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Rural Gentrification and Livestock Raising: Texas as a Test Case, 1940–1995

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Mark Friedberger
Mark Friedberger
Affiliation:
Department of History, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA
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Extract

One characteristic of an affluent society is that wealthy individuals often seek a place in the country to spend weekends and summer vacations. In the United States second homes in rural areas first became popular in the Gilded Age when elites in the northeast tried to ape English patterns of leisured country living. Americans, however, had to contend with hot and humid summers. As a result, access to water became a vital ingredient in any choice of a country retreat. An alternative motivation for migration to the countryside in the late nineteenth century came when elites desired to take part in field sports, especially foxhunting. In New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and of course, Virginia, where reasonably mild winters permitted activities to continue with some frequency throughout the winter, foxhunting became part of the yearly ritual of small numbers of urban based elites. Horse ownership went hand in hand with livestock raising. By the twenties cattle breeding had become another hobby pursuit of the gentry in northeastern states; herds of Angus or other breeds grazed in paddocks on either side of a long driveway which led up to a large country home.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , April 1996 , pp. 53 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

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37. Allinson interview.

38. The potential of worn out farm land and river bottoms for recreational use within the rural fringe came under the purview of Federal and state officials after World War II. The Army Corps of Engineers transformed low lying river bottoms and wetland into recreational lakes. Several large lakes north of Dallas and within Denton county were designed to provide the population of the metropolitan area with water recreation in the hot summers. The first, Lewisville lake, opened in 1957. Denton, therefore, became a recreational playground for the metropolitan area. Within the county there was room not only for aquatic recreation, but also for the upper middle class to seek excluded properties where they could follow equestrian pursuits. Interview with Glenn Floyd, Denton, Texas, 16 March 1995; see also Lapping, Mark B., ‘American Rural Planning, Development Policy and the Centrality of the Federal State: An Interpretative History,’ Rural History 3, 2 (1992) 231–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the Federal government's intrusion, or lack of it, in the countryside.

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57. Interview with Stanley Beard, Brenham Tx., 17 August 1994.

58. Interview with Ronnie Stanley, Burton Tx., 7 July 1994.

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63. Walter Prescott Webb urged the elite to buy rural land in the 1950s. He once told a Houston audience that the purchase of a ranch had many advantages: ‘It gives … prestige, a place to invite guests, a place to boast about in Dallas, Houston, or New York, a place to take an income tax write-off, and eventually make a capital gain.’ (quoted in Furman, Necah Stewart, Walter Prescott Webb, His Life and Importance (Albuquerque, 1978), p. 161Google Scholar).

64. Interview with Ray Stephans, Denton Tx., 13 March 1995; interview with Floyd.