A GEOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION OF THE CAUSES UNDERLYING URBAN GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION IN ALABAMA, 1820 – 2010 by ALEXANDER CHRISTOPHER FRIES JOE WEBER, COMMITTEE CHAIR CRAIG REMINGTON TERESA CRIBELLI A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the Department of Geography in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2020 Copyright Alexander Christopher Fries 2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Urbanization in Alabama has been driven and influenced by a number of factors over the course of the state’s history. Examined from a geographic standpoint, the sizes and spatial distributions of Alabama’s cities have been chiefly driven at different times by access to the state’s navigable waterways; proximity to its major cotton-cultivating regions; access to significant railroad infrastructure; proximity to the state’s major coal and iron ore deposits; access to significant highway infrastructure; proximity to various “institutional industries” (defined here as the combination of county seats of government, public universities, permanent military installations, and the site of the state capital); and the process of suburbanization. This study employs qualitative data-collection and quantitative analysis methods to determine the possibility of modeling the explanatory power of these variables relative to the populations of the state’s twenty largest cities in each decade since 1820 in a manner that complements and aligns with the prior literature on the subject using multiple linear regression. The resulting models are able to successfully capture a single statistically-significant geographic variable with great accuracy, although the results are also somewhat more mixed when examining possible secondary and tertiary predictors of city population. The research serves as a stepping stone towards developing a statistical means of analyzing and understanding the impacts of various geographic factors on urban population that is both adaptable to other regions of the world and is able to produce outputs that are relatively easy to map and visualize. ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my parents and my siblings, whose endless love, support, encouragement, and guidance over the years are what have ultimately made this journey possible. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful for the guidance and support from many different people that made this thesis possible. I would first like to thank all of the members of my thesis committee: my committee chair, Dr. Joe Weber, for his never-ending advice, encouragement, and generosity throughout the process of completing this project; Dr. Teresa Cribelli, for her invaluable mentorship as I navigated through the world of historical scholarship as both an undergraduate and graduate student; and Mr. Craig Remington, cartographer extraordinaire, for sharing his incredible insights into both cartography and Alabama history with me throughout my time working under him in the Cartographic Research Lab. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge my fellow colleagues in geography and cartography alike for their constant support and willingness to help me with any questions or concerns I may have had along the way. Finally, I would like to thank the faculty of the Departments of Geography and History, as well as the College of Arts and Sciences and The University of Alabama as a whole, for the instruction, experience, and financial support they have provided me that ultimately made it possible for me to take on this project at all. iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iv LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND .............................................................................5 2.1 NAVIGABLE WATERWAYS .................................................................................................7 2.2 COTTON CULTIVATION .....................................................................................................13 2.3 RAILROADS ...........................................................................................................................19 2.4 MINERAL RESOURCES .......................................................................................................24 2.5 HIGHWAYS ............................................................................................................................30 2.6 INSTITUTIONAL INDUSTRIES ...........................................................................................35 2.6.1 County Seats .........................................................................................................................35 2.6.2 Public Universities ................................................................................................................37 2.6.3 Military Installations .............................................................................................................40 2.6.4 The State Capital ...................................................................................................................42 2.7 SUBURBANIZATION............................................................................................................45 CHAPTER 3. METHODS .............................................................................................................50 3.1 DATA COLLECTION ............................................................................................................51 3.2 DATA ANALYSIS ..................................................................................................................61 v CHAPTER 4. RESULTS ...............................................................................................................68 CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSION .........................................................................................................82 5.1 CORROBORATING RESULTS .............................................................................................83 5.2 CONTRADICTING RESULTS ..............................................................................................86 5.3 STUDY LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH .................90 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................96 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................100 APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................................110 vi LIST OF FIGURES 3.1 Map of the 10-mile buffer zone used for calculating the mileage of railroads surrounding Fairfield in 1940 .............................................................................................................................65 4.1 A cartographic approach to visualizing the historical urbanization patterns in Alabama .......81 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The history of urbanization in the United States is a long, convoluted, and fascinating tale that has undoubtedly impacted every corner of the nation to some extent. The likes of the Union’s major industrial centers in the Northeast and the Midwest, as well as the burgeoning centers of commerce and innovation along its West Coast and the Sun Belt, all serve as remarkable testaments to the great variety of cities to be found in the United States, as well as to the plethora of causes and conditions that ultimately contributed to their individual stories of growth and development. When considering the most prominent examples of the phenomenon, however, rarely does the state of Alabama register as a location where urbanization imparted a significant mark. To an extent, this assumptions holds some merit; for much of its history, the majority of the state’s population has indeed resided in its countryside, its economy chiefly tied to, if not utterly dominated by, the cultivation of cotton and other cash crops—conditions that do not necessarily lend themselves to urbanization as it is typically considered. As with many topics, however, the truth of the matter is indeed more nuanced and complicated than it may otherwise appear at a first glance. Despite its long historical reliance on the agricultural sectors of the economy, Alabama has nevertheless proven to be robust enough to serve as the cradle for cities of their own unique identity and character. In the antebellum era, the state’s small coastline became the home to one of the nation’s largest and most prosperous port cities; by the start of the twentieth century, meanwhile, Alabama was host to one of the largest and most productive industrial centers in all of the United States, and by the twenty-first century 1 it has increasingly become the home of a major hub for scientific and technological development. Certainly, the cases mentioned here—those of Mobile, Birmingham,