Traces the development of this early twentieth century tourism route that connected the South to the urban North, the growth of businesses serving the route's visitors, and the evolution of the handmade chenille coverlets sold along the route that laid the groundwork for the modern carpet industry. Original.

At the turn of the twentieth century, good highways eluded most Americans and nearly all southerners. In their place, a jumble of dirt roads covered the region like a bed of briars. Introduced in 1915, the Dixie Highway changed all that by merging hundreds of short roads into dual interstate routes that looped from Michigan to Miami and back. In connecting the North and the South, the Dixie Highway helped end regional isolation and served as a model for future interstates. In this book, Tammy Ingram offers the first comprehensive study of the nation's earliest attempt to build a highway network, revealing how the modern U.S. transportation system evolved out of the hard-fought political, economic, and cultural contests that surrounded the Dixie's creation. The most visible success of the Progressive Era Good Roads Movement, the Dixie Highway also became its biggest casualty. It sparked a national dialogue about the power of federal and state agencies, the role of local government, and the influence of ordinary citizens. In the South, it caused a backlash against highway bureaucracy that stymied road building for decades. Yet Ingram shows that after the Dixie Highway, the region was never the same.

Identifies and describes specific government assistance opportunities such as loans, grants, counseling, and procurement contracts available under many agencies and programs.

At the conclusion of the nineteenth century, one of the issues that attracted the attention of reformers in the South was road improvements. Populists who subscribed to the tenets of the good roads movement sought to provide farmers with better access to markets, make the cultural and employment opportunities of cities more available, and perhaps even halt the mass exodus of young people from the farms.

Identifies and describes specific government assistance opportunities such as loans, grants, counseling, and procurement contracts available under many agencies and programs.