IMAGINING, PRACTICING AND CONTESTING ROAD DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA, 1920S TO 1970S

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.