Author(s): | Taylor, Stephen Wallace |
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Reviewer(s): | Phillips, William H. |
Published by EH.NET (March 2002)
Stephen Wallace Taylor, The New South’s New Frontier: A Social History of
Economic Development in Southwestern North Carolina. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2001. xix + 186 pp. $55 (cloth), ISBN:
0-8130-2116-2.
Reviewed for EH.NET by William H. Phillips, Department of Economics, University
of South Carolina.
In this book, Stephen Wallace Taylor, assistant professor of history at Macon
State College, has written a descriptive view of economic conditions in North
Carolina’s southwestern tip since 1880. This mountainous region, bordered by
Asheville on the east and Gatlinburg, Tennessee on the north, is identified
today by its proximity to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In the
modern mind, it is a recreational area that was never affected by American
industrialization. However, Professor Taylor recounts the history of an area
that was actively engaged in timber and mining operations, with local boosters
dreaming of future industrialization based on water-generated electrical power.
This future was sidetracked in the twentieth century by wider national
concerns: the rise of the conservation movement in the early 1900s, and the New
Deal showcase of government regional planning, the Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA).
Taylor gives an important role in his story to postbellum writers who
stereotyped the region as one of isolated mountainfolk. This included the
popular writings of Horace Kephart, who idealized a pioneer lifestyle that had
disappeared from commercialized America. In fact, the inhabitants of the
mountains were survivors, who rotated between agriculture, mining and timber as
economic opportunities warranted. Of necessity, they were more mobile than the
writers imagined, and the region had many seemingly timeless villages that had
once been boomtowns.
In the early 1900s the booming sectors were copper and lumber. Although the
copper expansion was limited by marginal ores, large scale clear-cutting fed
major lumberyards that required company town housing. The future of the area
seemed to ride on Alcoa and the aluminum industry. With massive power
requirements for plants in eastern Tennessee, Alcoa begin buying land in
anticipation of building a massive dam at Fontana, on the Little Tennessee
River. Although the reservoir would result in the loss of precious farmland,
boosters hoped that surplus power from the dam could fuel a local industrial
boom.
The 1920s and early 30s were a critical time for the Smokies. Forest depletion
in the most accessible areas led to timber industry decline. Then the Great
Depression reduced mineral demand. Besides the direct impact on the local
copper mines, concern about over-capacity led Alcoa to put its water power
plans on hold. Into this gloomy atmosphere came a national drive by
preservationists and conservationists to create national parks and forests in
the eastern United States. The fascination with America’s mountain regions
began with the health resorts favored by wealthy industrialists. Attention was
further focused on southwestern North Carolina by Vanderbilt’s estate in
Asheville.
Local boosters argued that the region could get tourism dollars now, while
industrial development would come with the eventual construction of Alcoa’s
dam. The first decision to be made was whether to create a national park,
favored by preservationists, or a national forest, favored by conservationists.
The park option would generate the most tourism, while the forest option would
enable the timber industry to continue operations. Despite significant
opposition from lumber companies, who still had large land holdings, Congress
approved the Smoky Mountains Park in 1925.
The park was not actually formed until the onset of the Depression, by which
time another institution with interest in the area entered the scene. The
Tennessee Valley Authority’s business was regional planning. The key to that
planning was complete control over the water flow of the Tennessee River
watershed. This meant that Alcoa’s control of a future dam on the Little
Tennessee River would permanently hamstring its operations. Alcoa’s monopoly
position in the aluminum market further intensified the hostility of TVA’s New
Deal progressives, who sought to purchase the dam site and run the dam in the
agency’s interest.
Before this political battle could completely play out, World War II raised the
stakes. Aluminum for airplanes was now a critical need, and the power from the
Fontana Dam was needed as soon as possible. A bid by Alcoa to retain ownership
and have the Federal Government pay for construction costs backfired
politically. The result was that Alcoa was forced to sell the Fontana site to
the TVA in return for a guaranteed power supply. Professor Taylor believes that
with the TVA in charge of the dam and its uses, the interests of the Smoky
Mountain region and its inhabitants were inevitably given little weight. TVA’s
main contact with the local area was during the dam’s construction, after which
it concentrated on distributing the power into eastern Tennessee. Even the
recreational use of the reservoir was limited, as annual summer draw downs to
meet power needs left docks and boat ramps stranded.
The perception that Tennessee was getting most of the benefits of federal
policy was reinforced by the actions of the Park Service in the Smokies. Many
inhabitants of land included in the park felt that officials misled them over
how long and under what conditions they could continue to reside there. Some of
this was due to changing views of what the park should be. The final policy was
one that attempted to eradicate traces of the land development that had already
occurred within park boundaries. This created more dislocation on the North
Carolina side, where more development had taken place.
The final battle revolved around the “North Shore Road.” This was a road that
the Park Service had agreed to build along Fontana Lake to replace a route
inundated after dam construction. Such a road would have given Bryson City,
North Carolina immediate entry into the park, enhancing its value as a tourist
stop. Park officials came to feel that such a road would create too much damage
to park land, and they successfully lobbied for abandonment of the original
plan. As a result, the Cherokee Reservation became North Carolina’s entryway to
the park, with the subsequent diversion of tourist dollars. Local civic
boosters especially resented the success of Gatlinburg, whose entryway on the
Tennessee side became the most popular destination for visitors.
The only shortcoming in this well written book is the lack of a critical
assessment of the area’s true industrial potential. In the absence of a
concrete proposal of what industries would have moved into the area had not the
TVA diverted the dam’s power, it is difficult to take the dreams of civic
boosters at face value. Unless an industry was to develop around some unique
mineral resource in southwestern North Carolina, the region was only left with
the standard Southern industrialization strategy: labor-intensive
manufacturing. But if labor is mobile, it is easier for Southern manufacturers
to entice the local population to more convenient locations for plant
operation. In their early years, Piedmont textile firms regularly sent labor
recruiters into the mountains offering train tickets. Perhaps a look at the
North Carolina furniture industry or Dalton, Georgia’s carpet industry might
reveal how the region could have forged an industry built around local craft
skills. Despite this reservation, the book will be very useful to historians
interested in the economic development of the Appalachian region.
William H. Phillips is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of
South Carolina. He is currently researching the development of the Southern
cotton gin manufacturing industry and, more generally, patents issued to
Southern inventors before World War I.
Subject(s): | Urban and Regional History |
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Geographic Area(s): | North America |
Time Period(s): | 20th Century: Pre WWII |