Paper Abstracts
“The Guide Told Us…”: Travelogues & Tour Guides
Katie Algeo - Western Kentucky University
This paper is a case study in using written travelogues to recover aspects of the oral history of tour guide narratives. Tourism at Mammoth Cave dates to the early nineteenth century. During the 1840s, large, newly discovered portions of the cave were incorporated into the cave’s tourist trails. The three main guides during this era were literate, but enslaved, African Americans who left an important legacy of oral interpretation of the cave, but no written record. Hundreds of visitors, however, recorded their impressions in published accounts, diaries, and private letters, preserving echoes of the guides’ narrated accounts. Analysis of early travel accounts reveals that one of the new interior cave toponyms was contested. The name Persico Avenue, selected by the cave’s owner to memorialize the artist who painted his portrait, was quickly changed by the guides to Pensico Avenue and then Pensacola Avenue, which remains its name today. Continued use of all three names into the 1850s suggests differences among the guides in usage. An attempt to correlate individual guides with variations of the P-Avenue name is suggestive, but inconclusive, as few travelogue authors named the guide who led them through the cave. Nonetheless, the recovery of the avenue’s original, but long-forgotten, name adds depth to our understanding of the cave’s history.
The US Public Land Survey System and the Production of Abstract Space in the Early Republic
Timothy G. Anderson - Department of Geography, Ohio University
The design and implementation of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) by the federal government in 1785 produced – and reproduced over time on a continental scale – a system of rectilinear land subdivision that imparted a widespread “regularity” to the American landscape, especially west of the Appalachians. An earlier generation of scholars viewed the PLSS as a conspicuous impress of federal governmental authority that imposed a system of land subdivision and survey within which settlers were forced to operate. Following in the vein of more recent scholarship that scrutinizes cultural landscapes within the framework of contemporary post structural social theory and ideas of governmentality, this paper argues for a more nuanced interpretation of the PLSS as a material manifestation of Enlightenment idea(l)s and discourses, a striking example of what Lefebvre labels ‘abstract’ spaces, and as an instrument of dispossession and settler colonialism that facilitated the state-sanctioned removal of indigenous populations. The paper begins with an overview of the genesis and implementation of the PLSS set against the backdrop of federal land alienation policies during the Early National period. Next, examples of visible impacts on settlement patterns and landscapes in the Midwest and Great Plains are offered. Finally, ideas of the production of space are employed as frameworks for identifying and understanding specific historical-political discourses encoded in the PLSS’s rectilinear survey landscape.
The Other Jersey Shore: Coastal Management, Cultures of Disaster, and Sea-level Rise on New Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore
Samuel Avery-Quinn - Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina
In December 2017, construction crews began demolishing most of the remaining houses in the Lawrence Township community of Bay Point. The demolition was part of New Jersey’s Blue Acres program, an initiative to buy out flood-prone neighborhoods in coastal communities. Flush with federal funds in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, the program, praised as a model for strategic retreat in the face of climate change and rising seas and criticized for targeting low-income neighborhoods on the Raritan and Delaware bays, may radically alter the state’s coastal landscapes. However, Blue Acres is only the most recent intervention in the Garden State’s littoral zones. On New Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore, the program follows a long history of coastal reengineering stretching from meadow banking and salt hay farming, the establishment of working-class residential resorts, and piecemeal efforts to harden the shoreline against beach erosion and storms. This presentation explores the historical intersections of coastal management, ecological change, and human habitation on the Bayshore. In this exploration, I argue that a succession of conflicting landscape discourses of coastal management, economic development, and resilience have long shaped Bayshore life and laid the groundwork for the Blue Acres program’s focus on the other Jersey shore.
The Postage Stamp Today: Nationalistic Patriotism Meets Global Capitalism
Thomas L. Bell - University of Tennessee
Commemorative postage stamps traditionally exemplify “banal nationalism” by showcasing the achievements of the country, patriotism, and pride of place. Today, some stamp issuers pander to fans of popular culture to raise revenue from collectors worldwide. The subject matter of pandered stamps is often placeless: the name of the country being the only indication of the stamp’s origin. Such stamps are commonly marketed on behalf of developing nations by private companies in profit-sharing arrangements with the country’s postal authorities. The US is not immune to this capitalistic tendency. The United States Postal Service is both a public service and a commercial enterprise; it too produces many stamps that are designed to appeal to worldwide collectors. Until recently, many affluent European countries took the opposite path, producing stamps that appeal almost exclusively to their own citizens and feature national products, cultural icons, and comic book characters. This type of stamp issuance represents “hyper nationalism.” But the winds of change are shifting, driven by modern communication technologies and declining stamp sales. Several European countries have added QR codes to prevent counterfeiting, but which may ultimately be used to replace traditional stamps. To raise revenue for their postal authorities, even affluent countries have joined in the business of stamp pandering by offering “boutique collectables” — postage printed on precious metals, included in prestige packages, or as crypto stamps that contain NFTs. These issues are not actually postage. Is there a happy medium between the staid nationalism of traditional commemorative stamps and the crass and placeless pandering of stamps depicting international movie stars and cartoon characters? I examine the stamps of one country that combines the best of nationalism and commercialism and might serve as a model for others to follow. Which country this is may surprise you.
The Grounds, Outbuildings, and Farming at Granger House
Emery Benoit - Castleton University
The modern landscape surrounding the Granger House looks very different today than it has throughout the house’s history. Those who have lived in Granger House over the years have left their marks on the landscape in accordance with their jobs, their hobbies, their aesthetics, and their subsistence methods, and although many of the marks they left have since faded, we have ways of rediscovering what once was. Gardens, pastures, barns, stables, beehives, sheds, workshops, swamps, orchards, and outhouses have all occupied the land, and we can find out more about their roles in the lives of Granger’s occupants by using a variety of archaeological and research techniques. Ground-penetrating radar, excavations, and analysis of recovered artifacts on the grounds and beneath the house’s ell provide valuable archaeological information, while research at the Castleton Town Office, Vermont State Archives, Castleton University’s Calvin Coolidge Library, coursework relating to the house’s history, and the Internet, give us another angle. Thus, a dynamic history of land use is revealed.
Beyond the Style, Beyond the APE: Dwelling on Detroit’s Upper Eastside, Common Neighborhoods, and Section 106
Dan Bonenberger and Katie Cook - Eastern Michigan University
The housing stock of Detroit’s upper Eastside reflects the Motor City’s growth in the 1920s-50s and the expected stylistic classifications of the National Register of Historic Places. However, the significance of such urban neighborhoods typically has little to do with architectural style, and instead resides in the spaces where Detroiters lived their lives, making individual and collective contributions to the city and its history. As part of the Section 106 review of a water main project along Conner Avenue, graduate students in historic preservation at Eastern Michigan University conducted an architectural survey. A historical Geographic Information System was created to compare historic maps and aerial photographs with the existing cultural landscape, analyze patterns, and communicate findings. The research moved beyond style to analyze historic buildings according to location, age, and morphology and beyond the area of potential effects (APE) in search of common and extraordinary places within the adjacent neighborhoods. Dwellings along Conner Avenue were geared towards middle- and working-class families of the mid-twentieth century, meaning that stylistic elements were simplified or absent. Based on exterior morphological clues, the floorplans of single-family dwellings appear to fall into two main classes, which reveal the influence of the Federal housing policies. Thus morphology, especially floorplan, may illustrate cultural values better than style and help illuminate the experience of the people residing within. Moreover, as we moved beyond the APE into the adjacent neighborhoods and talked with local residents, the team was introduced to the home of Civil Rights pioneer Sarah Elizabeth Ray. From the outside, Ray’s working-class cottage is unassuming, yet what happened inside was remarkable. Her home represents the opportunities and challenges inherent in the Section 106 process and reinforces the notion that it is common places that sometimes hold the greatest significance.
“An Unstable Atmosphere”: The Spatial Construction of Conflicting Atmospheres at the Titanic Museum
Ethan Bottone - Northwest Missouri University, Derek Alderman, and Stefanie Benjamin - University of Tennessee
The relationship between tourism spaces and atmosphere, a concept that seeks to capture the interplay between bodily/sensorial experiences of the visitor with the material setting of the destination, has become a topic of increasing interest for dark tourism scholars. Despite the rise of atmospheric studies, few have explored the topic through a critical lens to understand how competing atmospheres may manifest within the same touristic space. In order to provide more understanding on atmospheric conflicts within dark tourism spaces, we provide a case study of atmospheric construction at the Titanic Museum & Attraction in Pigeon Forge, TN, USA. Located on the strip of “tourist traps” leading to Smoky Mountains National Park, the Titanic Museum & Attraction attempts to tell the emotional and tragic story of the famed ocean liner’s sinking, while also providing a space where children and adults alike can find amusement through games and activities. The two competing missions of this site require the creation of two separate atmospheres, leading to “atmospheric instability” that permeates the spaces where visitors seek to both learn about this dark event, while also reveling in the entertainment provided by the attraction. As such, visitors to the Titanic Museum & Attraction are faced with a conflicting experience that influences their perceptions of both the historical event that the attraction is based upon and the present site itself. Through participant observation and autoethnography, we aim to demonstrate how these conflicting atmospheres are constructed and how this “atmospheric instability” can create differing visitor experiences at one of Pigeon Forge’s most unique dark tourism destinations.
Montana’s Copperway Trail: Recreation and Restoration in a Superfund Complex
Dawn S. Bowen - University of Mary Washington
More than a century of copper mining in Butte, Montana, produced a legacy of toxic waste. By the late 1980s, Butte, Anaconda, Silver Bow Creek, Warm Springs Ponds, and the Clark Fork River to Milltown, had been added to the national priority list, creating the largest Superfund site in the United States. Three decades later, most of the waste has been remediated and the cleanup project has reached its final stage. Through it all, runs a non-motorized recreational trail that will one day connect Butte with Anaconda. This paper examines existing trails in Butte and at Warm Springs Ponds, and the planned extension along the entire 26-mile stretch of Silver Bow Creek, demonstrating that recreational trail development can be combined with preservation of historic resources.
US Route 9: A Journey Through the ‘News’
Wayne Brew – Montgomery County Community College
US Route 9 runs from Laurel, Delaware through the coastal areas of New Jersey then north along the Hudson River through Albany ending at the Canadian Border in Champlain, New York. This region corresponds with the claims of the Dutch (through Henry Hudson’s explorations) as New Netherlands and is approximately 600 miles in length. US Route 9 is one of only two US Interstates that currently uses a ferry ride to connect the route (the other is US Route 10). Images of diners, drive-in theaters, motels, and gas stations will be discussed along with other roadside attractions.
Agriculture to E-Commerce: The Changing Landscape of the Greater Lehigh Valley, PA
Moira Conway - Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Berks, Lehigh and Northampton Counties in Pennsylvania have seen explosive growth of warehousing facilities within the last ten years. The availability of low-cost land and good accessibility to the large cities of the East Coast, make it a desirable location. In many cases formerly agricultural land is converted to industrial uses for the development, altering the nature of the community. The main benefit that is usually identified with this development is jobs, but at the same time the surrounding community has a variety of concerns about the impacts of these changes. This project examines the potential challenges identified by the community as part of the landscape transformations and explores the quality and quantity of jobs created in warehousing industries. Results of this project will help guide policy in local communities regarding warehouse development.
Revisiting Roadside Chapels in Wisconsin’s Belgian Culture Region
John A. Cross - University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Four decades ago two cultural geographers and a landscape architect described Wisconsin’s Belgian ethnic landscape, the nation’s largest rural concentration of persons of Belgian ancestry, noting its distinctive farmhouse and barn architecture and the area’s religious heritage. The presence in the region of small roadside votive chapels had long attracted the attention of travelers, yet the geographers lamented in their article that they might disappear over time. The landscape architect noted that there were “only a dozen remaining chapels” and there were none “under construction.” This paper revisits the findings of these scholars and looks at the contemporary status of these chapels. Today the presence of a dozen remaining historic roadside chapels that are open to the public, the relocation of several chapels to cemeteries, plus the construction of at least four new chapels over the last three decades, along with their promotion by the Belgian Heritage Foundation and interest and publicity by a local religious leader, ensures that they remain an enduring sacred element of the material culture that characterizes northeast Wisconsin’s Belgian cultural landscape.
Lost Cause?: The Lasting Legacies of Enslavers on the Landscapes of Western Kentucky University and Bowling Green, Kentucky
Margaret M. Gripshover - Western Kentucky University
Many universities and communities have struggled to address memorialization of the Confederacy and the other material representations of the bitter legacies of enslavement. Many institutions of higher education and the cities in which they are located, have initiated reconciliation programs that include removing symbols of enslavement and the “Lost Cause” from their landscapes. Similar efforts initiated at Western Kentucky University (WKU), located in Bowling Green (Warren County), met with limited success. Although Kentucky never joined the Confederacy, in 1861, one out of every three persons in Warren County was enslaved. Prior to the establishment of Freedmen’s Bureau schools in 1866, educational opportunities in Bowling Green were exclusively for whites and included various private academies and colleges. By 1928, several private schools merged to form what today is known as WKU. Two of these private colleges, Ogden College, and Potter College, were named for Warren County residents who were among the area’s wealthiest enslavers. Today, the Ogden and Potter names appear on WKU buildings, campus signage, and academic programs. The names of these and other enslavers are also memorialized on the Bowling Green landscape, especially as street names. In 2020, with increasing attention to the “Black Lives Matter” movement, WKU formed a “Names and Symbols Task Force” to identify campus resources whose names were linked to enslavement. Although the Task Force recommended that some names should be changed, the University took no action. To date, the city of Bowling Green has also made no effort to address the issue of enslaver memorialization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of the persistence of enslaver memorialization at WKU and in Bowling Green, and to discuss the consequences of this continued indifference to social justice issues for African Americans in the community.
Travelling Agent: The Geographic Movements of James Bond
Ola Johansson - University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown
The famous fictional secret agent James Bond travels around the world during his missions. This paper maps and measures James Bond’s movements. We reviewed twenty-two Bond films to analyze how widespread his geographic travels are and how they unfold and change over time. The method used was a two-tiered geographic dispersal measure. First, the amount of time Bond spends in each place, as depicted in the films, captures one aspect of the travels of James Bond as it treats each location as a discrete spatial unit, but not considering distance among places travelled. In a second measure, each film is visualized as a polygon with a centroid representing the locations of the film, which provides a dispersal measure based on actual distance. We conclude that James Bond’s whereabouts are more than a reflection of the storyline of each film; they are also representations of exoticized landscapes and places that mirror evolving global geopolitics. Moreover, James Bond’s geography tends to be slightly more dispersed over time, as he travels to more, and more far-flung, places later in the franchise. The research was conducted in an upper-level undergraduate seminar course, which proved to be effective in conveying geographic concepts and making spatial analysis relatable to students through popular culture.
19th Century Clay Smoking Pipes from Granger House, Castleton, Vermont
Luke Kosby - Castleton University
Clay smoking pipes are an abundant artifact class on 19th -century North American archaeological sites. As an artifact class, clay smoking pipes have qualities that hint towards their place of production and date of production, as well as towards the lives of the smokers themselves. The Granger House, a historic home in Castleton, Vermont on the National Register of Historic Places built c. 1800 has architectural features of Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival styles. Archaeological field work at the Granger House produced, alongside other artifacts, a wealth of clay smoking pipe fragments in a range of sizes as well as a few relatively complete pipes. These complete clay smoking pipes have been analyzed using Atkinson, Oswald, Binford, and Mallios methods, as well as considered in their contexts, to provide insight into the inhabitants of Castleton in the 19th century. The result of this analysis was that the pipes were likely imported from Britain, with evidence pointing towards Glasgow in particular, at some point after the date of the construction of the Granger House. The mean production date of the pipes has been calculated and corroborated by historical context to a date of near 1806, with estimate toward 1830. Societal implications of the types of pipes found indicate that the users of the pipes may have been working class due to implied and proven stem lengths.
Postcard Imagery and Place Promotion along Route 66
Adam A. Payne - Auburn University and Douglas A. Hurt - University of Missouri
U.S. Highway 66 (better known as Route 66) connected Chicago and Los Angeles between 1926 and 1985. Since then, remnants of the road and adjacent tourist infrastructure have become heritage tourism destinations for those wishing to better understand America’s past. As part of the process of interpreting historic place promotion along the highway, we sampled 451 Route 66 postcards in the online collection of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI; https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/). These visual geographies offer insights into how places were portrayed as Americans increasingly took road trips and car-based vacations. At this early stage in our research, several results have emerged. The postcards primarily were published between 1940 and 1970 and offer a window into Route 66 during those decades. Geographically, postcards representing Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma make up nearly 60 percent of the sample. Thematically, businesses (such as motels and restaurants), the road itself, automobiles, and landscapes (often desert or mountain) are most commonly represented.
Excavating the Memory of Kent State’s Wounded Students
Chris W. Post - Kent State University at Stark
On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard [ONG] killed four and wounded nine Kent State University students on campus while, as part of a large group of students, they peacefully protested the US invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Over the last five-plus decades Kent State’s commemoration of this tragedy evolved from nonexistent to several memorials, a walking tour, and a Visitors’ Center. Throughout these developments, however, the nine wounded students remained largely unmarked. This changed in 2020 as the University planned, as part of its 50th anniversary commemoration, the dedication of markers for each wounded student to be placed where they stood as the Guard shot them. This process did not go without impediments. While planning the markers, a small team of Kent State personnel and May 4 survivors found that the FBI wrongly located the wounded students’ locations, and thus also their distance from the ONG’s firing position. This miscalculation has impacted May 4 research and subsequent publications for decades. This presentation details the process of how these errors were found, corrected, and how the memory of the wounded students has been symbolically excavated. What is more, I ask and hypothesize what this process means for “memory work” and a constantly changing commemorative landscape at Kent State and beyond.
Granger House, Castleton, Vermont: The Original Floorplan circa 1806
Jaron Rochon - Castleton University
Floorplans are the building blocks of architecture, history, and culture; humans have used floorplans for thousands of years as instructions to reflect identity. When you think of New England and its stereotypical landscape, you think of white churches, stone walls, settled villages, English-styled homes and farms, and picturesque foliage and season. Most of those, however, are untrue, except for English-styled landscapes, and, of course, picturesque environments. One such English-styled feature is the New England two-story “five-over-five.” As a two-story, five-bay, two-room deep home with a central chimney, Granger House in Castleton, Vermont, fits in with those symbolic features. When Noadiah Granger, a joiner, built the family’s home on land inherited by his wife, Rachel, he must have followed a specific or standardized plan. However, no layout was left behind or recorded. Even before the sale of the home in 1841, Granger House had gone through extensive renovation, most notedly, the implementation of many Greek Revival elements, including a spiral staircase, and exterior pilasters. This paper examines the current structure of Granger House and compares it to similar homes in the region to create a theorized original design circa 1806. By observing key clues in the current structure, as well as considering the reports from a dendrochronologist and architectural historian, an original floorplan can be created as a reference and understanding of how Granger House reflected its environment in sparsely populated Castleton, circa 1806.
Granger House and “Hidden History”: An Interdisciplinary Project to Support Undergraduate Research and Training in the Humanities
Scott Roper - Castleton University
In 1806, house joiner Noadiah Granger constructed a home on land that his wife, Rachel, inherited from her father in Castleton, Vermont. Starting in January 2022, thanks in part to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, faculty at Castleton University are collaborating with students across disciplines to turn the house into a museum and learning lab to support students in the study of local history and material culture. Research-based classes have allowed students to work with GIS, 3D imaging, drones, ground-penetrating radar, and other technology, while also undertaking traditional documentary and archaeological research, to uncover and record the history and uses of the former Granger property, particularly in its first seven decades. The story that has emerged is one of a large, stylish Vermont house set in a rural area that was on the verge of becoming a village. Changes to the property, including the construction of a barn to support small-scale agriculture, the subdivision and sale of land to pay the debts of property owners, and the addition of an ell and Greek Revival features, reflect the changing fortunes of its owners. Some of these traits, as well as archaeological evidence on the site, also connect the house to local economic conditions as well as to national and international cultural and economic networks. The project demonstrates the value of applied humanities and social-science education in preparing students for a variety of jobs after graduation.
Teaching a Sense of Place in Place: Three Examples from Field Classes
Rex J. Rowley - Illinois State University
Sense of place is a part of life for every human. Yet, the topic can be a difficult subject to teach in a classroom. Since the fostering of a sense of place comes through our experience in a space, one of the best ways to teach the concept is through experiential learning, which for geographers often involves fieldtrips. I share three examples of how learning in the field can help students to understand sense of place by “placing” themselves in a location. In a day trip to St. Louis for an urban geography class, students recognize the complexities of a city beyond the Gateway Arch and headlines about crime and protest. During a week-long excursion to the American Southwest, students see how symbolic landscapes underscore a connection to place for the local resident population. And, during a short-term study abroad trip to Japan, students learn how their own experience in place can illuminate the nuance that is found underneath commonly held perceptions of another people and culture. In each of these examples, and in any fieldtrip, it is a connection to place that can be the best instructor on a topic as ubiquitous and misunderstood as sense of place.
Tracking White Supremacy: Restructuring Urban Residence in the Era of Jim Crow
Richard H Schein - University of Kentucky
This paper examines the historical geographies of racialized residential locations in Lexington Kentucky, particularly in the critical post-Plessy period between 1896 and the eve of World War Two. Detailed empirical examination of the changes in Black-White proximity illuminates the shift from a “micro” to a “macro” urban apartheid; and interprets the shift as not only related to the “color of law” but also driven by extra-legal actions and processes that solidified the arrival of Jim Crow. The case is presented as part of a project on racialized landscapes and racial formation in a southern city that was a way-station on the Great Migration. The project is underlain by the theoretical aphorism that landscapes work, in this case in the service of racial formation. The timing and location of the case adds empirical nuance to our historical urban models and for how we approach the historical geographies and structural legacies of racist urban development in the US today.
Watching Them Watching Us: Cultural Heritage Tourism in the Peruvian Rainforest
Christa Smith - Clemson University
Nunez (1963) described tourism as a “laboratory situation for testing how cultural perceptions and relations shift when hosts and guests interact.” It has been well documented that the “tourist gaze” often impacts how cultural groups choose to represent and market their histories and material cultures. Some researchers have argued that cultural heritage tourism, particularly tourism involving indigenous groups, is exploitive and damaging to local traditions and values. Others have argued that increased tourism could lead to a rebirth of indigenous languages and customs. The purpose of this paper is to describe the interactions between a group of American educators/tourists with the Yagua tribe in the Amazon Rainforest region of Peru. Observations over a 10-day period indicate that the Yagua have been significantly impacted by the globalization of tourism but also have benefited in ways that defy the belief that exploitation is the norm. The Yagua proved to be savvy observers and actors in meeting international expectations of the commodification of their culture, while at the same time subtly pushing back against the erosion of their beliefs and cultural landscapes. While the Yagua displayed multiple identities throughout the observation period, they consistently marketed their cultural heritage as a form of staged authenticity. The profits from these interactions were then, in part, used to further preserve their traditions and values.
Poster Abstracts
Since Waldmire: A Comparative Photo Analysis of Two Midwestern College Towns
Morgan Hurt – University of Missouri
In the late 1970s, famous Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire illustrated posters for various American college towns, among them Columbia, Missouri and Champaign, Illinois. Since then, their appearances have dramatically changed. Waldmire’s posters captured the senses of place and cultural landscapes of these two locations, providing an interesting opportunity to explore examples of change and continuity. Repeat photography was conducted in 2022 for each of the buildings pictured in Waldmire’s posters to interpret and compare alterations in cultural landscapes. Standard qualitative data analysis was then performed to sort each pair of illustrations and photographs into one of the following groups to assess the state of Columbia’s and Champaign’s cultural landscapes – same building, same business; same building, different business; different building, same business; different building, different business; building torn down, no business. Semi-structured, roughly half-hour interviews and email interviews with four Columbians were used to elicit their senses of place. Three major themes quickly emerged – amenity-based growth, expansion of universities and their continued prominence, and lifestyle. Respondents focused on the challenges of maintaining authenticity during rapid amenity-based growth. The sense of place in both college towns has been disrupted by tall apartment complexes and to a lesser extent, chain stores. The importance of proximity between campuses and their downtowns influences the economic vitality of both places. Adjacent to the University of Missouri, Columbia’s downtown thrives while the several blocks between the University of Illinois and Champaign’s downtown has resulted in sluggish business activity and a location dominated by government buildings. Although the sense of place memorialized in Waldmire’s posters has been altered in the decades that followed, elements of it are still visible and provide the cultural bedrock that Columbia and Champaign stand on today.
“Maranville’s Cherokee Balsam!” The Patent Medicine of Robert E. Maranville
Joseph Kinney – Castleton University
After the close of the American Civil War in 1865, rates of disease skyrocketed among returning soldiers and formerly enslaved people. As there was a lack of federal guardrails regarding the production and distribution of medicine at the time, a market vacuum was created in the pharmaceutical industry in which aspiring entrepreneurs created patent medicines to cash in on this growing medicinal demand. Robert E. Maranville, the creator and marketer of “Cherokee Balsam,” was one such entrepreneur, with his regional patent-medicine business constituting one of several endeavors with which he attempted to support a seemingly lavish lifestyle in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Using evidence preserved in nineteenth-century print sources including in advertisements in local newspapers, the author provides a contextualized perspective of Maranville’s Cherokee Balsam patent medicine and a view into the illnesses that afflicted the people of western Vermont and eastern New York after the Civil War.
Interpretation of the Architecture at Granger House
Samantha LaPlante - Castleton University
On the campus of Castleton University is a 216-year-old building called the Granger House. Named after the family who built it, it was purchased by the Vermont State College System in 2012. To students and the community, the Granger House is known as one of the oldest still-standing houses in town and an active archaeological site. As a result, there has been much interest in the history of the building and its owners. While looking into the architectural style of the house it has become apparent that it is a representation of three early to mid-19th century styles. First constructed using both Georgian and Federal style elements, these make up the majority of the structure. Later under the second owners, the house was modified to match the popular Greek Revival style of the mid-19th century, which has become that house’s most prominent feature. Attached to the main house is the ell. This structure, as a result of dendrochronology, has recently been discovered to have been three separate constructions beginning in 1810 and ending in the 1830s or 1840s. While the exact purpose of the ell has been lost, through archaeological finds it’s theorized that it acted as a carriage house and later was made into a kitchen. Although there have been modern renovations throughout the house, the majority of the building still reflects the trends that were popular among early to mid-19th century Castleton residents.
Applications of Technology to Modern Archaeology
Philip Williams - Castleton University
The Castleton Hidden History Project has been actively continuing archaeological investigations into Granger House, an early nineteenth-century house in Castleton, Vermont. In this poster, I will demonstrate how artifacts are prepared for analysis after being excavation from the field, and explain how modern technology, particularly 3D scanning, may be employed to curate collections of important finds for presentations in classrooms or off-site investigation into those artifacts. These techniques allow archaeologists and researchers in material culture to reach broader audiences for educational and investigative purposes. The author draws his knowledge from his active experience as an intern in the archaeology lab at Castleton University and experience working on the Granger House site over the summer of 2022.