Fort Chiswell
At Fort Chiswell, Virginia, the Transamerican Bicycle Route parallels a section where two interstate highways run together. Interstate 77 connects North Carolina to West Virginia and Interstate 81 connects Tennessee to the Canadian border in New York state. More than 50,000 vehicles travel this stretch of highway each direction on an average day. If you watch a stretch of highway for one minute, you might be able to count fifty cars, trucks, and other vehicles driving either north or south. About three quarters of the traffic is automobiles, with trucks making up the majority of the remaining traffic. For a cyclist, the highways are not accessible. Interstate highways are closed to two wheel vehicles, which are relegated to lower traffic routes to reach the same destinations. Yet these highways, which seem so inaccessible and even dangerous to cyclists now, have a history which is inseparable from the development of cycling in late nineteenth century America. This history is connected to the establishment of a network of roads in Virginia and nationally across the United States. This podcast explores the ways that the development of cycling in late nineteenth century America contributed to the establishment of a national system of roads. While this aspect of cycling history is relatively well documented, one dimension of this change, the connections between cycling and racial politics in the United States, are the focus of this podcast, which situates this intersection in the broader history of Virginia specifically and the US south more generally. This episode also explores ways that traffic patterns in the 1970s compare to traffic patterns today, thus illustrating how America has changed in the half-century since the Transamerican Route was established in 1976.
Welcome to episode 23 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the historic site of Fort Chiswell, located just over 400 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 150 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound rides enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte.
For several miles, Route 76 runs directly parallel to the interstate highway. For a cyclist, this experience is unsettling. To the south (left for westbound riders, right for eastbound riders), the highway is incredibly loud, with a constant hum of cars punctuated by the louder engines of trucks, buses, and motorcycles. In places, the highway can be felt through the air and ground, as the traffic forces itself into the cyclists’ sensory space. To the north (right for westbound riders, left for eastbound riders), a series of farms, wooded areas, and businesses (some open, some shuttered) provide a sense of quiet that is especially notable given the noise and activity on the other side of the cyclist. It is sensory relief as the route pulls away from the highway, and the cyclist returns to the more familiar, and safer, country roads of this route.
The history of roads in Virginia is most commonly told as the story of technological evolution, as old systems are replaced by newer systems that allow for more speed and volume. Yet this approach, which has been called “technological determinism” by scholars, ignores moments when other paths were possible. In this episode, we complicate the history leading to the establishment of the interstate highway system by integrating the role of cyclists and the impact of race on this history.
Prior to European colonization, Native Americans traveled primarily over land on established footpaths and by waters along creeks, rivers and coastlines. Some of these paths covered long distances, such as the Great Indian Warpath. More commonly, short paths connected settlements with waterways, land for hunting, and trade with other communities. European settlement in Jamestown brought the first roads, which in many cases followed existing Native American walking paths. Within the first decades of the English settlement in Jamestown, the governing bodies authorized measures to establish roads, including mandates that all male settlers devote a certain number of days to working on roads. By the 1650s, surveyors were authorized to lay out new roads to connect the expanding networks of settlements in eastern Virginia. In the eighteenth century, westward expansion was accompanied by increasing efforts to build roads that would allow for the transport of settlers and the movement of goods. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote that county governments could “order new roads to be opened wherever they think them necessary.”
In the early nineteenth century, toll roads, known as “turn pikes,” expanded across Virginia, as these roads provided a revenue stream for local authorities who built and maintained these roads. At this time, however, a network of canals provided more efficient transportation of goods. By the 1820s, railways appeared as competitors for both canals and roads, promising easier transport of goods across greater distances.
Dirt roads were slow and uncomfortable in the best conditions. During the fall and spring, roads turned to mud due to heavy rains. In the winter, especially in the western mountains, snow and ice made roads almost impassable. So-called “plank” or “corduroy” roads were built using tree trunks laid perpendicular to the travel direction which provided a more consistent surface, using an abundant resource, but building and maintaining these roads was expensive. The first paved roads used crushed gravel and a surface coating to provide more consistent surfaces. The civil war brought further destruction to Virginia’s roads, and the decades after the war saw limited investment in roads. By the time the first automobile was introduced in the early 1890s, Virginia’s roads were little improved from before the war began in 1861.
In 1894, the Virginia Good Roads Association was founded to join the national movement to mobilize support for improved public transportation. In the early 1900s, the Virginia State Highway Commission was assigned responsibility for building and maintaining public roads. The number of registered motor vehicles grew rapidly, from less than 3,000 in 1910 to just over 150,000 in 1920 and more than 350,000 in 1930. The expansion of roads accompanied this growth in automobiles. By 1930, Virginia had more than 36,000 miles of roads outside cities, including 25,000 miles of dirt roads, 9,000 gravel roads, and just 2,000 miles of hard surface roads.
World War II demonstrated the urgent need for improved roads in rural regions to bring agricultural produce to military bases, industrial centers, and transportation hubs. After deferring road construction and maintenance during the war, the postwar period saw renewed efforts in Virginia and nationally to build a network of safe and efficient roads. The first so-called “superhighway,” with divisions between travel lanes, was built in northern Virginia in the late 1950s to facilitate commuting into Washington DC. In 1956, the Federal Government committed major funds to support efforts to build a national system of interstate highways. The first highways in Virginia followed the same routes as established roads, such as I-95 along route 1 and I-81 along route 11. By the 1970s, Virginia’s transportation authorities believed that the interstate highways had achieved their intended purposes. Travel time had been reduced, access to urban areas had been increased, controlled access made travel safer, economic development followed the expansion and improvement of roads, and highways into urban areas contributed directly to the growth of suburbs for residences, commerce, and offices.
By the time the Bikecentennial route reached Fort Chiswell in 1976, Virginia had more than 3,000 miles of divided highways and more than 25,000 miles of paved secondary roads, a ten-fold increase since the 1940s. The two highways at this location were products of this era of development. Construction on Interstate 81 began in 1957 and was almost entirely complete by the 1970s. In Virginia, the interstate follows established travel routes through valleys in the Appalachian mountain range, including the Great Indian Warpath, the Great Wagon Road, and Route 11. Construction on Interstate 77 began later, in the early 1970s, with the section connecting I-81 and I-77 completed a decade after the Bikecentennial. This section where the two interstates run together is among the most heavily trafficked sections of both highways (other than sections near major cities)
In 1970, Virginia had 2.5 million registered vehicles, five times the number recorded in 1940. Yet the 1970s also brought several developments which complicated and even paused the seemingly endless increase in motor vehicle traffic. The oil shock of the early 1970s brought several policy changes designed to reduce fuel consumption, including lowering the highway speed limit to 55 miles per hour and, for about six months in late 1973 and early 1974, so-called “odd-even” restrictions on the purchase of fuel based on the last digit on license plates: odd numbers could purchase fuel on odd dates and even numbers could purchase fuel on even dates. Growing awareness of the environmental costs of automobiles led to policies designed to promote alternative transportation. Highways designed for commuting began to add lanes for buses and carpools with the goal of restricting the volume of cars with solo drivers. In 1974, two years before the Bikecentennial, the volume of traffic on Virginia’s highways decreased for the first time since World War II.
This history of how the transportation system expanded as a result of technological changes is incomplete, however, without recognizing the role of cyclists in the late nineteenth century. The so-called “good roads” movement actually originated with cyclists, who organized to pressure local governments to support improved roadways. The introduction of the “safety bicycle” in the 1880s, with symmetrical front and rear wheels and a chain mechanism, made it easier for more people to cycle longer distances. Cycling suddenly became an activity accessible to many more people in the United States.
Yet the condition of the roads created real impediments to recreational cycling. Ruts, mud, and flooding made the roads inaccessible or unusable for cyclists. Hard-surface roads, however, were ideal for cyclists. Even before automobiles were widely available, the League of American Wheelmen organized to pressure governments to commit to better roads. This organization was particularly strong in New England, but chapters were created across the country, with the shared purpose of securing good roads. The cyclists soon framed their arguments in ways designed to build coalitions and apply broader pressure. Farmers were recruited into the movement with the promise that improved roads would make it easier to bring products to markets.
In 1892, the League of American Cyclists, in cooperation with other organizations, presented a petition to Congress with an estimated 150,000 signatures calling for improvements in public roads. This movement expanded in the late 1890s and early 1900s as automobiles became available and popular. At the same time, cycling peaked in popularity, as many of those attracted to the opportunities for free movement found that automobiles promised more mobility. Although the influence of the cyclists in originating the good roads movement was well known at the time, it has been lost in popular memory. In fact, many histories of the good roads movement associate these efforts with the mechanized motor vehicle, and do not even acknowledge the role of cyclists at the start of this movement.
Historians of cycling have only recently brought wider attention to the role of cyclists in shaping this crucial moment in the history of American transportation. Yet another dimension of this story has also been recognized only in the last few years, as part of broader attention to the relationship between race, space, and politics. In 1894, the League of American Wheelmen formally became a whites-only organization when delegates to the Louisville assembly voted to implement a ban on African American members. This policy was demanded by southern chapters, who refused to affiliate with a national organization that might violate the basic premises of racial segregation. Despite opposition from many northern chapters, the national organization adopted the ban because of threats from southern whites to leave the movement if African Americans were allowed to join. At the time, organizations of “colored wheelmen” protested this decision, but their efforts were ignored or discounted by the national organization. The League of American Wheelmen, now called the League of American Bicyclists, did not formally abandon this rule until the end of the twentieth century.
Yet the relationship between cycling and the racial politics was even more complicated than the white-only rules of the leading cycling association. In the US south, public spaces were rigidly controlled by the rules of Jim Crow segregation. Streetcars, theaters, sporting events, schools, hospitals, parks, restaurants, and even restrooms were public spaces where the force of law maintained the color line between white and African Americans of all ages. Cycling was a public activity that threatened to evade the color line. On a bicycle, African American women, men, and children could travel with greater freedom across and beyond the urban spaces rigidly controlled by the rules of Jim Crow segregation. The white-elites who controlled public spaces in the South recognized, and feared, this new opportunity for African Americans to move freely. As declining prices made bicycles more affordable, new technologies made cycling more accessible to all, and improved roads allowed cyclists to travel further, whites began to see African Americans on bicycles as a threat. The efforts to limit African Americans’ access to cycling in public spaces needs to be understood in a broader context of how white organizations and authorities controlled African American access to public spaces.
Fort Chiswell’s history is a story of transportation networks. In the eighteenth century, this fort was established in 1758 during the expansion of European settlements into western Virginia. The fort was located along paths used by Native Americans as well as white settlers. During the revolutionary war, the fort protected lead mines essential to producing arms for the American forces. Once the county seat and courthouse were relocated to Wytheville, the fort was abandoned and the population declined. In 1975, the location of the historic site was in the path of the planned construction of Interstate 77. An archaeological team excavated the site and determined that its primary use was as a trading post. A historical marker along Bicycle Route 76, on a service road parallel to the interstate, provides information about this site, including mill stones from the eighteenth century. The historical marker is two hundred yards away from the site of the original Fort Chiswell, which now lies under the multiple lanes of I-81 and I-77.
Cyclists along route 76 cross interstate highways many times, including the bridge over I81 just east of Fort Chiswell. These crossings provide an opportunity to reflect on how the interstate highway system changed America through the acceleration of transportation of goods and people yet also by the separation and alignment of populations. Highways are not neutral spaces, but rather part of the structuring of American life in ways that shaped opportunities and outcomes. As the cyclist crosses the highway, perhaps pausing to marvel at the speed (and noise) of the cars, trucks, and other vehicles passing below the underpass, it is an opportunity to think about how modes of transportation are part of America’s past, present, and future.
You have been listening to episode 23 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the historic location of Fort Chiswell, located just over 400 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 150 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound rides enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible for the homepage for this podcast.
