5 - The Countryside: A Land Rediscovered, yet Threatened

Summary

Between the city and the distant wildlands was the settled countryside, containing varied lands and land uses: farms and woodlands, rivers and floodplains, wetlands, lakes and ocean shores, mines and “unproductive wastelands.” In the Environmental Era the countryside was a vast area in transition. Its fate was yet to be determined.

Until World War II the American countryside was land nobody wanted. Decade after decade rural people fled their farms and towns. As agricultural production per farm worker rose, fewer hands were needed, and those who were superfluous moved to the cities. The more productive agricultural areas came to be preferred, and the less productive, the so-called marginal lands, declined – in numbers of people, homes, and villages, and in property values. The relocation of American agriculture created vast areas of countryside to which few wished to lay claim. In the 1930s the rural population became somewhat stable as during the Depression the return of some to the countryside served as a safety value against economic privation, but by the 1940s the decline resumed at a rapid pace.

After World War II this was dramatically reversed. Lands that nobody had wanted were increasingly in demand. Some people financed farming for a livelihood with savings earned from urban occupations. More found in rural communities the kind of environment they sought for work, home, and play, which they had not found in the cities. They came to visit on weekends and vacations, to enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere away from crowds, where the air was cleaner and the water more sparkling.