AND THE CROOKED SHALL BE MADE STRAIGHT - PUBLIC ROAD ADMINISTRATION AND THE DECLINE OF LOCALISM IN THE RURAL NORTH, 1870-1930

This article examines the history of public road administration in the rural North between 1870 and 1930 in an attempt to illustrate the emergence of an organizational society in the countryside. At first, country people adhered to republican principles of self-government and strove to maintain local control over their roads in the face of increasing pressures from townspeople and boosters within their communities and from engineers, bicyclists, and other urban interests on the outside. In order to overcome this rural intransigence, however, the state became progressively more involved and, by 1930, road administration had become centralized. In the course of these events, though, the significance of local control and the meanings of localism changed. In particular, the issue of roads provided a crucible for farmers' own emergence as an organized faction in the new order and for their embrace of a new translocal perspective. While this new rural perspective represented a significant departure from an older, more localistic culture, it paradoxically continued to for-m a basis for opposition to urban and industrial society.