Managing the Mountains : Land Use Planning, the New Deal, and the Creation of a Federal Landscape in Appalachia

Historians have long viewed the massive reshaping of the American landscape during the New Deal era as unprecedented. This book uncovers the early twentieth-century history rich with precedents for the New Deal in forest, park, and agricultural policy. Sara M. Gregg explores the redevelopment of the Appalachian Mountains from the 1910s through the 1930s, finding in this region a changing paradigm of land use planning that laid the groundwork for the national New Deal. Through an intensive analysis of federal planning in Virginia and Vermont, Gregg contextualizes the expansion of the federal government through land use planning and highlights the deep intellectual roots of federal conservation policy. CONTENTS 6 PREFACE 9 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 14 Introduction Farms and Forests: An Appalachian Portrait 19 Part One: Origins 29 Chapter One. A Harvest of Scarcity: Self-Sufficiency in the Blue Ridge Mountains 29 Chapter Two. Customs in Common: Community And Agriculture In The Green Mountains 58 Chapter Three. Academics and Partisans: Federal Land Use Planning, 1900– 1933 94 Part Two: Projects 123 Chapter Four. Designing the Shenandoah National Park 123 Chapter Five. Cultivating the Vermont Forest 158 Chapter Six. Reforming Submarginal Lands, 1933–1938 193 Epilogue: Cellarholes and Wilderness: The Return of the Appalachian Forest 231 Notes 239 Index 296