IMAGINING, PRACTICING AND CONTESTING ROAD DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA, 1920S TO 1970S By JESSEY EDWARD GILLEY Submitted to the graduate degree program in Geography and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Barney Warf ________________________________ Jay T. Johnson ________________________________ Shannon O’Lear ________________________________ Geoffrey Buckley ________________________________ Stacey Swearingen White Date Defended: November 17, 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Jessey Gilley certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: IMAGINING, PRACTICING AND CONTESTING ROAD DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA, 1920S TO 1970S ________________________________ Chairperson Barney Warf Date approved: November 17, 2014 ii ii ABSTRACT Roads are ubiquitous yet few understand the historical and political geographies of their development. Politics, scale, and geographical imagination interweave in processes of promoting and building highways. This dissertation explores geographical imaginations of road development in West Virginia during the 1920s to 1970s with a focus on efforts to link the Great Lakes and Florida through southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. Due to its steep and uneven terrain the region is often viewed as remote and isolated, but it was considered an essential link between the Great Lakes and Florida. This research explores three phases of the region’s highway development: the transition between named historic-scenic trails and the numbered U.S. Highway System in the 1920s and 1930s; the development of the highly contested West Virginia Turnpike in the 1950s; and the incorporation of the turnpike into the interstate highway system during the 1960s and 1970s. This research enlivens road development by examining demands for better highways and its contestation. West Virginians have a long history of vying for improved road space. To explore the complexities of road development I utilize a simple framework of materiality, meaning, and practice. The advantage of this trifold approach is that it uncovers imaginations of road development and its contestation at multiple scales ranging from national imaginaries to local road uses. I draw heavily on the concepts of kinaesthetics and rhythm to consider how envisioning and contesting road space were intertwined with popular understandings of driving and riding roads in historically and geographically contingent circumstances. Kinaesthetics, the awareness of one’s body in motion, helps us uncover how driving deplorable roads was used as a political tool to encourage improvement. Rhythm is useful for exploring how roads were commodified and practiced. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to my family for patience and encouragement through many hours of research and writing. Thanks to my advisor, Barney Warf, for his guidance. I would also like to acknowledge the lasting influence of professors Joseph Manzo, George Towers, Michael Federici, and Thomas Tierney for inspiring me to pursue a career in academia. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1: EXPLORING GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS OF ROAD DEVELOPMENT IN WEST VIRGINIA’S SOUTHERN COALFIELDS ............................. 1 EXPLORING PAST GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS OF ROAD SPACE ............................................ 3 CONTENTS OF THE DISSERTATION ................................................................................................ 5 CHAPTER 2: THEORIZING ROAD SPACE AND GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS OF MOBILITY ............................................................................................................................. 9 IMAGINING ROAD SPACE AS MATERIALITY, MEANING AND PRACTICE. ..................................... 10 Lefebvre’s Triad and Geographical Imaginations of Development ..................................... 12 EXPLORING ROADS AS CULTURAL LANDSCAPE ......................................................................... 14 THINKING PRACTICE AND THE PRODUCTION OF ROAD SPACE ................................................... 17 Humanism and Mobility ........................................................................................................ 20 Using ‘New Mobilities’ to Study Old Mobilities ................................................................... 23 Mobilities and Kinaesthetics: The Body-Machine of Road Space ........................................ 24 Affect and Embodied Emotions ............................................................................................. 26 Mobilities and Rhythm: The Ordering and Practice of Road Space .................................... 30 CHAPTER 3: MODERNITY AND INDUSTRIALIZATION IN WEST VIRGINIA’S SOUTHERN COALFIELDS: CONFRONTING IMAGES OF ISOLATION AND BACKWARDNESS .................................................................................................................... 33 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES OF APPALACHIA ..................................... 34 CONFRONTING APPALACHIAN STEREOTYPES ............................................................................. 35 RAILROADS IN THE COALFIELDS: MODERN CONNECTIVE PRECURSORS TO HIGHWAYS ............. 36 The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway ......................................................................................... 36 The Norfolk & Western Railway ........................................................................................... 37 The Virginian Railway .......................................................................................................... 40 ROADS IN WEST VIRGINIA LITERATURE: CONNECTIVITY AND THE EVOLUTION ROADS ............ 41 CHAPTER 4: METHODS TO EXPLORE GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS OF WEST VIRGINIA’S ROAD DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................... 46 WEST VIRGINIAN NEWSPAPERS ................................................................................................. 48 THE DEARTH OF MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES IN NEWSPAPERS ...................................................... 49 HERITAGE ARCHIVES AND NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM ............................................................... 51 Keyword and Phrase Searches ............................................................................................. 55 The Research Process Using Newspaperarchive.com .......................................................... 57 Beginning the Search with Two Broad Keywords ................................................................ 58 Research Obstacles and Solutions ........................................................................................ 59 Notes and Analysis ................................................................................................................ 63 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................. 65 v CHAPTER 5: WEST VIRGINIA AND THE FIGHT FOR A THROUGH ROUTE TO FLORIDA .................................................................................................................................... 66 THE GREAT LAKES-TO-FLORIDA HIGHWAY .............................................................................. 67 The Tug River Highway ........................................................................................................ 69 Bland County, Virginia ......................................................................................................... 71 THE “CLEVELAND-ASHEVILLE ROUTE” ..................................................................................... 73 US 21: A MULTI-SCALAR ROAD SPACE..................................................................................... 77 CONTESTED RHYTHMS AND ROAD SPACE: COTTON HILL AND THE KANAWHA FALLS FERRY ... 79 Closing the Kanawha Falls Ferry......................................................................................... 84 A CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENCE OF TIME, SPACE AND POLITICS ......................................... 86 Racing Time: Cooper’s Dash from Cleveland to Jacksonville ............................................. 88 Contiguous Spaces and Contentious Politics: US 19/21 and State Route No. 4 ..................... 99 US 19 and Contentious Combinations .................................................................................. 94 CONTESTED ORDERINGS OF ROAD SPACE .................................................................................. 97 CHAPTER 6: THE SUPER-HIGHWAY THAT TIME FORGOT ..................................... 100 THE BLACK DIAMOND BUS LINE: EVERYDAY PRODUCTIONS OF ROAD SPACE........................ 102 Taskscape and Rhythm as Commodified Road Space......................................................... 103 The Taxi-Bus War ............................................................................................................... 105 TORTUOUS TIME-SPACES: BAD ROADS AND THE PRODUCTION OF ROAD SPACE ..................... 108 Kinaesthetics and the Production of Road Space ............................................................... 111 Kinaesthetics as Politics:
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