Reinterpreting Cultural History:

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Reinterpreting Cultural History

• Visualizing a Former Appalachian Landscape Using
  GIS

Joel M. Staub The Pennsylvania State
University jms837_at_psu.edu West Virginia GIS
Conference May 10, 2004
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Visualizing an Appalachian Landscape

• Background
• Study Region
• Spatial Data
• Settlement Patterns
• Spatial Relationships to Rivers/Streams
• Spatial Relationships to Schools
• Land-Use Activities

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Blue Ridge Mountains
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Shenandoah Homesteads
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Shenandoah Homesteads
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Study Region

• Shenandoah NP
• The Old Rag Hollows
• Corbin, Nicholson, and Weakley

Shenandoah NP and the Old Rag Region
Corbin, Nicholson, and Weakley Hollows
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Spatial Data

• 1934 U.S.G.S. Topographic Map
• Five Aerial Photographs, October 1937
• 31 Stitched DEMs
• 27 at 10 meters
• 4 at 30 meters

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Settlement Patterns
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Settlement Patterns
Dendritic/Fan- Shaped
Linear Shaped
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Settlement Patterns
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Settlement Patterns

• Proximity of Homes to Rivers

• -- Average distances
• Corbin 527 ft.
• Nicholson 186 ft.
• Weakley 507 ft.
• Total 350 ft.

1/16th of a mile 330 ft.
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Spatial Relationships to Schools

• Low educational attainment despite the number of
  schools present in hollows
• Intermittent school terms
• Children kept at home to do chores
• Location!

The Hull School in the 1930s
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Location of Schools
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Travel Distances to Schools

• Transportation routes to two different schools
• A 1.8 miles
• B 1.5 miles
• C 1.7 miles
• Topography determined distances to school
• Educational attainment?

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Land-Use Activities

• Agriculture
• Orcharding
• Pasture

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Land-Use Activities
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Land-Use Activities
3 acres 27 rows 266 trees
2 acres 14 rows 166 trees
1 acre 7 rows 68 trees
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Land-Use Activities
Land-Use Activities
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Land-Use Activities
Orchards
Pasture
Agriculture
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Conclusions

• Interpreting cultural landscapes that park
  officials until the 1990s neglected to
  acknowledge
• Used GIS to re-create the mountain hollows
• Compared this cultural landscape to patterns of
  the new resettlement communities

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within another decade a new era will have
begun in these mountains and the day of the Blue
Ridge mountaineer will have passed.
--Margaret Hitch, 1931