Traces the development of this early twentieth century tourism route that connected the South to the urban North, the growth of businesses serving the route's visitors, and the evolution of the handmade chenille coverlets sold along the route that laid the groundwork for the modern carpet industry. Original.
"The story of Georgia's 'Dixie Mafia' has never been told. At its core was one man and he was bigger than life. He was the author and enforcer of the rules that governed the entire organization. He set the standard of code that made the 'Dixie Mafia" impenetrable. And he was the one that anyone who broke that code would have to face. His name was Billy Sunday Birt and this is his story" --page 4 cover.
At the turn of the twentieth century, good highways eluded most Americans and nearly all southerners. In their place, a jumble of dirt roads covered the region like a bed of briars. Introduced in 1915, the Dixie Highway changed all that by merging hundreds of short roads into dual interstate routes that looped from Michigan to Miami and back. In connecting the North and the South, the Dixie Highway helped end regional isolation and served as a model for future interstates. In this book, Tammy Ingram offers the first comprehensive study of the nation's earliest attempt to build a highway network, revealing how the modern U.S. transportation system evolved out of the hard-fought political, economic, and cultural contests that surrounded the Dixie's creation. The most visible success of the Progressive Era Good Roads Movement, the Dixie Highway also became its biggest casualty. It sparked a national dialogue about the power of federal and state agencies, the role of local government, and the influence of ordinary citizens. In the South, it caused a backlash against highway bureaucracy that stymied road building for decades. Yet Ingram shows that after the Dixie Highway, the region was never the same.
The late-19th- and early-20th-century vision of the New South relied upon economic growth and access. The development of the Dixie Highway from 1914 to 1927--with its eastern and western branches running from Ontario, Canada, south to Miami, Florida--would help facilitate this dream attracting industry, tourists, and even new residents. Images of America: Tennessee's Dixie Highway: Springfield to Chattanooga tells the story of people, places, politics, and organizations behind the construction of the road from Springfield, Tennessee, to Chattanooga. This section is particularly important, as it was roughly the halfway point of the route and contained the headquarters of the Dixie Highway Association in Chattanooga. It also included the seemingly insurmountable Monteagle Mountain in Marion County--the very last portion of the national north-south highway to be completed.
The late-19th- and early-20th-century vision of the New South relied upon economic growth and access. The development of the Dixie Highway from 1914 to 1927with its eastern and western branches running from Ontario, Canada, south to Miami, Floridawould help facilitate this dream attracting industry, tourists, and even new residents. Images of America: Tennessees Dixie Highway: Springfield to Chattanooga tells the story of people, places, politics, and organizations behind the construction of the road from Springfield, Tennessee, to Chattanooga. This section is particularly important, as it was roughly the halfway point of the route and contained the headquarters of the Dixie Highway Association in Chattanooga. It also included the seemingly insurmountable Monteagle Mountain in Marion Countythe very last portion of the national north-south highway to be completed.
Northern Kentucky's Dixie Highway is a slice of Americana pie. Known also as U.S. 25 and the Lexington-Covington Turnpike, the once-rural route connects the urban cores of Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport to Central Kentucky. Originally a buffalo trail and named in the early 1800s, the route became a paved national highway in the 1920s. The creation of the thoroughfare encouraged the growth of several communities along its route that still thrive today. Images of America: Northern Kentucky's Dixie Highway captures historic images of the people and places along the Dixie Highway beginning in Covington and heading south through Boone County. The photographs--some taken as early as the mid-1800s--depict time's influence as well as those things that remain the same. The 200 images inside offer readers a chance to revisit the friends, familiar sites, and memorable times enjoyed along Northern Kentucky's Dixie Highway.
Looking beyond the Highway is an examination of road history and roadside attractions specific to the South. Focused in part on numerous aspects of thematerial culture landscape of the Dixie Highway, the essays consider the politics of roadbuilding, roadside entertainment, the buildings and businesses one might encounter along the road, and regional adaptations to the needs and desires of northern tourists. Following the Dixie Highway from southern Illinois to Florida with sidetrips down other southern roads, the essays cover a wide variety of subjects, many of which will resonate with anyone who has ever lived in or vacationed in the South: Harrison Mayes's “Get Right With God” signs; the park-and-pray craze of outdoor drive-in church services; the rise and demise of brick highways; the fierce political battle over the route of the Dixie Highway; beach music and the evolution of motel architecture in Myrtle Beach; Florida's early tourist towers; and the commercial development of Tennessee caves as tourist attractions. Covering a landscape that includes Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Indiana, Virginia, Arkansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, and Illinois, the anthology shows that there was and still is a distinctive southern culture and how roads have influenced that culture. As lively as they are diverse, thearticles provide a solid background for understanding roadside ephemera that have disappeared or are quickly disappearing. Ranging from the serious to the light-hearted and including descriptions of American road and roadside icons to kitsch, the book will appeal to anyone with an interest in road history and roadside architecture.