout the week, returning to their families on weekends. Once all twenty-five men had constructed homes for their families, the project would be expanded until two hundred families had settled there. This arrangement did not last long however. As word circulated as to which families had been chosen to “colonize” the new community, many landlords evicted tenants who were slated to move, and as a result, temporary shacks were erected to house entire families throughout the construction process.19
Officials divided the land into 181 homesteads of forty to sixty acre units (unit size varied based on the number of family members living on the land) connected by a web of local roads, reminiscent of country lanes of the nineteenth century as they wound in and around the farms creating scenic vistas along the way. Each family received materials to clear the land and construct a three to five room home on the property. In addition, each family received an apple tree, mule, barn, and smokehouse.20 On February 7, 1935, the first home opened for inspection. This house is referred to by Skyline residents as “Colony House Number 1” and is extant on Alabama Highway 79. All of the project homes were numbered as they were constructed. Harry N. Ross, the project director under FERA and the Jackson County works supervisor, hosted the first colony house inspection. Judge Money, Congressman Kirby, and FERA’s District Rehabilitation Director, T.P. Lee, made speeches. Planning engineer, A.F. Hawkins; State Director of Rural Rehabilitation, R.K. Green; state works supervisor, F.R. Smith; and J.T. High of the Auburn Extension Service all attended. Mr. and Mrs. Crawford Edwards and their family moved into the first colony house that day. Everyone praised not just the buildings but the furnishings, with the chairs and other furniture mostly made at the colony while women homesteaders wove most of the rugs and linens.
18 David Campbell and David Coombs, “Skyline Farms: A Case Study of Community Development and Rural Rehabilitation,” Appalachian Journal 10(Spring 1983): 244-254.
19 “Cumberland Mountain Farms Physical Set Up,” Skyline Farms Collection, Skyline Farms Heritage Association, The Commissary, Skyline, Alabama.
20 Campbell, “Skyline Farms: A Case Study of Community Development and Rural Rehabilitation,” 12.
NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet
Section number E Page 6 Skyline Farms Resettlement Project, Jackson County, Alabama
Food and clothing were provided to the initial settlers through joint funding from the Federal Emergency Relief Agency (FERA) and the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC). The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) was first conceived as a FERA program in the fall of 1933. It was developed “as a means of circumventing the irony whereby crops piled up in the countryside while the cities went hungry.”21 The FSRC therefore began acquiring surplus commodities from farmers and feeding the unemployed. One of many New Deal agencies, the FSRC was short lived and merged into the Department of Agriculture in the early 1940s.
The symbolic center of Cumberland Mountain Farms was also its administrative heart, where the Commissary, School, Warehouse, Administrative Offices, and Cotton Gin were located at the crossroads of County Road 25 and County Road 107. These key community buildings, erected by the colonists under the supervision of the RA’s construction division, are all extant (although altered). The school, commissary, and administrative office are all three Colonial Revival in style and made of native sandstone. The warehouse and cotton gin are both of frame construction. The warehouse has since been covered in metal siding.
Other community buildings have been lost over time. A women’s work center and a men’s work center once stood in the center of town. The men and women’s work centers are no longer extant. A health clinic was located somewhere in the center of town, possibly the nurse’s private home or possibly housed in the administrative office. The project’s home demonstration agent also kept a private home, which served as the model home for women in the community. The home demonstration agent’s home has not been identified.
In 1938, a hosiery mill was built on Highway 79, north of County Road 107 to provide Skyline residents, particularly women, with work outside the homestead as part of the general subsistence homestead concept. This red brick industrial building features glass block windows and an adjacent water tower. The water tower is 126 feet tall and reportedly holds 50,000 gallons of water.22 Both the hosiery mill and water tower are extant.
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was not the only New Deal agency reshaping the landscape at Cumberland Mountain. Throughout the project’s decade long existence, agencies such as the Works Progress Administration (later renamed the Works Projects Administration or WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the National Youth Administration (NYA) all had an active presence within the community.
The Works Progress Administration, the successor agency for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, was first established in May 1935 and was headed by Harry Hopkins at the federal level. The WPA funded many roads and bridge projects across the south and also funded the construction of hundreds of schools and public buildings. When it did not fund projects, it often provided labor. At Skyline Farms, the WPA funded construction of the community’s second school. Through a grant of $21,277, the new school was constructed over a two-year period and opened in 1938. As with the rest of the farms project, members of the resettlement community were responsible for much of the labor. A WPA official
21 Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal: 1933-1935 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), 278.
22 “Skyline Farms News,” Jackson County Sentinel, August 15, 1939.
NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet
Section number E Page 7 Skyline Farms Resettlement Project, Jackson County, Alabama
however supervised construction and the structure was “government planned.”23 In addition, William Kessler, landscape architect of Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to the design of the school.24 The WPA’s use of Kessler reflects the agency’s employment of local professionals on its projects. The school was an eleven-room building made of native sandstone and featured an auditorium where numerous community functions were held.
Unfortunately, in January 1941, this building was mostly lost to a fire of an undetermined origin. The city had no water system or fire department at the time, and “the blaze was allowed to rage unchecked.”25 A Jackson County Sentinel article says the fire was “not halted until the building was destroyed.”26 The loss was estimated at $70,000 and was partially covered by insurance. The Jackson County Board of Education signed a contract in July 1941 with Douglas Construction Company of Birmingham, Alabama to rebuild the school. The school was rebuilt on the original school site. It is possible that government agencies such as the WPA and NYA were active in rebuilding the school, but there is no mention of it in the newspapers.27 Resident Walter Tidwell worked with the National Youth Administration (NYA) when the school caught fire and remembers that much of the sandstone exterior was salvaged from the fire and relayed on the original foundation. The NYA collected stones to replace the ones that were damaged. Tidwell says the interior suffered the most damage.28
The Civilian Conservation Corps was created under Congress as the Emergency Conservation Work program on March 31, 1933. The name was changed to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1937 when the agency was reauthorized. Over time, the CCC proved one of the most popular New Deal agencies. Under the CCC, more than three million unemployed men between the ages of 18 and 25 were employed to work on projects related to the conservation and development of natural resources. It is unclear the impact the CCC had specifically at Skyline Farms, but according to the research of Robert G. Pasquill, the impact probably was limited to soil conservation work carried out by CCC Company 5432 in Jackson County during 1937.29
The National Youth Administration played a more prominent role at the homesteads. Established in June 1935 as part of the Roosevelt administration’s implementation of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, the NYA provided work to needy students between the ages of 18 and 25. West describes the NYA’s goal: “The administration saw NYA’s primary value as providing funds and work scholarships to keep needy
23 “Jackson Gets Big WPA Allocation on Local Projects,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 31, 1935.
24 “Land-Breaking for School Building is Attended by Many,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 19, 1936.
25 “Skyline School Building Burned,” Jackson County Sentinel, January 7, 1941.
26 Ibid.
27 “Contract Let for Skyline School,” Jackson County Sentinel, July 1, 1941.
28 Interview with Walter Tidwell by Skyline Farms Heritage Association’s Cindy Rice.
29 “Local Made Movies Here Next Week,” Jackson County Sentinel, June 20, 1935; Robert G. Pasquill, The Civilian Conservation Corps in Alabama, 1933-1942: A Great and Lasting Good (Tuscaloosa, University Press of Alabama, 2008), 93.
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students in high school and college under its Student Aid program.”30 This goal was evident in Skyline Farms’ NYA program. Local supervisor of the NYA, Clifford Anderson, developed the program for Skyline. The program consisted of thirty-five boys and ten girls, drawing $450.00 collectively each month for their pay. A second division of the NYA was a school work-aid group, giving part-time work to students 16 years of age and older. Each student could earn up to $6.00 a month, but they had to remain enrolled in school while they worked. These students worked on various projects, including clearing ditches to control flooding and building small bridges across ditches in the drainage system. The younger boys built washstands to contribute to the health program and bookcases for teachers. Girls in the second division assisted teachers with classroom materials and posters.
Throughout the project’s duration, the National Youth Administration (NYA) accomplished many things for the Skyline Farms community. Older boys in the program made heaters for the school out of recycled oil drums. They also built playground equipment and constructed a park on the school grounds as well as one on Larkinsville Road. The boys also established a nursery in which they collected specimens of all native flowers and shrubs and transplanted them for preservation. One of the most extensive projects attempted by the NYA boys was reclaiming of the Confederate Veterans’ cemetery east of the community’s center. This particular project received special appropriations from the NYA. According to one newspaper report, the cemetery consisted of ten acres and was covered in natural growth. NYA boys were responsible for clearing the land and repairing the markers. A wall of native stone was constructed at the entrance.31 Based on the location of the cemetery and the extant stone entrance to Skyline Cemetery, it is believed that this reference to a Confederate Veteran’s cemetery refers to what is now Skyline Cemetery on County Road 142 and Cemetery Road.
Similarly, girls of the NYA program were hard at work. They conducted a health survey of sanitation by inspecting all houses and premises within the community. They also assisted in clearing the grounds for the school park. In addition to Student Aid programs, the NYA furnished a full-time librarian for the community library. The library was located in the school.
Along with the presence of several federal agencies, three state agencies played important roles in the development of Skyline Farms. The Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now known as Auburn University, gave professional agricultural advice through its Extension Division. The State Health Department assisted by playing an advisory role, and the State Department of Education partnered with the Jackson County school board to make materials available for the development of educational programs.32
Residents of Skyline Farms were members of the farm cooperative and together owned the commissary. They also formed their own marketing association and enjoyed cooperative health care benefits. The federal government subsidized these projects. Local elections were organized for the first time in May 1937 to elect the community council. Also in 1937, farmers hoped to plant their first cash crop, Irish potatoes, not
30 West, 22.
31 “Extensive NYA Program at Cumberland Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, November 5, 1936.
32 “Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms,” published by FERA, located in the collection at the Commissary in Skyline, Alabama.
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the cotton that reformers from outside of the region had initially planned for the project when they built a community cotton gin. Cotton had dominated Jackson County for years, accounting for 74% of the county’s farms in 1930, according to the Farm Security Administration. But cotton was not the only cash crop; Cumberland Mountain potatoes also became important commodities.
Despite the project’s successful launch from 1935 to 1937, one problem remained unanswered—how could the considerable federal investment for private ownership ever be repaid. For the next several years, it was unclear not only to the farm families but also to government officials how farmers would repay their debt to the government. Although it was often discussed in the two newspapers prominent in Jackson County, the Jackson County Sentinel and The Progressive Age, definitive procedures for repayment were not widely known or understood by residents. This miscommunication was likely one of the greatest failures in the project’s history. In her book on New Deal landscapes, Phoebe Cutler discusses this issue as it pertains to the history of Cumberland Homesteads in Tennessee. She says, “The government’s revolving set of rules and fluctuating credo only exacerbated the confusion.”33 It is however apparent from newspaper articles that settlers were expected to pay on their debt in one way or another. For instance, one article states that “suitable” work would be established for women of the colony so they too could “work out their indebtedness to the government.”34
Skyline Farms and American Popular Culture
Skyline Farms fostered a strong folk music and dance program as part of the overall federal initiative to create new vibrant communities out of the destruction of the Depression since music “served as a means of ‘self-expression’ and ‘relaxation.’”35 Skyline Farms is significantly associated with the federal folk music initiatives associated with two giants in American music, Charles Seeger and Bascom Lunsford. In the mid- 1930s Charles Seeger was music advisor in the Special Skills Division of the RA. He advocated that federal programs should promote a “cultural democracy” with two primary goals: “the integration of all the arts into a culture based on a community rather than personal values and the politicization of the folk so that music, rather than being an end in itself, would become instead ‘a means for achieving larger social and economic goals.’”36 In 1936 Seeger was responsible for placing a teacher, Margaret Valiant of Memphis, at Skyline Farms to aid in the development and success of music and dance there. Valiant recalled that Seeger wanted his music program “`basically to restore a sense of confidence in the people at that time who were very frightened by changes that they did not anticipate.’”37
33 Cutler, The Public Landscape of the New Deal, 117.
34 “Colonization Plan for Jackson County Moving Rapidly,” The Progressive Age, January 24, 1935.
35 Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,” 249.
36 Loyal Jones, Minstrel of Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 121.
37 Jannelle Warren-Findley, ed., “Journal of a Field Representative by Charles Seeger and Margaret Valiant,” Ethnomusicology 24(May 1980): 173. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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Seeger later sent Bascom Lamar Lunsford to Skyline Farms to both nurture and develop its music potential. In 1936 Seeger had attended Lunsford’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina (which Lunsford established in 1928). Seeger told his superiors in Washington that Lunsford’s festival was far superior to others he had attended because “`the rural element predominated to such an extent that even the hardened urban visitor felt partly absorbed by it. I should say that I think it is a very worthwhile affair.”38 Lunsford was a lawyer, musician (banjo player and singer), festival promoter, and an Appalachian folk music historian. He was known as the “Minstrel of the Appalachians.”39 While defending a client who had been accused of moonshining in 1920, Lunsford wrote one of his most famous songs, “Mountain Dew” or “Old Mountain Dew.”40 The song was released in 1928, and covered by famous singers, Lulu Belle and Scotty Wiseman, among others.41 Lunsford was a “walking library of Appalachian arts,” argued historian Loyal Jones. “He was a remarkable performer, recording more than 300 songs, tunes and tales from memory for posterity. But more importantly to him, he sought to present what he considered to be the best of mountain performers to a public that was growing away from the old folk traditions.”42
After two weeks of training with Seeger in Washington,” Lunsford headed to his new assignment of teaching and promoting dance and music at Skyline Farms.43 Skyline Farms offered numerous events promoting music and dance, and Lunsford was an integral component to the success of the events and the music and dance tradition at Skyline Farms. There was some sort of music or dance event occurring on any given day or night at Skyline. Fiddlers’ conventions were held at the school auditorium, offering a chance to win prizes.44 In addition to these conventions, a square dance was held every Friday evening in the community center.45 On September 25, 1936, Cumberland Mountain Farms hosted a “Negro Minstrel,” which offered “vocal solos, duets, quartets, buck dancing, banjo picking, string music and the usual end men with their stories.”46 In all likelihood these performers were whites in blackface, a common form of entertainment at the time. After the minstrel, the usual Friday evening square dance was held. Musicians from Skyline Farms were even broadcast over the WAPI radio station in Birmingham, Alabama on August 1, 1936 from 5:00pm to 6:00pm. The Jackson County Sentinel reported, “The Night Riders band is one of the best string bands in the South and has made appearances at many places over the country and they are of course, a
38 Ibid., 120.
39 Ibid, 93.
40 Ibid., 34.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid 67, 121.
44 “Old-Time Fiddlers Convention,” Jackson County Sentinel, November 21, 1935.
45 Campbell and Coombs, 249.
46 “Cumberland Farms to have Big Negro Minstrel,” Jackson County Sentinel, September, 24 1936.
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regular feature at the colony. Wherever the Night Riders appear they always make a hit and are invited and urged to come back again.”47
Lunsford introduced singers and dancers from all over the region to the programs at Skyline Farms. At one particular event, according to a local newspaper advertisement, “Mr. Tom Starkey of Hollywood and Mr. Sherman Crye of Sand Mountain are invited to bring a team of square dancers… Mrs. James McClain, an excellent fiddler, will render several old time tunes such as ‘Roaring River,’ ‘Grey Eagle,’ and ‘Rocky Road to Diner’s house.’”48 The Skyline Farms band and dancers did not just perform locally. Lunsford invited the Skyline Farms band and dancers to perform at his Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville in August 1937.49 The announcement was made at a local event held in the Skyline Farms school auditorium in front of a crowd of approximately 350 people on March 9, 1937 by Lunsford himself. 50 The Asheville appearance was the first of several significant concerts for the Skyline musicians and dancers.
On August 5, 1937, twenty-nine musicians and dancers from Skyline left for the festival.51 They performed for an audience of 2,000 to 5,000 people “from every state in the union” and representing five foreign countries.52 Artist and photographer Ben Shahn of the Special Skills Division, was present at the festival too. He was impressed by the Skyline band and dancers, and would later visit the colony to photograph them.
The Skyline Farms band and dance team performed at 8:00 pm on the first two nights of the festival. The band performed several times on the closing night as well. In addition to performing on stage, the Skyline band was the only band from the festival that was broadcast over the radio. The broadcast lasted from 11:45 to 12:00 on Saturday morning.53 Elton Kennamer, a member of the Skyline dance team, was sightseeing forty miles from Asheville when he heard the broadcast coming from the radio of a parked car. He reportedly “heard a dog barking over the radio. Immediately he recognized Chester Allen’s ‘Rattler’ and
47 “Night Riders Over WAPI Radio,” Jackson County Sentinel, August 6,1936.
48 “String Music and Play at Skyline Farms March 9,” November 21, 1935, accessed at the Commissary, Skyline, Alabama.
49 “Mountain Dance and Folk Festival,” Folk Heritage Committee, May 2010, http://www.folkheritage.org/ourhistory.htm (accessed November 9, 2010). The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival was established in 1928 and has continued annually ever since. It is the “oldest continuously running folk festival in the nation,” and continues to showcase Appalachian music, dance, and culture.
50 “Skyline Square Dance Team to Attend Ashville Festival, “The Progressive Age, March 1937.
51 “Musicians and Dancers from Skyline Farms Visit Asheville, North Carolina,” Jackson County Sentinel, 17 August 1937. The following people attended: Mr. and Mrs. W. I. Floyd, Mr. and Mrs. Otis Sharp, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Anderson, Mr. and Mrs. N. E. Waldrop, Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Sentell, Mr. and Mrs. Elton Kennamer, Mr. and Mrs. Verbon Hodges, Miss Vesta Paradise, Miss Maude Lindsay, Miss Opal Holsenback, J. S. Shavers, Sister Ada Clarke, Jack Bradley, Mrs., Robin Adair, Pronce Whorton, Oakland Paradise and Orville. O’Shields. The band was composed of N. L. Green, Chester Allen, Thomas Holt, Joe Sharp, Clifford Anderson, and R. Rousseau.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
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he and his entire party swarmed around the automobile to listen.”54 The success at Asheville encouraged Skyline dancers and musicians to continue performing their music beyond the Cumberland Mountain.
The Skyline Farms Band and square dancers were nationally recognized in 1938 when Eleanor Roosevelt, the nation’s First Lady, invited the Skyline band and dance group to perform in Washington, D. C. at a White House garden party for women government executives. Historian Wayne Flint has emphasized the importance of this concert in his history of Alabama: “Alabama’s white folk music traditions found its way out of state in a new way.”55 The Jackson County Sentinel reported, “Chester Allen, famous comedian musician, received a special invitation to the affair and will do his stuff with a new number or two.”56 Approximately thirty members of the Skyline community departed on May 10, 1938 for Washington, D. C.,57 with expenses paid by the federal government.58 The Skyline band and dance team performed on May 12th on the White House lawn.59 The Jackson County Sentinel reported:
The White House grounds rang with mountain music, hound dog wails and the shuffle of dancing feet Thursday. Twenty-two Alabama boys and girls, who helped homestead a hilltop to escape the depression, sang, danced and fiddled for 2,323 garden party guests.
The gingham-clad girls and coatless boys who “Threaded the Needle” and “Rang Up Four” were young folks from Skyline Farms, a government aided community near Scottsboro, Alabama. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was entertaining women executives of government departments, announced her entertainment had come 750 miles by car to “play” just as they do regularly on Friday nights in their own community house…in the Lower Cumberland Mountains.
Ike Floyd, smiling homesteader in charge of timber cutting in the community was master of ceremonies.
Not the least self conscious, a six-piece orchestra began with “Alabama Jubilee,” When they played “Fox Chase,” Chester Allen who doubled on the fiddle and guitar wailed like a dog.
54 Ibid.
55 Wayne Flint, Alabama in the Twentieth Century (Tuscaloosa: University Press of Alabama, 2004), 519.
56 “Group from Skyline Farms On Way To Washington, D.C.,” Jackson County Sentinel, May 10, 1938.
57 Joyce M. Kennamer, 25. The following members of the Skyline community were present at the White House garden party: Mr. and Mrs. W. I. Floyd, Willie Rodgers, Opal Holsonback, Mrs. A. Walker, Prince Whorton, Mrs. E. E. Wilson, John Lindsey, J. W. Holmand, Edith Green, Mr. and Mrs. Elton Kennamer, Mr. and Mrs. N. E. Waldrop, Walter Freeman, Juanita Jarnagin, Jane Floyd, M. L. Lands, Mr. and Mrs. Otis Sharpe, Mr. and Mrs., W. N. Ross, H. L. Green, Joe Sharpe, Clifford Anderson, Thomas Holt, Reuben Rousseau, and Chester Allen (Old Rattler).
58 Campbell and Coombs, 249.
59 “Group from Skyline Farms On Way To Washington, D.C,” unknown date and title, article part of collection at the Commissary, accessed at the Commissary, Skyline, Alabama.
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Then the tune “Cacklin Hen” and Allen’s voice still did tricks. Eight couples danced the figures kept alive in the South despite the modern round dances.60
The Washington Post also covered the performance. It reported:
A highlight of the afternoon’s entertainment was the program of mountain music and old fashioned square dances presented on the improvised stage at one side of the lawn. Twenty- two Alabama boys and girls came 750 miles by automobile from Skyline Farms near Scottsboro, Ala. to put on the program…
Master of ceremonies was Ike Floyd, homesteader in charge of timber cutting in the community. As he called the figures eight couples “waved the ocean, waved the sea,” “opened and shut the garden gate,” and “circled left,” while the six-piece string orchestra made mountain music. The “fox chance” duet, in which Chester Allen starred, was one of the first numbers in the program that began with “Alabama Jubilee” and concluded with an “Over the Mountain” song. Judging by the thunder of applause following each performance, the gingham-clad girls and coatless boys were highly successful as entertainers.61
According to Chester Allen’s son, Roger, when Chester performed at the White House, “the President laughed so hard and was so amused by Chester’s ‘bark’ he could not quit slapping his knee.”62
While in the nation’s capital, the “Skyline Farms group” also recorded several songs for Alan Lomax, director of the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song. Lomax’s recordings included the influential song “These Cumberland Mountain Farms,” later recorded by Woody Guthrie, the Grateful Dead, and many others, “Salty Dog,” and “John Henry.”63
The following year, the Skyline Farms group performed again at the White House. The Roosevelts invited Lunsford for a special performance for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. This was the first time a reigning British Monarch visited the United States of America. Mrs. Roosevelt wanted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to hear a variety of American music. She invited numerous singers and musicians besides Lunsford, including Marian Anderson, Lawrence Tibbett, Kate Smith, and Alan Lomax.64 This was certainly a highlight of Lunsford’s extensive career. For the special occasion, Lunsford brought Sam Queen, Queen’s
60 “Skyline Farms Group Make a Hit in Washington,” Jackson County Sentinel, May 17, 1938.
61 Hope Ridings Miller, “Cabinet Wives. Including Mmes. Morsenthau. Swanson, Wallace, Roper and Miss Perkins Assist First Lady as Hostesses,” The Washington Post, May 13, 1938.
62 Interview with Roger Allen by Middle Tennessee State University graduate student Katie Randall, September 9, 2010.
63 Skyline Farms Band recordings are available in the Archive of American Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, AFS 2943A1-2945B, which contains three discs and eleven songs. See http://www.loc.gov/folklife/guides/Alabama.html for additional details.
64 Jones, 71.
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Soco Gap Dancers, and the Skyline Farms dancers.65 This performance was an incredible and rare opportunity for the Skyline Farms dancers.
Several members of the Skyline band went on to a certain amount of success in the music industry. Joe Sharp, the guitarist and mandolinist of the Skyline Farms band, became famous for his version of “Cotton Mill Colic,” recorded by Alan Lomax in 1938 for the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song project. David McCarn had originally recorded “Cotton Mill Colic” in May 1930. McCarn was laid off from his job as a textile worker in Victory Yarn Mills in South Gastonia, North Carolina. McCarn told two interviewers in 1961 that he wrote the song “due to the conditions of the textile mills in the South at that time and the hard times we was having…things were just about that bad.”66 His former mill superintendent did not see the humor in the satirical song when he heard it and blacklisted McCarn from the mill.67
“Cotton Mill Colic” struck a chord with many people who could relate to the lyrics. The song was used in a United Textile Workers union rally in Danville, Virginia.68 The song reached Southern Appalachia through aural traditions and radio broadcasts. Sharp learned the song and recorded it for Lomax during his visit to Washington, D.C. in 1938. Historian Peter Huber argued, “[Sharp’s version] came to be enshrined as the definitive aural version of the song.”69 In 1941, Lomax published a transcription of Sharp’s version of the song in his anthology, Our Singing Country: A Second Volume of American Ballads and Folk Songs.70
Chester Allen, a member of the Skyline Farms band, appeared on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, which was a popular country music stage show that was broadcast over CBS radio every Saturday. The show moved from Ohio to Mount Vernon, Kentucky in November 1939; therefore, Allen most likely performed on the Ohio stage. Thousands of people from all over the country attended the show, and thousands more listened in over the radio. Allen performed with artists such as Red Foley and Ernest Tubb. According to Chester Allen’s son, Roger Allen, “When Chester played with Red Foley and saw Foley’s extensive wardrobe, having only one suit of his own, Chester was so embarrassed, he crouched in a corner until it was his time to play.”71 Allen also performed on the ABC affiliate of Chicago known as WLS.72 He also “recorded for Victor on the Bluebird label.”73 His most well known hit recording was “New Huntsville Jail.”74 Allen is listed as a Music Achiever in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
65 Ibid.
66 Patrick Huber, Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 200.
67 Ibid., 202.
68 Ibid., 209.
69 Ibid., 210.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Roger Allen.
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The success of the music programs at Skyline Farms does not fully explain why the project was so thoroughly documented by some of the best photographers of the New Deal era, but a close correlation existed between the allure of Skyline music and the quality of artists who documented the project. The best example is Charles Seeger’s pivotal 1938 article in the Magazine of Art about his music program and his ideas of what constituted folk music. Seeger featured a Ben Shahn photograph of the Skyline Farms group and added the caption, “The music of the masses is still going strong in America, losing, as it goes, many old songs but healthily adding many new.”75 A Seeger biographer noted that the Shahn’s photograph “was especially appropriate in that it represented the major setting for Seeger’s personal baptism in rural music.”76
But that single Shahn image was just one of dozens of Skyline Farms produced by his camera and those of his esteemed colleagues Arthur Rothstein and Carl Mydans, as part of the Resettlement Administration’s huge photography program.77 “We tried to present the ordinary in an extraordinary manner,” argued photographer, Ben Shahn. “But that’s a paradox, because the only thing extraordinary about it was that it was so ordinary. Nobody had ever done it before, deliberately. Now it’s called documentary.”78 Shahn was one of three Resettlement Administration photographers who photographed Skyline Farms between 1935 and 1937. The photographs taken by these three men capture the “ordinary” lives of the colonists at Skyline Farms, and serve as an exemplary case study into the methodology of this RA program.
Rexford G. Tugwell, a professor of economics at Colombia University and close advisor to Roosevelt, directed the Resettlement Administration.79 Tugwell was well aware that some of the programs administered by the RA could generate controversy, so he created the Informational Division, which was to showcase the RA’s successes. In order to showcase the benefits of more “controversial” RA programs, Tugwell wanted to hire someone familiar with photography, believing that photographs would be the best way to publish the program’s successes. “Tugwell realized that he would have to rely heavily on photographs to tell the story of the RA. Aware of the importance of familiarizing the public, especially city dwellers, with the plight of the rural poor, he felt that words alone would not create a groundswell of support.”80 He knew that photography
74 Ibid.
75 Charles Seeger, “Music in America,” Magazine of Art (July 1938): 411-13, 435-36.
76 Archie Green, “Charles Louis Seeger (1886-1979),” Journal of American Folklore 92(Oct.-Dec. 1979): 396.
77 Roy Emerson Stryker and Nancy C. Wood, In This Proud Land: America, 1935-1943, as seen in the FSA Photographs (New York: Galahad Books, 1973), 7.
78 Davis Pratt, The Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), x.
79 Jack F. Hurley, Portrait of a Decade; Roy Stryker and the Development of Documentary Photography in the Thirties (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), 30.
80 Michael L. Carlebach, “Documentary and Propaganda: The Photographs of the Farm Security Administration,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 8 (Spring 1988): 15-17.
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would be an effective way to document the problems in America that the program addressed, bringing both its problems and successes to the eyes of Americans. In his words, “We introduced Americans to America.”81
In 1935, Tugwell hired his Columbia colleague (and former student) Roy Emerson Stryker and gave him the title, Chief of the Historical Section.82 His job description was vague and called upon him to “direct the activities of investigators, photographers, economists, sociologists and statisticians…to make accurate descriptions of the various… phases of the Resettlement Administration, particularly with regard to the historical, sociological and economic aspects of the several programs and their accomplishments.”83 At first, Stryker was unsure exactly what his job was supposed to encompass. He chose photography as a starting point, and he hired Arthur Rothstein to fill the photographic requirement.84 Initially, Rothstein was ordered to photograph virtually every piece of paper that was associated with Stryker and his office.85
Rothstein was not only Stryker’s first photographer, but he was also the first, in 1935, to photograph what was then called Cumberland Mountain Farms.86 He departed for his assignment in the fall of 1935 and extensively photographed the region using a 35mm camera. On August 28, 1935, Rothstein wrote to Stryker and said, “After I am finished with Louisiana, I will continue to the Cumberland Farms, Alabama and the Irwinville Farms, Georgia.”87 Rothstein photographed at Cumberland Mountain in the beginning of September focusing on the lives of colonists and new construction within the colony.
Rothstein’s photographs tell the story of the establishment of the colony, from beginning to end, and of the people involved, similar to images taken by his colleagues at other RA projects across the nation. The titles of some of the images offer insight into the story Rothstein and the RA were trying to tell about the community. The title of one particular photograph states, “Sawmill. New houses are built with timber cut on the project,” which gave the public insight into the self-sufficiency and success of the community. All in all, Rothstein’s images portrayed Skyline Farms in a positive light and showed the rapid progress of the community, which, in turn, portrayed the government’s programs as successful. The photographs serve as a photographic documentary of the establishment of the colony and the building methods implemented.
81 Stryker and Wood, 9.
82 Hurley, 36.
83 Ibid., 36.
84 Ibid., 37.
85 Ibid, 30.
86 Hurley, 82.
87 Letter from Arthur Rothstein to Roy E. Stryker, 28 August, 1935, Roy Stryker Papers, University of Louisville Library, Special Collections.
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Rothstein made at least one more trip to Skyline Farms in 1937.88 Rothstein took images relating to community life during this trip, including images of the cooperative store, the school, and several colonists (See Figures 18-22). Stryker may have advised Rothstein to take photographs of specific things that Rothstein missed the first time he visited, since Rothstein seemingly took photographs of everything he did not capture on his first trip. The two sets of photographs serve as a more complete representation of the colony, from the transition of new homesteaders to a representation of everyday life in the colony.
The second RA photographer to photograph Skyline Farms was Carl Mydans who had a background in journalism and previously worked for the Boston Globe and Boston Herald.89 He was deeply interested in the ordinary person and their everyday life. “With his trained reporter’s eye, Mydans quickly developed a style of his own that fitted his people oriented approach,” argued historian F. Jack Hurley. “With his small cameras, he was able to achieve pictures that were striking yet intimate.”90 Mydans arrived in Skyline in 1936, one year after Rothstein.91 True to his style and interest, Mydans photographed people at Skyline, with the majority of his photographs depicting school scenes (see Figures 23-30). Most of these photographs portray children engaged in various school related activities, such as reading and writing. The photographs certainly portray the newly built school at Skyline and the school system in a positive light. The children appear studious, and the teachers appear to be actively engaged with the students. This was most likely one of Mydans’s last assignments under Stryker, as he left the RA to work for Life magazine later that year.
In 1937, a third RA photographer, Ben Shahn, photographed Skyline Farms, focusing on the music and dance programs at the homesteads. Shahn was not a photographer by trade. He was a painter, designer, and muralist. Shahn was born in Lithuania in 1898 and immigrated to the United States when he was six. He was apprenticed to a lithographer in 1911. He continued his job as a lithographer until 1930. He attended New York University and later City College of New York. Shahn was hired as an assistant by the renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to work on the Rockefeller Center frescoes. Shahn also did frescoes in the main corridor of the Social Security Building (now the Federal Security Building) in Washington, D.C. Soon, he became recognized for his fine art skills, and Tugwell commissioned him to do a mural for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Tugwell later asked Shahn to work for the Resettlement Administration as an artist for the Special Skills Division. For a short time (6 weeks in Ohio), he was an unofficial part-time photographer for Stryker. He told an interviewer, "I had a big mural to do, and photography ceased to interest me, suddenly. Suddenly, just like that, I felt I would only be repeating myself and stopped it dead."92
88 Letter from Roy E. Stryker to Arthur Rothstein, March 3, 1937, Roy Stryker Papers, University of Louisville Library, Special Collections, Louisville, Kentucky.
89 Hurley, 42.
90 Ibid.
91 The Library of Congress dates the images to June 1936, but LIFE has several listed with the date January 1, 1936.
92 Oral history interview with Ben Shahn, April 14, 1964, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/shahn64.htm, accessed June 5, 2011.
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Shahn shared a studio in Manhattan with Walker Evans, an accomplished and famous photographer, before he was employed by the Resettlement Administration and gained fame from his work in southern Alabama. Shahn felt that his ability to sketch in the field was inadequate, and he wanted to learn how to use a camera to take images for reference instead of sketching. His brother acquired a Leica camera for him. “My knowledge of photography was terribly limited. I must tell you this because I thought I could always ask Walker to show me what to do and so on, and it was kind of an indefinite promise that he made.”93 Evans gave Shahn his first lesson, while Evans was running out the door for an assignment. He told Shahn, “Well, it’s very easy, Ben. F9 on the sunny side of the street, F4.5 on the shady side of the street. For a twentieth of a second hold your camera steady.”94
Shahn’s images of a square dance at Skyline Farms show the spontaneity of his style. A short article in the Jackson County Sentinel acknowledged Shahn’s visit to Skyline on August 11, 1937. The article reported that Shahn “saw the dance team and heard the band in Asheville, N.C. [Shahn] seemed to be favorably taken with this feature of Skyline Farms and made it a point to come on here for further details.”95 The majority of Shahn’s photographs from the visit depict a square dance and various musicians. The newspaper reported that Shahn was “making photographs of the community activities of various Resettlement projects [throughout the] country.”96 In addition to an extensive collection of photographs of the square dance and musicians, Shahn also photographed folk crafts, such as chair making and “pictures of the N.Y.A boys and girls and their activities.”97 Shahn’s photographs showcase various community activities and entertainment available to the colonists in a positive light.
The photographs Shahn took at Skyline are certainly a valuable source of information about Skyline Farms, but they are also an important part of Shahn’s photographic career. Just as Mydans left the RA, shortly after photographing Skyline, so too did Shahn. Davis Pratt, curator of photographs at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University argued, “Shahn’s serious involvement with photography was relatively short. When he left the FSA in 1938 he ended his extensive use of photography.”98 The photographs taken of the people at Skyline are likely some of the last photographs Shahn took of people. “In 1959 my wife and I went to Asia, and I took a camera along to do what I had done years ago – photograph people,” wrote Shahn. “I could not
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
95 “Resettlement Official Photographs Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, August 17, 1937. When Shahn visited Skyline Farms, he most likely was not working directly under Stryker. He only worked directly under Stryker for a short time while photographing in Ohio. The Mountain Folk Festival at Asheville, North Carolina where Shahn saw the Skyline Band and dance team was an event sponsored by the Special Skills Division. This was the division Shahn worked for and likely explains his presence at the festival.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid. The photographs Shahn took of the N.Y.A boys’ and girls’ activities are currently not available through the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Division.
98 Pratt, x.
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get interested in it… I found it was gone. I still love to look at photographs of people, but I couldn’t make them myself anymore.”99
Although part of the reason Shahn left the RA was due to lack of interest, he was not fond of some of Stryker’s methods, which also influenced his decision. Stryker exerted immense control over his photographers, which can be seen in some of the images of Skyline Farms. Arguably, one of the most startling and controversial to his photographers was his use of a hole-puncher. Stryker punched a hole into negatives he deemed substandard or redundant, “a process they called ‘killing’ the image.”100 The punched hole insured that the image would never be printed and seen by the public. “So he sat down with his hole- puncher and made his choices. That did not sit well with the photographers,” argued Beverly Brannan, a curator of photography in the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division.101
Examples of the “killed” images can be seen in the photographs of Skyline Farms. These “killed” images were hole-punched in many different places on the individual photograph, which does not illustrate any particular pattern used by Stryker.102 Photographs of Skyline Farms are not only an important photographic documentary of the colony and the people that lived there, but they also serve as an excellent case study of Stryker’s selection process, and a significant aspect of the end of Mydans’s and Shahn’s photographic careers with the RA.
Handicrafts and Social Activities
Many colonists, who relocated to Skyline Farms, did not know one another, so government officials believed that creating social opportunities in a community setting was very important. Campbell argues, “Carl Taylor, a rural sociologist employed with the Subsistence Homestead Division, believed strongly in creating this sense of community. His ideas reflect the theory that went into the planning of Skyline Farms.”103 He continues, “Taylor believed that ‘community consciousnesses would bind together new communities.”104 Music and dance were part of the community bonding process as much as the efforts to enhance the production of handicrafts at the homesteads. Furniture making, quilting, and sewing, were heavily emphasized at Skyline Farms. Campbell argues that participating in crafts would not only “serve as a source of community pride,” but the crafts that were produced could be sold, providing additional income to
99 Ibid., x-xi.
100 Meg Smith, “Hard Times in Sharp Focus: Online Collection Shows America, 1935-1945,” Library of Congress, Library of Congress, August 1998, http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9808/fsa-osi.html, October 31, 2010.
101 Ibid.
102 There are several examples of “killed” images of Skyline Farms available on the Library of Congress Web site, but all are untitled. The images can be found by first searching the Prints and Photographs Online Division (keyword: Skyline Farms Alabama), then clicking on an image, and then selecting, “Browse neighboring items by call number.” All of the images taken of Skyline Farms are not currently available on the Library of Congress Web site, although it offers the most extensive collection available online.
103 Campbell and Coobs, “Skyline Farms: A Case Study of Community Development and Rural Rehabilitation.”
104 Ibid.
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colonists.105 Handicrafts were gendered occupations at Skyline, as men participated in furniture making, while women practiced sewing and quilting.
One of the more distinct handicrafts of Skyline was the craft of furniture making. Most of the furniture in the colony homes was built by J. A. Houston in a small shop, which had “as its only machine a homemade lathe.”106 The location of Houston’s shop is unclear. No extant shop building has been identified. Houston, and perhaps others, made many different kinds of furniture, including: cabinets, bedsteads, tables, and chairs. The chairs were fashioned in the traditional Appalachian style. “Comfort is the defining feature of a traditional southern Appalachia chair,” argues Patrick Velde. “The Appalachian chair, marked by rear posts which bend backwards and away from the woven seat, allows the sitter to lean back and engage in contemplative sitting.”107 The rear posts that bend slightly backwards and the woven seats are characteristics of the chairs made at Skyline. A 1917 instructional article on how to reseat a chair by Harriet Cushman Wilkie contains an illustration that closely resembles one of the styles of chairs made at Skyline.
The small ladder-back sized chair was not the only type of chair made at Skyline. There was not a universal style of an Appalachia chair, rather the chairs shared basic characteristics, and the design of the chair was open to the creative interpretation of the crafter. “It is important to note that there was also a generous flexibility of design within the traditional Appalachian style,” argues Patrick Velde. “While many southern craftsmen did adhere to the basic requirements of a ‘settin’ chair,’ some employed a variety of unique adaptations; varying the number of slats and posts, adding rockers, or customizing a seat’s weave.”108 Furniture makers at Skyline added rockers to some of the chairs they made, but even the chairs with rockers have the signature rear posts that bend slightly backwards.
Men, women, and children made handicrafts at Skyline. In 1937, the annual fair, held in October, offered prizes for the best “crochet work, embroidery work, cut work, tufting and rugs.”109 The NYA taught girls to make “tennis, volley ball, and fish nets for sale or exchange for other similar products.”110
Field days, competitions, and square dances were often held at Skyline for entertainment and as an effort to foster a sense of community among colonists. One of the largest attended events at Skyline was the annual Fourth of July picnic. This event was open to all residents of Jackson County, and was heavily advertised in local and county newspapers. The event opened Skyline Farms to anyone who was curious about the
105 Ibid., 27.
106 Harold L. Fisher, “Nearly 200 Contented Families Find Homes on Cumberland Mountain Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, 3 December 1936. The newspaper article contains an image of J.A. Houston seated next to several chairs and a bedstead that he built.
107 Patrick Velde, “Woodwork: Chairs,” Craft Revival: Shaping Western North Carolina Past and Present. http://www.wcu.edu/craftrevival/crafts/chairs.html (accessed November 2, 2010).
108 Ibid.
109 “Skyline Farms Community Fair,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 5, 1937.
110 Fisher. An article in the Jackson County Sentinel reported that photographer, Ben Shahn, photographed the activities of the NYA during his visit to Skyline in 1937.
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community and its progress, and it also provided various sources of food and entertainment, including “baking, barbeque, music and two ball games.”111 The event was first held in 1935 and met with great success. A newspaper reported, “The Cumberland Farms was the scene of one of the biggest picnics on the 4th of any picnic that has been held in this county in many years. The crowd was estimated from 2,500 to 5,000 people.”112 The picnic not only provided entertainment but also served to promote the overall success of the colony. The same newspaper article that reported the attendance gave a lengthy positive description of the colony’s progress. These events took place in the community center and surrounding areas. The recreation center where square dances and ball games once took place was located on the school grounds and is no longer extant. Additions to the existing school building and a new gym are in its place now.
Skyline Farms also hosted an annual community fair scheduled each fall. On October 10, 1936, the fair at Skyline hosted a series of softball and baseball games and several contests. For entertainment, there were “shooting galleries, fish ponds, [and a] fortune-telling booth.”113 There was also an exhibit of furniture made by J. A. Houston, which was “expected to be one of the most outstanding displays of the fair.”114 Other activities included: “a baby show, a wheel barrow race, pie eating contests, three legged race, hog calling contest, watermelon eating contests, long jumps, potato race, sack race, and horse shoe pitching.”115 Women were encouraged to participate in a canning competition as well. A “huge crowd of people” attended the 1936 fair.116 Subsequent fairs offered more activities and competitions.
Public Services and Education
Skyline Farms residents had access to a variety of social services administered by the federal government. Resettlement Administration (RA) officials of Jackson County initially outlined the plan for Skyline Farms in a document called “Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms.” This document outlines plans for a “social service approach” to be employed at Skyline Farms. A trained social worker, who formerly served as Director of Relief in an agricultural county, was employed as Director of Social Service for this project. This person most likely would have been a woman as social work was one of few female dominated professions. Under her authority, the RA placed a doctor, nurse, a home economist, and recreational leader to assist her in promoting a social service program. This same document notes plans for construction of the “Model House” mentioned previously. Just like the homes of homesteaders, the model house was designed to be the private residence of the social service staff under direct supervision of the Home Economist. The document says that the
111 “Fourth of July to be Celebrated at Colony,” Jackson County Sentinel, June 25, 1936.
112 “Cumberland Mountain Scene of Big Fourth: The Largest Crowd in Years Attends Celebration; Day is Enjoyed,” The Progressive Age, July 11, 1935, accessed at the Commissary, Skyline, Alabama.
113 Cumberland Farms Community Fair,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 8, 1936.
114 Ibid.
115 Ibid.
116 “Skyline Farms Community Fair,” The Progressive Age, accessed at the Commissary, Skyline, Alabama.
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Home Economist was responsible for “teaching the women of a well ordered home and the ways in which they might improve living conditions in their homes.”117
In addition, the Public Health Section of the RA provided a health-care clinic. A nurse was on duty full-time while the doctor, Dr. Zimmerman, was available only part-time. Healthcare at Skyline, like everything else, was viewed as a cooperative initiative and paid through a pre-paid group plan. This type of program was common in other such rural resettlement projects and was the first of its kind sponsored by the federal government.118 The health clinic hosted several events for the health education and physical betterment of the community. For instance, periodically, the nurse provided “Well Baby” clinics and immunization clinics. The Home Management specialist, Eleanor Holley, sponsored a Red Cross Nutrition Course at the clinic, which taught good nutrition and health. Additionally, the community put on plays occasionally and many were health themed. For instance, in May 1937, a health play on the prevention and cure of malaria was put on while members of the community awaited local election results.119
The Skyline Farms School was considered progressive for its time in several areas. According to the Social Research Report No. XI of 1938, the average number of years of formal schooling for the heads of families at Skyline Farms was about four and a half years.120 That statistic suggested that both the plateau residents and the tenant farmers from the lowlands who made up the colony population sacrificed an education in order to earn a subsistence living. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) provided a means by which colony residents could break the cycle of poverty through education by setting up a temporary school until a permanent school building could be constructed.121 FERA employed an administrator and six teachers to implement modern teaching techniques such as grouping students by ability and using individualized instruction.122 When a permanent school building was opened in 1936, ten faculty members offered a rich curriculum that included vocational courses in agriculture for boys and home economics for girls to prepare students for success in the Skyline Farms community. This type of training was relatively new and still rarely offered in most high schools in 1936.
Under the Resettlement Administration’s Public Health Section, the school also required the immunization and medical examination of students prior to entering school for the first time. In another progressive move, students at Skyline were grouped according to their ability rather than their age, allowing instruction to better suit each student’s needs.123 In addition to its experimental practices, the school boasted one of the first Future Farmers of America (FFA) programs in northern Alabama. By 1943, Skyline’s FFA chapter was
117 “Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms,” published by FERA, located in the collection at the Commissary in Skyline, Alabama.
118 Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,” 248.
119 “Skyline Farms Plan Community Election,” Jackson County Sentinel, May, 6, 1937.
120 Davidson and Loomis, ''Standards of Living,'' 67.
121 Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,’’ 248.
122 Ibid.
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involved in reforestation projects to address erosion on farms. Their chapter also established a school forest, a seven-acre lot provided by FFA to practice and demonstrate fire prevention practices.
Industry at Skyline Farms
Although officials in Washington D.C. felt it appropriate for farmers in northeast Alabama to grow a cotton cash crop because “cotton had long been the principal farm crop” in Jackson County, the land and climate on the mountain proved unsuitable for growing cotton. Campbell says farmers attempted to switch their primary cash crop to Irish potatoes, but that venture eventually failed as well. By the early 1940s, Skyline Farms had begun to decline. In 1938, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) accepted an offer from Dexdale Hosiery Mills of Pennsylvania, allowing the company to operate mills in three of the government’s resettlement projects. Hoping to boost the local economy and give women, in particular, a place to work outside the homestead, the federal government awarded a contract to an Atlanta based construction company to construct one of the three hosiery mills at Skyline Farms. 124
A. K. Adams and Company began construction of the hosiery mill, also referred to as the “Knitting Mill,” on November 29, 1938. Its construction was estimated to cost approximately $94,000.125 The mill required electricity to operate, so its construction brought electricity to the Skyline Farms community. As of March 9, 1939, fifty families had signed up for electricity.126 The hosiery mill initially provided employment for approximately 40 residents, later growing to approximately one hundred residents. Workers were paid minimum wage, which was thirty-five cents per hour when the mill opened and later rose to forty cents per hour.127 Although briefly successful at employing Skyline residents, the mill failed in the early 1940s due to nylon rationing during World War II. The mill reopened under private ownership as an elastic factory in post-project years. The hosiery mill and adjacent water tower are extant and located on Highway 79.
3. World War II Years, 1941-1945
Skyline Farms residents contributed significantly to the homefront efforts of Jackson County during World War II. Eighty residents served in the armed forces. The Jackson County Sentinel noted, “Skyline Farms is certainly in the war with men and production too. We believe the above is a record for a small rural settlement in the way of volunteers, at least.”128
124 Campbell and Coombs, 249; “Dr. Alexander Praises Work at Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, November 1, 1938.
125 “Work Starts on New Knitting Mill at Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, November 29, 1938; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 6.
126 “Alabama Power Co. Contracts to Serve Skyline Farms,” The Progressive Age, August 31, 1939; “Skyline Farm News,” The Progressive Age, August 31, 1939.
127 Campbell, 22; Campbell and Coombs, 249.
128 “Can Skyline Farms Be Surpassed?,” Jackson County Sentinel, September 22, 1942.
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On the homefront, the Skyline community participated in programs for food production needed across the nation. Farmers were urged to plant peanuts for much needed oil. A newspaper article in 1942 highlights their efforts: “With the ability to feed themselves accomplished, Skyline now turns efforts toward that of helping feed the nation…Skyline, we feel is contributing something to the National defense where it counts most.”129 While many believe that decline led to the eventual liquidation of government assets at Skyline Farms, this article printed in 1942 remarks that Skyline farmers were doing well, enjoying a surplus for the first time in the project’s short history. In fact, the article concludes, “There is no limit to the amount of foods and feeds we can contribute considering the size of the community.”130
Private James H. Anderson was a resident of Skyline Farms and a member of the U.S. 5th Cavalry. He was killed on February 29, 1944 at the Battle of Los Negros on the Los Negros Island, a Japanese base during World War II that is located north of New Guinea in the south Pacific Ocean. Anderson was twenty-two years old. He is buried in the Skyline Cemetery located on County Road 143 at Cemetery Road.
4. A Controversial End, 1944-1946
Campbell argues that in addition to the community’s overall decline, by the 1940s, some members of Congress were starting to question the communal nature of resettlement communities, calling them socialistic. In 1944, the federal government began liquidating the project’s assets. Only two of the original settlers were able to purchase their farms outright. The rest were sold to private buyers, leaving many of the original settlers homeless once again. In an interview conducted by David Campbell, one of the original settlers said that he and his family were forced to return to tenant farming after leaving the project and eventually migrated north in search of industrial work.131
Interestingly, the number of times Skyline Farms is mentioned in either the Jackson County Sentinel or The Progressive Age drops significantly throughout the 1940s. Clearly the entrance of the United States into World War II in 1941 took precedence, but it is interesting none the less that the overall decline and liquidation of Skyline Farms is hardly mentioned.
In the 1980s, sociologists David Campbell and David Coombs conducted oral interviews with seventeen participants in the Skyline Farms project. Relying heavily on those interviews, they produced an article for the Spring 1983 edition of the Appalachian Journal in which they made a case study of the development of Skyline Farms. The material gleaned from the interviews convey a sense of the immense amount of planning and impressive monetary outlay the federal government expended in order to break the cycle of poverty in the lives of the impoverished participants. The governmental agencies on the federal, state and local level acted swiftly to provide relief, jobs, land, recreation, education, health care, and occupational training for families on relief rolls in Jackson County during the early years of the Great Depression.132 The
129 “Skyline Farms Answers Demands for Food,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 31, 1942.
130 Ibid.
131 Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms.”
132 Ibid., 250.
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oral interviews indicate that the participating families embraced the project enthusiastically and energetically. One participant stated, “I had the place in real good shape. I had taken an interest in it just like it was mine…we cleared the land ourself…and finished our home ourself.”133 Another participant claimed, “We’d worked hard and cleared land, and then we lost it all. We worked so hard at it; I think it broke our health down.”134 In a more recent interview, another former participant relates a story about his first experience at school when he was eight years old. He arrived at the Skyline school alone, and states that he wandered around the halls of the school when he got there because he had “never been no where like that before.”135 Ethyline Woodall relates that her husband, James Earl Woodall, helped roof some of the Skyline Farms colony houses. She says that her husband and his brothers worked in timber with their father, Walter Woodall, in order to supplement the income they produced on their colony farm.136 The oral histories of Skyline residents, though varied in detail, offer poignant, firsthand accounts of historical memory.
Within a decade of the establishment of Skyline Farms, the U. S. Department of Agriculture sponsored a sociological comparative study of several resettlement communities to judge their efficacy for the future. Social Research Report No. XI, conducted by Dwight M. Davidson, Jr. and Charles P. Loomis in 1938, provides an analysis of the immediate benefits or failures of the programs instituted at Skyline Farms and five other New Deal resettlement communities. It anticipated follow-up studies of the successes or failures of those resettlement communities. A statement in the report cites the goal of bringing families on public relief into a better relationship with the land by halting tillage of certain land, promoting different farming methods at other sites, and ending tenancy in favor of ownership of the land in order to provide a more abundant life to program participants.137 Oral history interviews conducted by Campbell and Coombs reveal participants’ experiences, perspectives and evaluations of the success of Skyline Farms after fifty years. These interviews, when compared to the benchmark Social Research Report No. XI, offer surprising revelations about perceived successes and failures of the unprecedented resettlement experiment.
Many colonists who lost their homes in the liquidation of Skyline Farms never understood the federal government’s requirements for repayment and were left confused and often homeless. Former residents such as Virgil Brewer and Mrs. Henry Black stated they felt confusion and bitter disappointment when they were evicted from their colony houses at the end of the project. Virgil Brewer stated that it was one of the greater disappointments of his lifetime.138 In an interview conducted on September 10, 2010, Walter Tidwell
133 Interview with Virgil Brewer, June 30, 1981, in Campbell and Coombs, ''Skyline Farms,'' 251.
134 Interview with Henry Black ,October 19, 1981, in Campbell and Coombs, ''Skyline Farms,'' 251.
135 Interview with Stanley Owens by Middle Tennessee State University graduate student Katie Randall, September 9, 2010 at Skyline, Alabama.
136 Interview with Ethyline Woodall Middle Tennessee State University graduate student Mona M. Brittingham, September 9, 2010 at Skyline, Alabama.
137 U. S. Department of Agriculture, ''Social Research Report No. XI: Standards of Living of Residents of Seven Rural Resettlement Communities, prepared by Dwight M. Davidson, Jr. and Charles P. Loomis for The Farm Security Administration in cooperation with the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. (Washington, D. C. : Government Printing Office, 1938): Intro 1-3.
138 Campbell and Coombs, ''Skyline Farms,'' 251.
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stated that he became distrustful of the federal government in 1945 and vowed at that time that he would never take another penny from the federal government. He claims that he has kept that promise all his life. 139 Another former resident, Stanley Black, stated, regarding his parents’ experience at Skyline Farms, “They misunderstood. They thought the government was giving them the land to farm free and clear, and the farms were set up only to produce enough for families to live off of, no extra.”140
Campbell and Coombs concluded in the 1980s that the project fell short of early goals, and they asserted that community memory provided a reliable yardstick for measurement of the success or failure of the resettlement experiment.141 Those individual memories, when contrasted with the early federal government documents, broaden the understanding of the unprecedented resettlement experiments’ place in twentieth century American history.
5. Community in Post-Project Years, 1946-1960
Even though property ownership was privatized and the ideology of the community began to change in post-project years, the functions of many of the buildings at Skyline Farms remained consistent with what they had been used for during project years. As Skyline Farms transitioned from a federally administered resettlement project to a private community, the physical and cultural landscape of Cumberland Mountain began to reflect that change.
From 1946 to 1960, the physical landscape of Skyline Farms changed with the rest of the nation. In McAlester’s A Field Guide to American Houses, the authors describe this shift: “Most domestic building ceased between 1941 and 1945 as the United States prepared for and fought World War II. When construction resumed in 1946, houses based on historical precedent were largely abandoned in favor of new variations of the modern styles that had only begun to flourish in the pre-war years.”142 Following typical post-war trends of development, minimal traditional cottages and ranch houses were newly constructed within the Skyline community.143 In addition, many of the original colony houses were transformed through additions and alterations to reflect these developing trends. Some were covered in a brick veneer to give a more modern appearance while others underwent more severe additions and alterations.
Housing and other structures built during post-war years were built to be more permanent than housing had previously been built. Much of the new construction on the mountain was built with solid brick or concrete block foundations. This trend opposed the piered foundations, wooden cladding, and locally available materials used in construction of the colony houses.
139 Interview with Walter Tidwell by Middle Tennessee State University graduate student Amy Kostine, September 9, 2010 at Skyline, Alabama.
140 Interview with Stanley Black.
141 Campbell and Coombs. “Skyline Farms,’’ 250-1.
142 Virginia and Lee McAlester, A Field Guide to American Houses, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 477.
143 Ibid.
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Following the project’s liquidation, the buildings located in the community center were each purchased privately. Many of them have since been converted for new uses. The Commissary came under private ownership and continued to operate as a community general store until 2005. Although no longer operating on a co-op system, the Commissary served Skyline residents for more than sixty-five years. During this time of private ownership, an automobile garage was added to the building. This garage was removed when the Commissary was purchased and converted for use as a community heritage museum in 2005. Additionally, the Warehouse located behind the Commissary has been maintained as a storage space and remains in such use today.
The Administrative Office, located directly across County Road 25 from the Commissary and referred to locally as the Rock House, was purchased privately, and work began to convert the building into a residential space. The work was never completed, and the owner never resided there. The Administrative Office is extant, remains privately owned, and is now vacant.
Sometime in the mid to late twentieth-century, the Cotton Gin located on County Road 107 was converted for use as a multi-family housing unit. It is extant and remains in such use today.
Skyline School, first established as the project school, satisfied an urgent need for education on Cumberland Mountain.144 After the project ended, Skyline School continued to function as a community school, adding high school grades in the mid 1970s. In 1975 Skyline School graduated seniors for the first time,145 and in 2010, Skyline School had thirty-seven teachers, two administrators, and eighteen support staff members for five hundred and fifty-six students.146 For more than seventy years since the Skyline Farms colony disbanded, the school has continued to serve Skyline residents. Former Skyline School teacher Joyce Kennamer concludes that the school is one of the more enduring legacies of the resettlement experiment.147 Skyline School is extant on County Road 25.
The Dexdale Hosiery Mill located on Highway 79 is extant and currently in use as a rope factory. After failing in the early 1940s due to nylon rationing, the mill reopened under private ownership as an elastic factory in the 1950s. Skyline resident Stanley Owens recalls his wife, Lucille Owens, working there in 1955. He says, “They only employed ten to fifteen people at a time and paid very little. [Lucille] made $0.75 an hour and worked eight hour shifts with no breaks, not even for lunch,” Owens says. 148
144 Skyline High School. ''About the school,'' Jackson County, Alabama School District, http://www.skyline.jch.schoolinsites.com/?PageName=%27AboutTheSchool%27 (accessed November 15, 2010).
145 Joyce M. Kennamer, 33.
146 Skyline School, ''Skyline School Teachers,'' Jackson County Alabama School District, http://skyline.jch.schoolinsites.com/?PageName=%27Teachers%27 (accessed November 15, 2010).
147 Joyce M. Kennamer, 32.
148 Interview with Stanley Owens by Middle Tennessee State University graduate student Katie Randall, September 9, 2010 at Skyline, Alabama.
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In addition to buildings, the infrastructure of roads and bridges that developed during the project years is a lasting legacy and an important part of the post-project landscape. The road constructed by the RFC in the early 1930s connected residents in the lowlands to the mountaintop. It created a means by which isolated Appalachian residents connected to the outside world. It further opened the plateau for later commercial development, and completion of the road connected Cumberland Mountain to Scottsboro, the Tennessee River Valley, routes into Middle Tennessee, and Alabama urban centers such as Huntsville and Birmingham. This became the route by which many mountain residents in post-war years traveled to jobs in the surrounding areas. In the 1960s, the state of Alabama built state route 79, a modern two-lane highway to replace portions of the historic road near Skyline Farms. Remnants of the original roadway remain near the Skyline Farms Commissary, Skyline School, and through Tupelo Cove, in the valley.
6. New Deal Design at Skyline Farms
Properties at Skyline Farms may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places for significance under Criterion C as examples of New Deal architecture.
The structures built for the Resettlement Administration’s Skyline Farms project in Jackson County, Alabama are examples of the architectural styles and building practices typical of New Deal agencies. The use of local materials, such as timber and quarried sandstone, is a signature design element in New Deal projects. The significance of New Deal structures goes well beyond architecture and use of local materials, however. In a chapter called “Community Buildings and Institutions” in New Deal Landscapes in Tennessee: A Guidebook, historian Carroll Van West says:
The types of buildings constructed to house the wide-ranging community projects and newly established community groups varied in their building materials and architectural style. Some are magnificent examples of labor-intensive stone masonry, while others are grandiose and flamboyant examples of Colonial Revival or Classical Revival style. Still others are one-story, unadorned buildings designed simply to fulfill their function, and little more. Whatever their size, material, or styling, however, New Deal community buildings still speak of the reformers’ hope to uplift rural and urban life, even in the harshest days of the Great Depression.149
The built environment left over from New Deal programs reflects reformers’ ideologies. The structures and changes to rural southern landscapes are evidence of this tumultuous time in America’s past and are a lasting legacy of many New Deal agencies.
At Skyline Farms, settlers built their community in keeping with the locale. Their modest board-and-batten dwellings were not like the stone Tudor cottages found in the suburbs, and in the Tennessee Cumberland Homesteads project about one hundred miles to the north. Rather, the Skyline dwellings were not that different from the rural vernacular of Jackson County just organized in an ordered fashion within the hilly landscape. Roads at Skyline Farms followed the curvature and patterns of existing terrain rather than cutting through natural features, and residents sited houses themselves, working each structure’s placement into the existing landscape. There was no standardized setback at Skyline Farms. Some colony
149 West, Tennessee’s New Deal Landscape, 80.
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houses were positioned near the road while others were placed several feet from it. Likewise, some houses faced the road while others did not. Because settlers were so involved in the construction of their own houses, these and other similar decisions were left up to them, resulting in a less organized and more organic appearance overall.
The Arts and Crafts movement heavily influenced the use of local materials during the New Deal era. In Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916 to 1942, Linda Flint McClelland says, “Practitioners used native materials, seeking designs that harmoniously integrated site, structure, and setting. They followed nature, avoided artificial appearances, capitalized on scenic vistas, used picturesque details, and unified interior spaces with the out-of-doors.”150 McClelland says that the integration of such details was signature of Arts and Crafts philosophy, which she describes as “a unity of home and hearth, community and nation, and dwelling and land.” These tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement are evident at Skyline Farms. The three-, four-, and five-room dwellings constructed at Skyline Farms are Rustic in style, similar to cabins that many other New Deal projects built at state parks across the country. They were clad either in board and batten siding or horizontal plank weatherboard. They were massed-planned, side-gabled or front-gabled single-family homes. The timber was locally sawn and consisted mostly of hardwoods such as oak, poplar, and gumwood. The roofs were made of locally sawn wood shingles, and chimneys were constructed using locally quarried sandstone. All of the building materials used were readily available to farmers on the mountain.
The school, administrative office, and commissary at Skyline Farms were also constructed using local materials and are built in the Colonial Revival style. All three buildings were constructed of locally quarried sandstone and feature symmetrical facades and multi-light windows, both elements of the Colonial Revival style. In addition, the Commissary features a pedimented entryway and parapet walls on either end of the building. Colonial Revival was a popular style in the southeastern region of the United States between World War I and World War II. The Great Depression was a time of great instability for most Americans, and, in response, many embraced patriotism. Cutler says, “To achieve harmony the nation grasped for the old—the pioneer, the colonial, the Renaissance.”151 Preservation efforts beginning at Colonial Williamsburg also influenced the popularity of the Colonial Revival style in the South.
The Colonial Revival-styled school also fits into the ideas about school design for New Deal schools that had been so shaped by the writings of educational reformer Fletcher B. Dresslar of the George Peabody College for Teachers. The idea of designing buildings in a regionally accepted style is another signature of New Deal projects. Regionalism in New Deal architecture was also rooted in the Arts and Crafts movement. McClelland says, “[The Arts and Crafts movement] recognized diverse regional features of buildings and sites, such as the Prairie style architecture of the Midwest, the open terraces and patios of the Southwest, and the log construction of pioneers.”152
150 Linda Flint McClelland, Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916 to 1942 (Washington D.C.: National Park Service, 1993), 66.
151 Cutler, The Public Landscape of the New Deal, 145.
152 McClelland, 67.
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F. Associated Property Types
Skyline Farms, started as a New Deal resettlement community in Jackson County, Alabama, remains a community today. Skyline retains many of the historic resources of the New Deal project. Several resource types have been identified, including homesteads, community institutions, industrial facilities, landscape elements, and housing during the post-project years, 1946-1960.
1) Homesteads
As with many New Deal resettlement communities, the most recognizable property type associated with Skyline Farms is the homestead. Homesteads, or collections of “buildings and structures designed for the resettlement of needy families onto small subsistence farms,” included a residence, known as a colony house, and a combination of outbuildings that included a barn, a chicken coop, a privy, a well house, a smokehouse, and fences as well as landscape elements that included orchards and gardens, agricultural fields, and sometimes ponds.153 Outbuildings were arranged on individual homesteads as part of the domestic complex, in close proximity to the residence, or as part of the agricultural complex, further away from the domestic components.
The federal government provided “colonists,” or occupants of homesteads, with building plans for modern homes and outbuildings as well as for community buildings with modern amenities.154 While the plans and materials were provided, each colonist built the components of their homestead, and did not always follow the plans to the letter. The property types identify components, although variations on these forms may exist.
Colony house Individuals who participated in Skyline Farms during the project years, referred to the resettlement project as “the Colony.” This tradition is continued today with the identification of the residences of the homesteads at Skyline Farms as “colony houses.”
Although bunkhouses and temporary houses were the first dwellings built as part of the Skyline Farms project, the Colony houses are the only remaining dwellings—historic single-family places of human occupation. The resettlement community eventually included approximately one hundred and seventy-one colony houses of the two hundred planned.155 A model colony house was planned near the center for the community, to serve as a pattern for additional dwellings, but it is unclear if the model home was actually constructed.156 All colony houses were built using related floor plans, and they were intended to be
153 Claudette Stager and Elizabeth Straw, “Cumberland Homesteads Historic District,” National Register Nomination, 1988.
154 Campbell, “Skyline Farms,” 12.; “The Relief Administration at Work on Colony,” The Progressive Age, January 17, 1935; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 4.
155 Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,” 246; Davidson and Loomis, “Standards of Living,” 6; “Cumberland Mountain Farms Physical Set-Up,” 2; “Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms, Jackson County Rural Homesteading Project,” 1-2.
156 “Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms, Jackson County Rural Homesteading Project,” 5. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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“modern” homes for the displaced farmers, rather than the temporary shacks and bunkhouses that preceded them.157 The homes followed one basic form: the one-story, gable-roofed, frame Colony House.158 They are massed-plan, side-gabled or front-gabled family homes, clad in board-and-batten siding or horizontal siding, made of locally milled oak, poplar, gumwood, and other hardwoods, sometimes painted a standard green.159 The original wood cladding has been covered over with vinyl on some homes today. At the time of their original construction, the colony houses were shingled with shingles from a local sawmill (during the early project years), or pressed tin roofing panels (during the later project years), and built upon locally quarried sandstone piers. The capped chimneys—the most readily identifiable architectural element of surviving colony houses today—and arched fireplaces were also constructed from sandstone. Each homestead included at least forty acres for raising crops and livestock to be sold as well as two to twelve acres to be used for growing their own fruits and vegetables.160
Four floor plans were available that included one, two, three, or four bedrooms, a living room, and a large kitchen equipped with a cooking range, kitchen sink, cabinets, and an ice box.161 The size of the home varied according to the size of the family, and the colonists often adapted the standard floorplans by changing the orientation to the road or building the porch at a different angle.162
The first dwellings were built cooperatively and the future residents of these homes were chosen from a hat.163 The first colony home, finished in February 1935, is located at 20980 Alabama Highway 79.164 The Colony Houses were spread out surrounding the core of the community at the intersection of County Road 107 and County Road 25. The length of time for construction of each colony house depended upon the ability of the colonists, because each built their own home.
Key characteristics for identification of Colony Houses include single-story frame construction, side-gabled or front gabled roofs, pressed tin roof panels, wooden siding, and capped sandstone central chimneys.
157 Davidson and Loomis. “Standards of Living,” 26.
158 Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,” 246.
159“Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms, Jackson County Rural Project,” 2; Kennamer, “The Rise and Decline of Skyline Farms,” 15; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3; Harold J. Fisher, “Nearly 200 Contented Families Find Homes on Cumberland Mountain,” Jackson County Sentinel, December 3, 1936.
160 Jackson County Sentinel, February 14, 1935; Kennamer, 14-15; “Cumberland Mountain Farms Physical Set-Up,” 2; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3.
161 USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3.
162 Surviving colonists recall four floorplans, however official records for the resettlement project describe three floor plans. This discrepancy may be because of the adaptability of these homes by the colonists who were constructing their own homes. Field survey confirms that there are four floorplans extant today. David Campbell, “Skyline Farms” A Case-Study of Community Development and Rural Rehabilitation,” unpublished manuscript, Northeast Alabama Community College, Rainsville, Alabama, 12; Kennamer, 14-15; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3.
163 Farm Colony Assured in Jackson County,” The Progressive Age, December 13, 1934; “Colony Farmers Hold Get-To-Gether Meeting,” The Progressive Age, December 17, 1936.
164 Jackson County Sentinel, February 14, 1935; Kennamer, 14. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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Many survive today, although most have been altered. The first colony house survives and concentrations of surviving colony houses may be found near the community center and on County Road 107 east of the community center.
Barn The barn was the most important outbuilding of the homesteads at Skyline Farms. Each homestead included a barn to house dairy cows, which became increasingly important to Skyline Farms agriculture in 1942 when interests in Scottsboro, Alabama built a cheese plant. The barns also housed the livestock the government provided for clearing and cultivating the land. Initially, farmers were given steers, but later mules were provided because they were less expensive.165
Barns built during the resettlement project at Skyline, standardized in design, are extant on many of the homesteads today. One-and-a-half stories tall with a gable roof and vertical wooden plank siding, each of the barns roughly measures twenty feet wide and thirty-two feet deep. Featuring two bays on the ground level and a smaller bay centrally located on the second level, farmers could access both floors and effectively utilize interior space. While changes and additions have been made to the barns over time, the cores remain consistent from farm to farm. Many farmers built shed additions to either side of the front façade, providing additional storage.
Chicken Coop Initially, poultry was raised only for home use at Skyline Farms, but some families also produced chickens commercially, raising broilers, or chickens that are sold for meat.166 The first group of chicks arrived at Skyline in March of 1937 and colonists brooded additional chickens using rock brooding houses. Project residents hoped to raise several hundred chickens that spring, and to aid in the success of this project the school’s vocational agricultural department provided brooding information to residents.167 In 1941, 5500 chicks were grown for market and 2500 chicks for egg production.168 Poultry houses, or chicken coops, were included in the homestead design for Skyline Farms because poultry production was a major part of progressive agriculture practices. USDA extension service agents produced standardized plans for small coops with two or three windows on one side covered by a shed roof.169
Frame construction with vertical, horizontal, or diagonal wooden siding, the chicken coops at Skyline exhibit a distinct salt-box roofline. The one-story rectangular outbuildings, measuring roughly 7 feet deep and 9 feet wide and 9 feet tall, featured a downward angled overhang on the front to shelter the ventilators at the eave. A wooden plank door could be found on one of the two smaller elevations. Many homesteads at Skyline retain their chicken coops, though many have been converted into garages and additional storage space.
165 Campbell, “Skyline Farms,” 12; Kennamer, 15; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3; Campbell and Coombs, 247; Hackworth, “Opening of First Homestead Celebrated Thursday,” Jackson County Sentinel, February 14, 1935; Wyche, “200 Families Find Security at Cumberland Farms,” Chattanooga News, December 4, 1936; “Skyline Farms Community Fair,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 5, 1937; “Skyline Farms Answers Demands for Food,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 31, 1942.
166 USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3, 6; “Cooperative Association for Colony,” Jackson County Sentinel, July 30, 1936.
167 “Farm Notes: Skyline Farms a Reality,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 18, 1937.
168 “Skyline Farms Answers Demands for Food,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 31, 1942.
169 West, “Historic Family Farms,” 51; West, “Historic Resources of the Paint Rock Valley,” 14, 16. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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Privy An essential domestic homestead outbuilding was the privy. This building contained a non-flushing steel toilet with a wooden seat and cover situated over an individual septic tank to dispose of the sewage.170 These one-story, rectangular frame buildings with a shed roof sloping toward the rear of the building, measured roughly 4 feet wide by 5 feet deep. Each privy featured a wooden plank door on the facade, ventilators at the eaves, board-and-batten siding, and measured a maximum height of approximately 7 feet. At least one extant privy has been identified at 166 Alabama Highway 146.
Well house Each homestead was equipped with a hand-pumped well to provide water for the family and farming operation. Wells were approximately 70 feet deep and may have had pressure tanks and well houses.171 In the twentieth century frame well houses were commonly used to cover the well opening and pump, to prevent contamination of the water supply.172 Few well houses remain at Skyline as legal changes required many open wells to be covered and sealed, to reduce further contamination. Filling in the open wells, new below ground pumps were often installed, no longer requiring a shed or building to protect the pump equipment. At least one of these historic structures is extant. It is located near the project’s administration office.
Smokehouse Each homestead also included a smokehouse. These one-story frame structures featured a front-facing gable roof and a central plank door on the façade. Originally, clad in vertical, horizontal, or diagonal wooden siding, each of these structures featured hooks and shelves for curing meat, particularly pork. The interiors of the smokehouses are sometimes lined with a heat containing reflective barrier, which is extant in some examples. Often used for additional storage, many extant smokehouses have been greatly altered or incorporated into other farm structures.
Fences Fencing played an integral role in the creation of homesteads. Board fencing, common in the twentieth century, was constructed of square lumber posts connected by three to five wooden boards and usually enclosed pastures. Barbed wire fencing also became common in the twentieth century with increased cattle production. Net wire fencing, a woven fence, was also common at the time of the construction of Skyline Farms.173 None of the homesteads’ original fencing has been identified, but fields that remain in use for cultivation and livestock are fenced by similar post and wire fencing.
Orchards and Gardens A fruit orchard and vegetable garden also accompanied each homestead, providing fresh produce for the families. Each family was also provided with a pressure cooker for canning, and by 1938, participating families canned an average of 450 quarts of produce.174 It is unclear if any of the
170 USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 4.
171 USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3-4; Murray E. Wyche, “200 Families Find Security at Cumberland Farms,” Chattanooga News, December 4, 1936.
172 West, “Historic Family Farms in Middle Tennessee,” 48; West, “Historic Resources of the Paint Rock Valley, 1820-1954,” 15.
173 West, “Historic Family Farms,” 55.
174 USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 3, 5; “Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms, Jackson County Rural Homesteading Project,” 4-5. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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homesteads’ original orchards or gardens are currently in use, but apple trees remain on many homesteads today.
Field Patterns Agricultural fields are another integral part of the homesteads. Early in the project, farmers grew some subsistence crops but spent most of their time clearing land and building homes. Farmers were given at least forty acres of land to grow cash crops including cotton and Irish potatoes, and later tomatoes, cabbage, beans, tobacco, and carrots. Farmers often used terracing after the land was cleared to prevent erosion.175 Terraces may still be used, however locations of terracing have not been identified. The fields today reflect the agricultural history of Skyline and are commonly used to raise cattle, corn, and hay.
Ponds Many of the homesteads at Skyline Farms feature small agricultural ponds. Providing water and a place of refreshment for livestock, these ponds are often very small in size. While these may have been part of the original design of the farms, they could have also been added at a later date. Verification of the addition of ponds should be completed when assessing contribution of ponds.
2) Community Institutions
Historic community institutions provided social services and included an administrative office, commissary, health clinic, school, warehouse, cemeteries, and churches. The majority of the public buildings were located in the center of the community at the intersection of County Road 107 and County Road 25. A cooperative community was encouraged so that farmers could both assist one another and receive assistance, saving time and money by working together.
Administrative Office Constructed of local sandstone in 1937, the administrative office is also known as the Rock House. A one-story, rectangular building with a side-gable roof, the Office features a front-facing cross gable extension at the entrance. The front door features transom windows and is centered on the front façade between four, six-over-six double hung windows. It has three rooms, each with a fireplace constructed from local sandstone, and the flooring is sandstone cut into one-foot-long rectangles and set in a diagonal pattern. The building has survived and is currently a privately owned residence, although unoccupied. The original sandstone fence surrounding the building and sidewalk leading to the porch remains. It is located at the intersection of County Road 107 and County Road 25.
Commissary Also known as the Rock Store, the commissary was completed in 1935 and constructed of local sandstone. The commissary functioned as a farmers’ cooperative where colony residents as well as those from surrounding communities could purchase goods using stamps or cash. The store originally had two large windows on either side of the double front doors centered in the façade, however the right side window was filled in with local sandstone around 1990. In 1937, an addition was added to the back of the store to form an “L” shape. A garage was added to its north side, however, that has since been removed. The commissary building is extant, and it is currently referred to as the “Rock Store” and used by the Skyline Heritage Association as a museum and meeting space. Sections of the original sandstone sidewalk around the building remain. It is located at the intersection of County Road 107 and County Road 25.
175 “Farm Notes: Skyline Farms a Reality,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 18, 1937; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, October 25, 1939. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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Warehouse Built by the Skyline Farms Homestead Association in 1937 to support cooperative activities and facilities, the warehouse served as additional storage for the community. It was used for crop storage and may have been a potato curing house for potatoes as well as additional storage for the commissary.
The warehouse is a one-story rectangular frame building featuring a tin-clad side gabled roof. A shed roof porch extends across the front of the building, providing additional outdoor storage. Set on a concrete pier foundation, the warehouse exterior is clad in metal siding that was added during the project years. It is located on County Road 107 near the Community Center and is currently used by the Skyline Farms Heritage Association for storage.
Health clinic Healthcare was another benefit of the Skyline Farms Homestead Association. The original community plan indicated that space would be made in the administrative building “for clinical purposes,” however oral history indicates that the health clinic was operated in Nurse Ola Barclay’s home. While a part-time doctor, Dr. Zimmerman, made visits to Skyline Farms, other health care benefits included classes on health and wellness. 176 The clinic operated as a “pre-paid group plan” that cost fifty cents per month per family and included all medical care needs, and it might have been the “first such program sponsored by the federal government.”177
The health clinic building is extant and is located beside the former cotton gin on County Road 107, near the community center. It is a one-story, rectangular gable-front frame home with a large front porch with a shed-roof. Closely resembling the other colony houses, the health clinic building has been altered with the addition of a large front porch and side addition.
Recreation Area The recreation area is another community institution property type. Success of the Skyline project depended upon the development of a sense of community. Carl Taylor, a rural sociologist in the Subsistence Homestead Division of the Resettlement Administration, believed that recreation was critical to creating a sense of community, which in turn would make the project both easier to implement and more successful.178 Sources indicate that the recreation area was a large, open space near the school auditorium where square dances, singings, picnics, field days, and ball games were held. A wooden frame platform was constructed for dancing but is no longer extant. Much of the area near the auditorium is now occupied by the expansion of the school campus and school gymnasium.179 The recreation area should not be confused with the current day Skyline Park.
176 “Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms, Jackson County Rural Homesteading Project,” 5; Joyce M. Kennamer, 15.
177 Campbell, “Skyline Farms,” 19-20; Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,” 248; Kennamer, 15; “Skyline Farms,” The Progressive Age, June 1, 1939; Joyce M. Kennamer, 15; “Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, June 6, 1939; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, June 1939; “War Time Food Habits Studies at Skyline Farms,” The Progressive Age, June 3, 1943.
178 Campbell, “Skyline Farms,” 22-24; Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,” 249.
179 Joyce M. Kennamer, 21-22. “Free Picture Show at Cumberland Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 8, 1936’ “Cumberland Farms Offers Yule Pageant,” The Progressive Age, December 1936; “Skyline Farms Elects Officers,” Jackson County Sentinel, May 6, 1937; “May Day Dedication Exercises at the Skyline Farms May 7th,” Jackson County Sentinel, May 3, 1938; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, June NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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School The first public school was a temporary frame building. It used oil drums for heat and had hastily built benches and tables constructed of plank seats nailed to log legs, some even with the bark still on them.180 Funded by a grant from the Works Progress Administration, and intended to be a focal point of the community because education was considered an important part of breaking the cycle of farm tenancy, construction of the school began in March of 1936.181 With an estimated cost of $25,000, Birmingham architect William H. Kessler contributed to its design and the project was completed in 1938.182 Featuring ten or eleven classrooms with six teachers, the school taught “progressive education,” with a curriculum that included music, arts and crafts, and students were grouped according to ability rather than age. It was also one of the first schools in northern Alabama to teach agricultural courses and home economics to junior high students.183 The school was the center of community activity, hosting many community events and holiday festivals.184
In December of 1940, the school closed because of an outbreak of scarlet fever, and in January of 1941, a fire destroyed the building. There was no water system to fight fires, and the damage was estimated at $70,000.185 Reconstruction began in July of 1941, by the Douglas Construction Company out of Birmingham.186 The new building followed the plans of the original and, according to Skyline residents, was rebuilt using salvaged materials from the burned school. The school was incorporated into the Jackson County School District in 1945, and the building was renovated in 2000 and 2009 by the architectural firm of Osborn & Associates, of Madison, Alabama.187 The building has remained in use as a public school since its construction.
180 Campbell, 249; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 5-6; Charles P. Loomis and Dwight M. Davidson, Jr., “Social Agencies in the Planned Rural Communities,” Sociometry 2, no. 3 (July 1939):24.
181 “Celebration at the Colony the Fourth,” The Progressive Age, July 2, 1936; Campbell, 16.
182 Kennamer, 17; “Land-breaking for School Building is Attended by Many,” Special Edition of Jackson County Sentinel, March 19, 1936; “Cumberland Fars $25,000 Building Starts Monday,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 5, 1936; Joyce M. Kennamer, 18; “May Day Dedication Exercises at Skyline Farms May 7th,” Jackson County Sentinel, May 3, 1938; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, May 18, 1939.
183 “Cumberland Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 8, 1936, quoted in Joyce M. Kennamer, 18-19; “350 Enroll in School at Cumberland Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 8, 1936; Campbell, 16; Kennamer, 18-19; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 4; Campbell and Coombs, “Skyline Farms,” 248;
184 “Skyline Farms Honor President’s Birthday,” Jackson County Sentinel, January 1, 1938; “President’s Ball at Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, January 1938; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, March 14, 1940 August 1, 1940, and October 31, 1940; Kennamer, 18; “Old-Time Fiddler Convention,” Jackson County Sentinel, October 31, 1935; “Cumberland Farms $25,000 Building Starts Monday,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 5, 1936; “I Like Mountain Music,” Jackson County Sentinel, February 11, 1937; “String Music and Play at Skyline Farms March 9,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 4, 1937; “Faculty Play at Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, March 7, 1938; “Sacred Harp Singing at Skyline Farms,” The Progressive Age, October 12, 1939; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, June 27, 1940; “Grandpappy’ Coming to Skyline Farms,” The Progressive Age, September 26, 1940; “Thanksgiving Service at Skyline Farms,” The Progressive Age, November 14, 1940; “Halloween Program,” Skyline Heritage Association Newspaper File, Skyline, Alabama; “Singing at Skyline Farms First Sunday in June,” Jackson County Sentinel, June 1, 1943. “Skyline Service Flag Dedication Sunday,” The Progressive Age, August 12, 1943.
185 Campbell, 19; “Skyline School Building Burned,” Jackson County Sentinel, January 7, 1941; Joyce M. Kennamer, 27.
186 “Contract Let for Skyline School,” Jackson County Sentinel, July 1, 1941; Joyce M. Kennamer, 28.
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The original section of the Skyline Elementary School, dating to 1941, is a rectangular, one-story sandstone building. Constructed out of local sandstone, the building has multi-paned, nine-over-nine original wooden windows. A standing seam steel hipped roof protects the building and features three triangular cross-gable vents extending towards the facade of the school. A wide wooden cornice line surrounds the building between the sandstone walls and the roofing system. While the campus of the school has expanded with the addition of several other buildings, the original school section retains its original setting, purpose, and materials.
Cemeteries Cemeteries played an integral role in the community life of Skyline. Members of the Skyline Farms community found a final resting place in several public and family cemeteries.
Skyline Cemetery: Marked graves in the Skyline Cemetery date as early as 1936 with the beginning of the resettlement project. The Skyline Cemetery entrance consists of two sandstone columns four to five feet tall and three feet wide flanked by a two foot tall sandstone walls parallel to County Road 143. The November 5, 1936 issue of the Jackson County Sentinel references a National Youth Administration project plan to build a “native stone” wall at the entrance of the “Confederate Veterans Cemetery” east of the downtown crossroads of County Road 107 and County Road 25. The description and location of the project match that of Skyline Cemetery, and there are a number of unmarked graves near the oldest section of the cemetery, which could possibly be Confederate veterans’ graves. These unmarked graves appear to be in a small section of the cemetery, however boundaries for this section cannot be easily drawn, due to the nearby location of more recent graves. Further research is needed to determine when these burials occurred and to identify the interred. The cemetery is on County Road 143, and it appears burials continue in the cemetery today.
Sanders-Mill Creek Cemetery: Another cemetery, the Sanders-Mill Creek Cemetery, is located north of the community on County Road 545. Legible dates indicate that the earliest burial occurred in 1863 and eight of the markers indicate deaths between 1863 and 1898, with burials continuing into the 1990s. With fifty- seven identifiable interments and an unknown number of additional unmarked or illegible graves, further research into information regarding these burials is needed. The majority of the unidentified graves are marked with simple stone head and footstones and are located near the graves of confederate soldiers. This section of unidentified stone gravestones is set apart from more recent burials and boundaries around this section could easily be drawn. These may also be Civil War veteran graves, although further research is needed. Markers dating to the Civil War era, or indicating a Civil War veteran, include the following names: Pvt. James Arthur Sanders, Alabama Infantry; Pvt. Williams Mashburn, Tennessee Infantry; John Mashburn, Indiana Cavalry; W.M. Feers, Ohio Cavalry; John Sanders, Ohio Cavalry; and E. P. King, Alabama Cavalry. While it may not be the veterans cemetery referenced in the newspaper article, this cemetery offers an interesting insight to settlement on the mountain before the Cumberland Mountain Farms project, especially since it also documents in its burials from 1935 to 1962 the lives of many Skyline residents.188
187 Campbell, 19; Kennamer, post-script; Osborn & Associates Architects, “Skyline Elementary School,” http://www.osbornarchitects.net/images/SkylineElementarySchool.pdf (accessed November 17, 2010).
188 USGenWeb Archives, “Sanders Cemetery, Skyline, Alabama,” http://files.usgwarchives.org/al/Jackson/cemeteries/sanders2.txt (accessed December 9, 2010). NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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Travis Cemetery: The Travis Cemetery is a family cemetery in which the majority of the nearly sixty burials are from the 1930s, 1980s, and 1990s. The earliest documented burial is from 1910, suggesting that the Travis’ were one of the few families to live on the Cumberland Mountain before the New Deal project.189
Churches. No church buildings remain extant from the period of federal involvement at Skyline Farms, 1933-1944. But religious organizations were undoubtedly important. In 1936, J. M. Money donated a one- acre lot for a Baptist Church for the community.190 In 1939, The Progressive Age announced plans to build a Baptist Church just north of the project center.191 Led by Pastor G. H.Inglis, the dedication for the church was held on July 28, 1940192 at the site of the current Skyline Central Baptist Church on County Road 25. Other churches associated with the Skyline community include the Independent Church of God at 8717 County Road 17, Skyline Holiness Church at 39 Morris Circle, Skyline Church of God on Alabama Highway 79, and Skyline Church of Christ on Alabama Highway 79. Future research may reveal the original locations, denominations, and construction dates of these churches
3) Industrial Facilities
Cotton Gin Included in the original plan for Skyline Farms, the cotton gin and seed house is a frame structure with a local sandstone foundation and chimney. The original USDA plan for the community called for the colonists to grow cotton as a cash crop because “cotton had long been the principal farm crop” in Jackson County, but the mountain climate was not suitable for growing cotton and problems arose from the presence of the boll weevil, so the gin was never used for its intended purpose.193 After the community switched to potato production, they purchased a potato sorter that oral history suggests was housed in this building. Newspaper reports suggest that it was purchased by and housed at the Commissary.194 Resident Walter Tidwell remembers the potato sorter being used in both buildings.195 It is likely that the cotton gin was converted to the “potato-curing house” that is referenced in USDA report 1606 once cotton was abandoned as a cash crop. The potato grader was electric powered and sorted potatoes into sacks labeled with a special Skyline Farms design. The sorter could process 200 sacks per hour.196 The Cotton Gin is
189 Tracking Your Roots, “Travis Family Cemetery, Jackson County, Alabama,” http://files.usgwarchives.org/al/jackson/cemeteries/travis.txt (accessed November 17, 2010).
190 “Judge Money Thanked for Gift of Church Lot,” The Progressive Age, June 16, 1936.
191 “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, October 25, 1939.
192 “Dedication Service for Skyline Baptist Church,” The Progressive Age, July 25, 1940.
193 Davidson and Looms, “Standards of Living,” 6; Campbell, “Skyline Farms,” 35.
194 “Skyline Potato Deal Nearing Maturity,” The Progressive Age, June 22, 1939.
195 Interview with Walter Tidwell by Skyline Farms Heritage Association’s Cindy Rice.
196 USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 6; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, June 15, 1939; “Skyline Farms News,” The Progressive Age, June 1939; “Skyline Potato Deal Nearing Maturity,” The Progressive Age, June 22, 1939. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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extant and is located on County Road 107 near the center of the community. It has been converted into an apartment building.
Hosiery Mill Ground was broken for the construction of a silk-throwing plant and hosiery mill also referred to as the “Knitting Mill,” on November 29, 1938, by A. K. Adams and Company contractors. Its construction was estimated to be approximately $94,000.197 The hosiery mill initially provided employment for approximately 40 residents, later growing to approximately one hundred residents. It employed those who were not employed in agriculture, mostly farmers’ families, especially women.198 Workers were paid minimum wage, which was thirty-five cents per hour when the mill opened and later rose to forty cents per hour.199
The mill required electricity to operate, so its construction brought electricity to the Skyline Farms community. As of March 9, 1939, fifty families had signed up for electricity.200 The adjacent water tower was constructed in August of 1939, and standing 126 feet tall, it was reported to hold 50,000 gallons of water.201
Constructed of red brick with glass block windows, the mill features a fan and blower system for ventilation. A flat roof shelters the building. The modern style of the Hosiery Mill sets its design apart from other buildings of the community that feature more vernacular forms. The mill and tower are extant and located on Highway 79, north of County Road 107, near the community center.
4) Landscape Elements
Roads Roads played an integral role in the development of Skyline Farms. Roads at Skyline Farms followed the curvature and patterns of existing terrain rather than cutting through natural features, as later roads were constructed.
The infrastructure of roads and bridges that developed during the project years is an important part of the post-project landscape. The road constructed by the RFC in the early 1930s connected residents in the lowlands to the mountaintop. It created a means by which isolated Appalachian residents connected to the outside world. It further opened the plateau for later commercial development, and completion of the road connected Cumberland Mountain to Scottsboro, the Tennessee River Valley, routes into Middle Tennessee, and Alabama urban centers such as Huntsville and Birmingham. This became the route by which many
197 “Work Starts on New Knitting Mill at Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, November 29, 1938; USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 6.
198 Campbell and Coombs, 249; “Dr. Alexander Praises Work at Skyline Farms,” Jackson County Sentinel, November 1, 1938.
199 Campbell, 22; Campbell and Coombs, 249.
200 “Alabama Power Co. Contracts to Serve Skyline Farms,” The Progressive Age, August 31, 1939; “Skyline Farm News,” The Progressive Age, August 31, 1939.
201 “Skyline Farms News,” Jackson County Sentinel, August 15, 1939. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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mountain residents in post-war years traveled to jobs in the surrounding areas. Sections of this road are extant near the Skyline Farms Commissary, Skyline School and through Tupelo Cove in the valley.
In the 1960s, the state of Alabama built state route 79, a modern two-lane highway to replace portions of the historic RFC road near Skyline Farms. Highway 79 is the most prominent road in the Skyline landscape today. A north-south corridor connecting Skyline to Scottsboro, Alabama, to the south and Winchester, Tennessee, to the north, the community’s boundaries fall along this road between its intersections with County Road 245 to the north and County Road 17 to the south.
County Roads 25, 107, 143, 207, 219, 241, 245, and 307 appear to be original roads in the community. As research continues, additional original roads or remnants of original roads may be identified. Project participants used locally quarried limestone, to construct all of the community’s roads, adding bridges and culverts where needed.202 Original roads followed the contours of the land, hugging the curves of the landscape and gradually wrapping around hills and curves, while more recently added roads bisect the landscape.
Many of the roads in Skyline Farms have been widened and paved with asphalt since their original construction, but most follow the historic route.
Bridges Two historic bridges remain in the Skyline Farms community. The first, a wooden plank bridge, just off of Alabama Highway 79, leads into Skyline Cemetery. Limestone abutments appear below the bridge.
The second bridge is located on County Road 25, south of the community center. Here, project participants constructed a bridge over a small creek. Constructed of limestone in an arched shape, this bridge is original to the Skyline Farms resettlement project. While this bridge appears to have been reinforced with metal since its construction, the original limestone bridge structure remains intact.
Stone Retaining Walls Stone retaining walls provide a unifying landscape element within the Skyline community. Several of these stone retaining walls appear on the grounds of the Administration Office and nearby Commissary, at Skyline’s community center. Constructed out of locally quarried sandstone, these retaining walls and several other flagstone paths throughout the community reflect the sandstone construction of public buildings while serving as landscape elements.
Ponds Original plans for the Skyline Farms community and many newspaper articles reference ponds within the landscape. While some ponds may have been created as a part of the original homesteads, larger, more recreational ponds were once part of Skyline Farms. Historically, there was a several-acre lake, Hill’s Pond, and residents considered building a dam to supplement its size. It is unclear whether or not they ever built a dam in this location.203 This body of water is extant today along County Road 107. Several residents recall smaller ponds, including one that flowed out of Hill’s Pond toward the bridge on County Road 25 and another at Mill Creek. Resident Walter Tidwell remembers at least one other pond
202 USDA, “Skyline Farms,” 4.
203 “Cumberland Mountain Scene of Big Fourth,” Jackson County Sentinel, July 11, 1935. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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located at Mill Creek. There are references to two other small lakes constructed for recreation, however they have not yet been identified.204 Smaller ponds have been identified on several individual homesteads.
5) Post Skyline Farms Project Housing, 1946-1960
Following typical post-war trends of development, minimal traditional cottages and ranch houses were newly constructed within the Skyline community between 1946 and 1960.205 In addition, many of the original colony houses were transformed through additions and alterations to reflect these developing trends. These trends are described in greater detail in Section E, Part V. The significance of extant properties from this period relate to the Skyline community in post-project years.
Modified Colony Houses Changes to colony houses began during the years of the project and continue today. As popular tastes and architectural styles changed, so did many of the colony houses. Many of the properties at Skyline Farms have undergone both interior and exterior modifications. The exteriors of many of the colony houses have been covered with brick facades or asbestos or aluminum siding beginning in the 1950s. Vinyl siding began to appear on colony houses as early as the 1980s. Also, many colony houses have expanded to accommodate additional rooms, altering the footprint and extending the ends of the house or adding to the rear of the homes. As ranch and minimal traditional styles became popular, some colony houses were adapted to reflect these new styles, and carports or attached garages were also added to some historic colony houses. Many of the homes reflect changes in the 1950s and 1960s and feature changes which are or will become historic, due to age.
Minimal Traditional (1946-1960) Similar to the colony houses at Skyline Farms, minimal traditional homes built after the end of the project provided additional housing. Constructed between 1946 and 1960, these one-story square or rectangular frame or brick dwellings are small (three to five rooms) one-story houses featuring a symmetrical façade with little ornamentation. Sometimes this house form is referred to as a “tract-house,” identifying its origins in the immediate post-World War II housing boom.206
Ranch style (1950-1960) Popular from 1950 to 1960, ranch style homes can be found throughout the community of Skyline. Ranch homes are one-story typically brick buildings with an asphalt shingle gable roof that incorporates a garage or carport at one gable end. The very popular late twentieth century dwellings often feature concrete foundations, a small stoop at the entrance, and generally asymmetrically arranged windows and doors. The Ranch style dwelling is strongly associated with commuter farmsteads of the late twentieth century.
Many of the historic resources at Skyline retain integrity. A few of the homesteads remain relatively intact with nearly original colony houses and many extant outbuildings. The loop of County Road 107 provides access to a corridor of nearly intact homesteads, including many colony houses with original tin roofs.
204 Fisher, “Nearly 200 Contended Families Find Homes on Cumberland Mountain,” Jackson County Sentinel, December 3, 1936.
205 Ibid.
206 Virginia and Lee McAlester. A Field Guide to American Houses (New York: Knopf, 2000), 477; Susan Knowles, Kristen Leutkemeier, and Carroll Van West, “Historic and Architectural Resources of Gatlinburg, Sevier County, TN, 1807-1960,” 35. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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Community institutions remain visible at Skyline and particularly at the central core of the community, centered near the intersection of County Road 25 and County Road 107. These resources retain the highest degree of integrity and are located near the Skyline Farms Heritage Association’s museum and community center.
Registration Requirements
The property types for homesteads, community institutions, industrial facilities, landscape elements, and housing during the post-project years at Skyline Farms are most often eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for historical significance in Agriculture, Politics/Government, and Social History and Criterion C for significance in Architecture and Community Planning and Development. Some resources may be eligible for Criterion B, if associated with a prominent person in the history of Skyline Farms. Additional research may reveal additional property types and periods of significance beyond those discussed in this multiple property documentation.
To meet Criterion A eligibility, the property or resource must be directly associated with significant historic events and/or patterns of events in the history of the Skyline Farms resettlement project.
To meet Criterion B eligibility, the resource must be associated with a prominent person in the history of the Skyline Farms community and it must be associated with that person during their period of significance in the history of the development of Skyline Farms. Eligible properties must also be the primary property associated with the individual and his/her period of significance. At Skyline, examples of Criterion B eligibility would include properties associated with the directors of the Skyline Farms project or with prominent figures such as Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who organized trips for the Skyline musicians and dancers.
To meet Criterion C eligibility, for historical significance in Architecture and Community Planning and Development, the property or resource must retain character-defining features and integrity. The integrity of a property is assessed by evaluating its design, workmanship, materials, setting, location, feeling and association, and how these characteristics have been altered since the property’s period of significance.
Homesteads Colony houses and outbuildings, including barns, chicken coops, privies, well houses, and smoke houses, and landscape features, such as fences, orchards and gardens, field patterns, and ponds, collectively make up a homestead. A homestead containing some or all of these extant parts that maintains a high degree of integrity is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for its direct association with significant historic events and/or patterns of events in the history of the Skyline Farms resettlement project.
A homestead is also eligible under Criterion B if it was associated with a prominent person in the history of the Skyline Farms community and if it was associated with that person during their period of significance in the history of the development of Skyline Farms. Eligible properties must also be the primary property associated with the individual and his/her period of significance.
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Community Institutions Community Institutions include the administrative office, the commissary, the warehouse, the health clinic, the recreation area, the school, cemeteries, and churches. These properties that maintain a high degree of integrity are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for their direct association with significant historic events and/or patterns of events in the history of the Skyline Farms resettlement project.
Cemeteries are also a property subtype eligible under Criterion A due to the fact that in many cases the gravestones are the only extant historic property associated with an individual subject. They also serve as places of commemoration for the Skyline community.
Community Institutions are also eligible under Criterion B if the property was associated with a prominent person in the history of the Skyline Farms community and was associated with that person during their period of significance in the history of the development of Skyline Farms. Eligible properties must also be the primary property associated with the individual and his/her period of significance.
Community Institutions are also eligible under Criterion C for historical significance in Architecture and Community Planning and Development, if the property retains character-defining features and integrity.
Industrial Facilities The Cotton Gin and Hosiery Mill represent the industrial facilities at Skyline Farms and are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for their direct association with significant historic events and/or patterns of events in the history of the Skyline Farms resettlement project.
Industrial Facilities are also eligible under Criterion B if the property was associated with a prominent person in the history of the Skyline Farms community and was associated with that person during their period of significance in the history of the development of Skyline Farms. Eligible properties must also be the primary property associated with the individual and his/her period of significance.
Industrial Facilities are also eligible under Criterion C for historical significance in Architecture and Community Planning and Development, if the property retains character-defining features and integrity.
Landscape Elements Roads, bridges, stone retaining walls and walkways, and ponds have been identified throughout the Skyline Farms community as landscape elements and are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for their direct association with significant historic events and/or patterns of events in the history of the Skyline Farms resettlement project.
Landscape elements are also eligible under Criterion C, for historical significance in Architecture and Community Planning and Development. The property or resource must retain character-defining features and integrity.
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Post Skyline Farms Project Housing includes modified colony houses, minimal traditional homes (1946- 1960), and ranch style homes (1950-1960). These properties that maintain a high degree of integrity are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for their direct association with significant historic events and/or patterns of events in the history of the Skyline Farms resettlement project.
Post Skyline Farms Project Housing is also eligible under Criterion C, for historical significance in Architecture. The property must retain character-defining features and integrity.
Integrity
Properties may meet registration requirements if they possess sufficient character and integrity to retain their sense of time and place from their period of significance during the development of the Skyline Farms community. If the property lacks the significant distinguishing features from its period of significance, no matter how just and well intentioned those renovations may be, the property no longer possesses integrity for that period of significance. Determining the property’s period of significance, consequently, becomes a key step in determining its eligibility. In assessing integrity, careful attention should be directed at the exterior and interior integrity of the nominated property.
Key questions to raise about the integrity of property types in this nomination are:
Location Is the resource situated on its historic lot from its period of significance during the project and early post-project years at Skyline Farms?
Association Is the property located at the place of its construction at the time of its significance during the project and early post-project years at Skyline Farms?
Setting Is there an intact historic setting for the property during its association with the project and early post-project years at Skyline Farms? Do substantial modern intrusions, such as highways, commercial development, and modern outbuildings, sties, and structures exist? Are these intrusions located on the property or on immediate adjacent property? Are the modern intrusions so distracting that they lessen, or eliminate, the sense of time and place conveyed by the historic property?
Feeling Does the property and its lot retain an ability to convey a sense of time and place from its period of significance during the project and early post-project years at Skyline Farms?
Design Are the design qualities—as represented by its distinguishing significant architectural elements and features—from the property’s period of significance during the project and early post-project years at Skyline Farms still extant and apparent? Many of the properties are significantly associated with the project and early post-project years at Skyline Farms and their design qualities from the 1930s to 1960s should be extant.
Materials As much as possible, individual and collective historic buildings and structures should retain their original building materials. Do the resources display their original construction materials? How much original material has been lost? How much have been retained? When and why did these alterations take NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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place? Were the changes within the period of significance and associated with the project and early post- project years at Skyline Farms?
Workmanship As much as possible, individual and collective historic buildings and structures should retain their construction techniques and overall form and plan. How much of the original workmanship and building plan survive? When and why did these alterations take place? Were the changes within the period of significance and associated with the project and early post-project years at Skyline Farms?
Cemeteries with a majority of grave markers dating after 1960 are not potentially eligible for listing in the National Register since they do not retain their integrity to the period of significance of the Skyline Farms project.
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G. Geographical Data
The geographical area encompasses properties historically associated with the Skyline Farms community (1931-1960) within the corporate limits of present day towns Skyline and Hytop in Jackson County, Alabama.
H. Summary of Identification and Evaluation Methods
In the summer of 2011, staff from the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University worked with members of the Skyline Farms Heritage Association to survey and identify (1) potential historic properties associated with the Skyline Farms Resettlement Administration/ Farm Security Administration project (2) document extant properties detailed in Farm Security Administration reports from project years and photographs taken by New Deal photographers in 1935, 1936, and 1937 and (3) identify properties associated with the Skyline Farms community as it was in post-project years. The fieldwork led to additional documentary research on the Skyline Farms project and its associated properties, and was completed in August 2011.
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I. Major Bibliographical References
Primary Sources
Archival Sources
“Cumberland Mountain Farms: Outline of Plan and Procedure of Operation of the Cumberland Mountain Farms, Jackson County Rural Homesteading Project.” Skyline Farms Heritage Association Collection, Skyline, Alabama.
“Cumberland Mountain Farms Physical Set-Up.” Skyline Farms Heritage Association Collection, Skyline, Alabama.
Davidson, Dwight M., Jr., and Charles P. Loomis. “Social Agencies in the Planned Rural Communities.” Sociometry 2, no. 3 (July 1939): 24-42.
------. “Standards of Living of the Residents of Seven Rural Resettlement Communities.” Social Research Report No. XI. Washington D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, The Farm Security Administration, and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics Cooperating, 1938.
Shahn, Ben. Oral history interview. April 14, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/shahn64.htm,October 31, 2010.
Newspapers
Jackson County Sentinel, 1934-1945.
The Progressive Age, 1934-1945.
The Washington Post, 1938.
Unpublished Interviews
Allen, Roger. Interview by Katie Randall. Skyline, AL, September 9, 2010.
Owens, Stanley. Interview by Katie Randall. Skyline, AL, September 9, 2010.
Tidwell, Walter. Interview by Amy Kostine. Skyline, AL, September 9, 2010.
------. Interview by Cindy Rice. Skyline, AL, May 2011.
Woodall, Ethyline. Interview by Mona M. Brittingham. Skyline, AL, September 9, 2010.
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Secondary Sources
Alabama Department of Archives and History. “Alabama Counties: Jackson County.” http://www.archives.state.al.us/counties/jackson.html (accessed November 11, 2010).
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “Flock to the River Valley: North Alabama Birding Trail.” http://www.northalabamabirdingtrail.com/pdf/nabt_guide_final.pdf (accessed November 11, 2010).
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “Outdoor Alabama: Wildlife Management Area Maps and Hunting Permits.” http://www.outdooralabama.com/hunting/wildlife-areas/wmamaps/ (accessed November 11, 2010).
Alabama Department of Environmental Management, “Brownfields: Reclaiming Alabama One Site At A Time,” ADEM, http://adem.alabama.gov/programs/land/brownfields.cnt (accessed Nov. 16, 2010).
Ambrose, Timothy and Crispin Paine. Museum Basics. New York: Routledge, 1993.
American Association of Museums. The New Museum Registration Methods. American Association of Museums, 1998.
Archibald, Robert R. A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1999.
______. The New Town Square: Museums and Communities in Transition. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004.
Baldwin, Sidney. Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.
Campbell, David. “A Case Study of Community Development and Rural Rehabilitation.” Unpublished manuscript available at Northeast Alabama Community College.
Campbell, David. “Skyline Farms.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1546 (accessed September 22, 2010).
Campbell, David, and David Coombs. “Skyline Farms: A Case Study of Community Development and Rural Rehabilitation.” Appalachian Journal 10, no. 3 (Spring 1983): 244-254.
Carlebach, Michael L. “Documentary and Propaganda: The Photographs of the Farm Security Administration,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 8 (Spring 1988): 6-25.
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Carriker, Robert M. Urban Farming in the West: A New Deal Experiment in Subsistence Homesteads. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010.
Conkin, Paul K. Tomorrow A New World: The New Deal Community Program. New York: Cornell University Press, 1959.
Country Music Who’s Who. Nashville: Record World Publications, 1971.
Cutler, Phoebe. The Public Landscape of the New Deal. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.
Dale, J.K. “Manufacture and Uses of Malt Syrup.” Sugar: An English-Spanish Technical Journal Devoted to Sugar Production 22, no. 6 (June 1920), 331-332.
Federal Writers’ Project. The WPA Guide to Tennessee. 1939. Reprint. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986.
Fisher, Harold L. “Nearly 200 Contented Families Find Homes on Cumberland Mountain Farms.” Jackson County Sentinel. 3 December 1936.
Grauberger, Steve. “State’s Musical Heritage Preserved on Recordings.” Alabama Arts. http://www.arts.state.al.us/actc/articles/historical_recordings_article.html (accessed September 22, 2010).
Hamilton, Paula and Linda Shopes. Oral History and Public Memories. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008.
Huber, Patrick. Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Hurley, Jack F. Portrait of a Decade; Roy Stryker and the Development of Documentary Photography in the Thirties. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,1972.
Jackson County, Alabama School District. “Jackson County, Alabama School District.” http://www.jackson.k12.al.us/ (accessed November 15, 2010).
Jones, Loyal. Minstrel of Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002.
Kennamer, John Robert. History of Jackson County, Alabama. 1935. Reprint, Scottsboro, AL: Jackson County Historical Association, 1993.
Kennamer, Joyce Money. “The Rise and Decline of Skyline Farms: Success or Failure?” Master’s thesis, Alabama A&M University, 1978.
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Knowles, Susan, Kristen Leutkemeier, and Carroll Van West, “Historic and Architectural Resources of Gatlinburg, Sevier County, TN, 1807-1960,” National Register Multiple Property Nomination, Center for Historic Preservation, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 2008.
Kurowski , Rene and Michael Ostapchuk, “Overview of Histoplasmosis“ American Family Physician, 66, no. 12 (2002), http://www.aafp.org/afp/2002/1215/p2247.html, (accessed December 14, 2010).
Library Journal.com. “Charlotte Meckenburg Library To Close Half Its Branches, Lay Off 140.” Library Journal.com, http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/communitymanaginglibraries/884428- 273/charlotte_mecklenburg_library_to_close.html.csp (accessed December 14, 2010).
Lord, Gail Dexter and Barry Lord. The Manual of Museum Management. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1997.
McAlester, Virginia and Lee McAlester. A Field Guide To American Houses. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
McClelland, Linda Flint. Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916 to 1942. Washington D.C.: National Park Service, 1993.
“Mountain Dance and Folk Festival.” Folk Heritage Committee. May 2010. http://www.folkheritage.org/ourhistory.htm (accessed 9 November 2010).
The Oral History Association. “Principles for Oral History and Best Practices for Oral History: Introduction.” 2009. http://www.oralhistory.org/do-oral-history/principles-and-practices/ (accessed October 27, 2010).
Osborn & Associates Architects. “Skyline Elementary School.” http://www.osbornarchitects.net/images/SkylineElementary School.pdf (accessed November 17, 2010).
Owen, Thomas M. History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, Volume II. Chicago, IL: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1921.
Page, Wendell, Jackson County, Alabama historian. “One Hundred Schools.” http://www.wendellpage.com/One Hundred Schools.htm (accessed November 15, 2010).
Patrick Velde. “Woodwork: Chairs.” Craft Revival: Shaping Western North Carolina Past and Present. http://www.wcu.edu/craftrevival/crafts/chairs.html (November 2, 2010).
Pratt, Davis. The Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Rehder, John B. Appalachian Folkways. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004. NPS FORM 10-900-A OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86)
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Ritchie, Donald A. Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Saloutos, Theodore. The American Farmer and the New Deal. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982.
Serrell, Beverly. Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1999.
Skyline High School. “Skyline High School.” Jackson County, Alabama School District. http://www.skyline.jch.schoolinsites.com (accessed November 15, 2010).
Stryker, Roy Emerson and Nancy C. Wood. In This Proud Land: America, 1935-1943, as seen in the FSA Photographs. New York: Galahad Books, 1973.
Tracking Your Roots. “Travis Family Cemetery, Jackson County, Alabama.” http://files.usgwarchives.org/ al/jackson/cemeteries/travis.txt (accessed November 17, 2010).
Tugwell, Rexford G. “The Resettlement Idea.” Agricultural History 33, no. 4 (October 1959): 159-164.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. “The Commercial Grading, Packing, and Shipping of Cantaloupes.” Farmers’ Bulletin 707 (February 2, 1916).
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Security Administration. “Skyline Farms.” Report 1606. Skyline Farms Heritage Association Collection, Skyline, Alabama.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Preparation of Barreled Apples for Market.” Farmers’ Bulletin 1080 (September 1919).
U.S. Department of Justice, “2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design,” Department of Justice, http://www.ada.gov/regs2010/2010ADAStandards/2010ADAstandards.htm#403e (accessed December 14, 2010).
USGenWeb Archives. “Sanders Cemetery, Skyline, Alabama.” http://files.usgwarchives.org/al/Jackson/cemeteries/sanders2.txt (accessed December 9, 2010).
West, Carroll Van. “Historic Family Farms in Middle Tennessee.” National Register Multiple Property Nomination, Center for Historic Preservation, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1995.
------. “Historic Resources of the Paint Rock Valley, 1820-1954.” National Register Multiple Property Nomination, Center for Historic Preservation, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 2004.
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------. Tennessee’s New Deal Landscapes: A Guidebook. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001.
Young, Robert A. Historic Preservation Technology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2005.
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