Summary

Between 1826 and 1858 the state of Pennsylvania built and operated the largest and most technologically advanced system of canals and railroads in North America – almost one thousand miles of transport that stretched from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and beyond.

The construction of this ambitious transportation system was accompanied by great euphoria. It was widely believed that the revenue created from these canals and railroads would eliminate the need for all taxes on state citizens. Yet with the Panic of 1837, a financial crisis much like the boom and bust cycle that ended in 2008, a deep recession fell across the country. By 1858, Pennsylvania had sold all canals and railroads to private companies, often for pennies-on-the-dollar.

Over the Alleghenies: Early Canals and Railroads of Pennsylvania is the definitive history of the state of Pennsylvania’s incredible canal and railroad system. Although often condemned as a colossal failure, this construction effort remains an innovative, magnificent feat that ushered in modern transportation to Pennsylvania and the entire country. With extensive primary research, over one hundred illustrations, newspapers clippings, and charts and graphs, Over the Alleghenies examines and dissects the infrastructure project that bankrupted the wealthiest state in the Union.

Contents

1. Early America and the Coming of the Transportation Revolution

2. The State of Pennsylvania’s Program of Canals and Railroads (1826-1858)                    

3. The Eastern Division of the Pennsylvania Canal                            

4. The Western Division of the Pennsylvania Canal                         

5. The Juniata Division of the Pennsylvania Canal                           

6. The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad                                                   

7. The Allegheny Portage Railroad                                                                            

8. The Susquehanna, West Branch, and North Branch Divisions                 

9. The Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal                                               

10. Pittsburgh to Lake Erie — The French Creek Division, the Beaver Division, and the Erie Extension                                       

11. The Gettysburg Extension and the Demise of the State of Pennsylvania’s Canals and Railroads                                                          

Bibliography  

Index

About the Author

Summary

Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University since World War II chronicles the emergence of WVU as a major land-grant institution. As a continuation of the work of Doherty and Summers in West Virginia University: Symbol of Unity in a Sectionalized State, this book focuses on the modern historical developments that elevated WVU from a small regional institution to one of national prominence.

West Virginia University’s growth mirrors the developmental eras that have shaped American higher education since World War II. The University’s history as an innovative, pioneering force within higher education is explored through its major postwar stages of expansion, diversification, and commercialization.

Institutions of higher education nationwide experienced a dramatic increase in enrollments between 1945 and 1975 as millions of returning World War II and Korean War veterans took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights. Their children, the “baby boom” generation, continued to supply the growth in college enrollment and the corresponding increase in institutional complexity until the mid-1970s. During this period WVU followed the national trend by growing from a few thousand students to nearly fifteen thousand.

From 1975 to the early 1990s, expansion gave way to diversification. The traditional student population stopped growing by 1975, and  “boomers” were replaced by students from nontraditional backgrounds. An unprecedented gender, racial, and ethnic diversification took place on college campuses, a trend encouraged by federal civil rights legislation. To a lesser degree WVU was no exception, although its location in a rural state with a small minority population forced the University to work harder to attract minorities than institutions in proximity to urban areas.

The commercialization of higher education became a full-fledged movement by the 1990s. Major changes, such as globalization, demographic shifts, a weak economy, and the triumph of the “market society,” all accelerated the penetration of business values and practices into university life.  Like other public universities, WVU was called upon to generate more of its own revenues. The University’s strategic responses to these pressures reconstructed the state’s leading land grant into the large complex institution of today.

As the only modern history of West Virginia University, this text reaches into the archives of the President’s Office and makes exhaustive use of press accounts and interviews with key individuals to produce a detailed resource for alumni, friends, and supporters of WVU, as well as administrators and specialists in higher education. 

Contents

Coming Soon.

Author

Ronald L. Lewis received the BA degree from Ohio University in 1966, and from the University of Akron earned the MA (1971) and PhD (1974) in American history. He taught at the University of Delaware for eleven years (1974-1985) prior to becoming professor of history at West Virginia University in 1985. At WVU he offered undergraduate and graduate courses in American labor, West Virginia, and Appalachian history. He served as department chair for six years (1989-1995), was appointed Eberly Family Professor of History (1993-2001), and then Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair in History (2001-2008), a position he held until his retirement in 2008. He is currently professor emeritus and Historian Laureate of West Virginia. His publishing career includes numerous journal articles, book chapters, and essays, along with fourteen co-edited books that include Transnational West Virginia: Ethnic Communities and Economic Change, 1840-1940 (WVU Press, 2002). In addition to Aspiring to Greatness, he is the author of: Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715-1865 (1979); Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780-1980 (1987); Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880-1920 (1998); and most recently Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields (2008).

Charles Vest, President Emeritus and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a native of Morgantown, West Virginia. Dr. Vest earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1963, and M.S.E. and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967, respectively. He served on the boards of several non-profit organizations and foundations devoted to education, science, and technology, including the West Virginia University Board of Governors. He authored a book on holographic interferometry, and two books on higher education. He received honorary doctoral degrees from seventeen universities. He was awarded the 2006 National Medal of Technology by President Bush and received the 2011 Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board. 

Reviews

Coming Soon.

Summary

First published in 1982, West Virginia University: Symbol of Unity in a Sectionalize State details the history of WVU from its inception as the Agricultural College of West Virginia in 1867 to its expansion and development in the 1980s. This comprehensive history includes an index of people, places and events; photographs and illustrations; and in-depth descriptions of campuses, buildings, colleges, and academic and sports programs. As a joint effort between William T Doherty, Jr., a Professor Emeritus History at WVU, and Festus P. Summers, the first University Historian who passed away before this project was complete, this new edition once again grants access to the diverse and complex elements which shaped the institution. 

Contents

Coming Soon

Author

William T. Doherty, Jr., is Professor of History Emeritus at West Virginia University where he also served as University Historian. He is author of Louis Houck: Missouri Historian and Entrepreneur; Berkeley County, U.S.A.: A Bicentennial History of a Virginia and West Virginia County, 1772-1972; and was editor of the journal West Virginia History. Doherty, who received his doctoral degree in history from the University of Missouri, was chair of the WVU Department of History from 1963-1979.  He retired in 1988.

Festus P. Summers, who died in 1971 at the age of 76, began the work in this first comprehensive history of West Virginia University where he was the first University Historian and chair of the Department of History from 1946-1962.  He was the author of biographies of Johnson N. Camden and William L. Wilson, The Baltimore and Ohio in the Civil War: A Borderland Confederate, co-author of West Virginia: The Mountain State, co-editor of The Thirty-Fifth State, and editor of The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896-1897. 

Reviews

Coming Soon.

Summary

The Cacapon and Lost River is located in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia’s eastern panhandle. Well loved by paddlers and anglers, this American Heritage River is surrounded by a lush valley of wildlife and flora that is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Although this area is still rural and mostly forested, development and land fragmentation in the Cacapon and Lost River Valley have increased over the last decades. Listening to the Land: Stories from the Cacapon and Lost River Valley is a conversation between the people of this Valley and their land, chronicling this community’s dedication to preserving its farms, forests, and rural heritage.

United around a shared passion for stewardship, the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust and local landowners have permanently protected over 11,000 acres by incorporating local values into permanent conservation action. Despite the economic pressures that have devastated nearby valleys over the past twenty years, natives and newcomers alike have worked to protect this valley by sustaining family homesteads and buying surrounding parcels.

This partnership between the Land Trust and the people of this Valley, unprecedented in West Virginia and nationally recognized for its success, greatly enriches historic preservation and conservation movements and brings to light the need to investigate, pursue, and listen to the enduring connection between people and place.

Contents

Coming Soon

Author

Project Director and Writer Jamie S. Ross, has worked for over thirty years writing, directing, and producing documentary work on American history and culture. Most recently she was producer and co-writer of the acclaimed four-part PBS environmental history series, A History of Mountains and People, (www.appalachiafilm.org) , selected as the Best Video of the Year by the American Library Association. For her work on the series, Ross received the Mountain Hero award from the Mountain Institute. She has been named a National Scholar by the Council on Basic Education and has served as a Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Ross is also director of Red Dirt Productions, and along with Red Dirt Productions, is currently at work on a documentary that will explore the history of the South as told through the foods of the Southern table.

Tom Cogill is a freelance photographer, born in Hollywood, California, and for the past thirty-five years has been a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia. He photographs mostly non-famous people for magazines, university publications, and annual reports. His work has appeared in US News & World Report, American Heritage, National Geographic, NG Traveler, Science, Nature, the Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications. For the past 10 years he has worked increasingly in documenting the work of individuals and foundations doing social projects in Latin America. See www.tomcogill.com.

Peter Forbes is the founder of the Center for Whole Communities, a writer and farmer, facilitator and speaker, and lives in Vermont and works across the country. His story is told at www.peterforbes.org. When not farming with his family in the Mad River Valley of Vermont, Peter travels the country helping communities, organizations, and citizen leaders be their wisest selves.

Nancy Ailes is the Executive Director or the Cacapon & Lost Rivers Land Trust. She represents the eighth generation of her family that has lived in Hampshire County, West Virginia. Having had varied career opportunities and accomplishments, Nancy is most proud of her work permanently protecting land in the Cacapon & Lost River Valley.

Rodney Bartgis is State Director of The Nature Conservancy in West Virginia. He is a native of Berkeley County, has a biology degree from Shepherd University and a Master of Science degree from West Virginia University. He currently lives in Randolph County.

Reviews

"When I owned property in the Lost River Valley, where my life’s work was inspired, I admired the principles and values of the landowners. I also realized that if the special beauty of this place was to be conserved, it would only happen if this was what the local people wanted. As you read the history of these individuals, you will understand how the Cacapon River Watershed became what it is today.  This precious resource could not have been placed in more loving and caring hands.  These hardworking people have passed along a national treasure so unique and important to future generations and the environmental health of the entire Chesapeake Bay Watershed, that we cannot ignore its presence. By more fully understanding their love of this community and the land, we can join with them in their quest to preserve the natural habitat and their heritage.  Together we have the rare opportunity to protect one of the most biodiverse, and one of the last remaining intact watersheds in the entire Chesapeake Bay drainage."

Patrick Noonan, Founder, American Farmland Trust and The Conservation Fund

"After years of building relationships with communities throughout the nation, the Land Trust Alliance has discovered something truly essential to land conservation – people love to hear stories about their land.  The Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust truly celebrates these connections in Cacapon Voices  through the stories of people who love a place so much that they put its protection ahead of their own needs. These stories give me hope for the future of land conservation because these are stories about the why of saving land, not just the how."

Rand Wentworth, President, Land Trust Alliance