Shanties on the Mountainside: A Look at Labor on the Blue Ridge Railroad
Author(s): John M Hyche
Year: 2018
Summary
From 1850 to 1860, the Blue Ridge Mountains were home to roughly 1,900 Irish laborers as they worked on the construction of the Virginia Central Railroad. Upon its completion, the railroad stretched from Norfolk, Virginia, to the Ohio River. Along the Blue Ridge Mountains, several cuts and tunnels were constructed by the Irish immigrants including the 4,263ft Blue Ridge Tunnel. In 2011, a local non-profit organization, focused on pinpointing the remains of Irish shantytown homes, contacted the University of Maryland, to see if an archaeological survey could aid their search. Over the course of two years, archaeological research shed light on the material culture of transient labor and brought attention to the strong ties to the landscape held by community members. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the archaeological evidence collected and determine if the data conclusively points to the existence of shantytowns at the two sites investigated.
Cite this Record
Shanties on the Mountainside: A Look at Labor on the Blue Ridge Railroad. John M Hyche. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, New Orleans, Louisiana. 2018 ( tDAR id: 441531)
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Keywords
General
Blue Ridge Mountain Railroad
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Shantytown
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transient labor
Geographic Keywords
North America
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United States of America
Temporal Keywords
Mid-19th Century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 967