Wetlands of the American Midwest
Wetlands of the American Midwest

Author: Hugh Prince

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0226682803

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How people perceive wetlands has always played a crucial role in determining how people act toward them. In this readable and objective account, Hugh Prince examines literary evidence as well as government and scientific documents to uncover the history of changing attitudes toward wetlands in the American Midwest. As attitudes changed, so did scientific research agendas, government policies, and farmers' strategies for managing their land. Originally viewed as bountiful sources of wildlife by indigenous peoples, wet areas called "wet prairies," "swamps," or "bogs" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were considered productive only when drained for agricultural use. Beginning in the 1950s, many came to see these renamed "wetlands" as valuable for wildlife and soil conservation. Prince's book will appeal to a wide readership, ranging from geographers and environmental historians to the many government and private agencies and individuals concerned with wetland research, management, and preservation.

The Swamp Peddlers
The Swamp Peddlers

Author: Jason Vuic

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1469663163

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Florida has long been a beacon for retirees, but for many, the American dream of owning a home there was a fantasy. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called "installment land sales industry" hawked billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners. For only $10 down and $10 a month, working-class pensioners could buy a piece of the Florida dream: a graded home site that would be waiting for them in a planned community when they were ready to build. The result was Cape Coral, Port St. Lucie, Deltona, Port Charlotte, Palm Coast, and Spring Hill, among many others—sprawling communities with no downtowns, little industry, and millions of residential lots. In The Swamp Peddlers, Jason Vuic tells the raucous tale of the sale of residential lots in postwar Florida. Initially selling cheap homes to retirees with disposable income, by the mid-1950s developers realized that they could make more money selling parcels of land on installment to their customers. These "swamp peddlers" completely transformed the landscape and demographics of Florida, devastating the state environmentally by felling forests, draining wetlands, digging canals, and chopping up at least one million acres into grid-like subdivisions crisscrossed by thousands of miles of roads. Generations of northerners moved to Florida cheaply, but at a huge price: high-pressure sales tactics begat fraud; poor urban planning begat sprawl; poorly-regulated development begat environmental destruction, culminating in the perfect storm of the 21st-century subprime mortgage crisis.

Arkansas, 1800-1860
Arkansas, 1800-1860

Author: S. Charles Bolton

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 1998-09-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1557285195

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Often thought of as a primitive backwoods peopled by rough hunters and unsavory characters, early Arkansas was actually productive and dynamic in the same manner as other American territories and states. In this, the second volume in the Histories of Arkansas, S. Charles Bolton describes the emigration, mostly from other southern states, that carried Americans into Arkansas; the growth of an agricultural economy based on cotton, corn, and pork; the dominance of evangelical religion; and the way in which women coped with the frontier and made their own contributions toward its improvement. He closely compares the actual lifestyles of the settlers with the popularly held, uncomplimentary image. Separate chapters deal with slavery and the lives of the slaves and with Indian affairs, particularly the dispossession of the native Quapaws and the later-arriving Cherokees. Political chapters explore opportunism in Arkansas Territory, the rise of the Democratic Party under the control of the Sevier-Johnson group known as the Dynasty, and the forces that led Arkansas to secede from the Union. In addition, Arkansas’s role in the Mexican War and the California gold rush is treated in detail. In truth, geographic isolation and a rugged terrain did keep Arkansas underpopulated, and political violence and a disastrous experience in state banking tarnished its reputation, but the state still developed rapidly and successfully in this period, playing an important role on the southwestern frontier. Winner of the 1999 Booker Worthen Literary Prize

Legislative Documents
Legislative Documents

Author: Iowa. General Assembly

Publisher:

Published: 1872

Total Pages: 966

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Contains the reports of state departments and officials for the preceding fiscal biennium.