Created by the federal government in 1933 to revitalize a region twice the size of New England, the Tennessee Valley Authority began as an experiment of unprecedented proportions. Seen here through picture postcards, the dramatic achievements of the TVA take on a personal aspect, as individuals visit the hydroelectric projects and enjoy the newly created recreational opportunities. Tangible benefits are also documented, such as improved navigation, new roads and bridges, and abundant and inexpensive electricity. Influenced by such visionaries as Gifford Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Norris, the agency also dealt with regional issues, including river commerce, soil conservation, and flood control.

4. Reinterpreting the Shell Mound Archaic in Western Tennessee: A GIS-Based Approach to Radiocarbon Sampling of New Deal-Era Site Collections - Thaddeus G. Bissett -- 5. Depression-Era Archaeology in the Watts Bar Reservoir, East Tennessee - Shannon Koerner and Jessica Dalton-Carriger -- 6. WPA Excavations at the Mound Bottom and Pack Sites in Middle Tennessee, 1936-1940 - Michael C. Moore, David H. Dye, and Kevin E. Smith -- 7. Reconfiguring the Chickamauga Basin - Lynne P. Sullivan

The Tennessee Valley Authority was the largest single agency created under the auspices of the New Deal legislation. Until 1933, when the project was initiated, the Tennessee Valley was known romantically as "a region of untapped potential" and, less romantically, as one of the most impoverished and isolated areas of the country. The TVA was responsible for three large-scale environmental projects–the river, land, and power machines–but the project also had social, even utopian, goals. In service to the latter, the TVA put together a cadre of regional planners, architects, and landscape architects that Avigail Sachs calls the "atelier TVA." These professionals contributed to the design of the system of multipurpose dams, arranged visitor centers and scenic routes, built housing and communities (although both were segregated), and instigated a regional recreation industry. In addition to its planning and design history audience, this volume will be of interest to environmental historians and historians of the Progressive Era. Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

Utilizing primary sources that include correspondence and unpublished reports, Lyon demonstrates the great importance of the New Deal projects in the history of southeastern and North American archaeology. New Deal archaeology transformed the practice of archaeology in the Southeast and created the basis for the discipline that exists today.

After the Civil War, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, forged a different path than most southern urban centers. Long a portal to the Deep South, Chattanooga was largely rebuilt by northern men, using northern capital, and imbued with northern industrial values. As such, the city served as a cultural and economic nexus between North and South, and its northern elite stood out distinctively from the rest of the region’s booster class. In Chattanooga, 1865–1900, Tim Ezzell explores Chattanooga’s political and economic development from the close of the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century, revealing how this unique business class adapted, prospered, and governed in the postwar South. After reviewing Chattanooga’s wartime experience, Ezzell chronicles political and economic developments in the city over the next two generations. White Republicans, who dominated municipal government thanks to the support of Chattanooga’s large African American population, clashed repeatedly with Democrats, who worked to “redeem” the city from Republican rule and restore “responsible,” “efficient” government. Ezzell shows that, despite the efforts by white Democrats to undermine black influence, black Chattanoogans continued to wield considerable political leverage into the 1890s. On the economic front, an extensive influx of northern entrepreneurs and northern capital into postwar Chattanooga led to dynamic if unstable growth. Ezzell details the city’s efforts to compete with Birmingham as the center of southern iron and steel production. At times, this vision was within reach, but these hopes faded by the 1890s, and Chattanooga grew into something altogether different: not northern, not southern, but something peculiar “set down in Dixie.” Although Chattanooga never reached its Yankee boosters’ ideal of “a northern industrial city at home in the southern hills,” Ezzell demonstrates that it forged a legacy of resilience and resourcefulness that continues to serve the community to the present day.