Allen Dieterich-Ward, “Mines, Mills and Malls: Regional Development in the Steel Valley”

The goal of my dissertation is to explore postwar American society as a whole from a vantage point midway between the local community and the national polity. My project analyzes the ways in which national trends, federal and state policies, and macro-economic transformations interact with individual decision-making, community politics and local institutions. I situate my work at the intersection of postwar political and social historiography, and utilize a regional, space-oriented framework to synthesize multiple themes into a coherent whole. Through this regional focus, I am proposing a new model that transcends the old urban decline/ suburban ascendance divide in favor of a more heterogeneous landscape that also includes failing suburbs, gentrified city centers, and a de/industrialized countryside.

The ‘Steel Valley’ stretches from the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, westward and down the Ohio River Valley around the West Virginia panhandle and through the foothills of the Appalachian Plateau in southeastern Ohio. Its location at the intersection of the cultures and economies of the Northeast, the Midwest and the Appalachian South makes the Steel Valley both historically important and difficult to categorize, as the unifying factors of a shared geography and economy vie with the various political and administrative boundaries inherent in a multi-state region. My dissertation traces the cultural and social evolution of the Steel Valley as residents faced

the postwar turmoil caused by the decline of its heavy industrial base. In a series of chapters focused on key transitions in the social and physical landscape, I bring together the histories of such disparate elements as suburbanization, the rise and fall of the Great Society, the conflict over coal surface mining, and the feminization of labor in a ‘service’ economy.

Pittsburgh provides a particularly important example of postwar economic and cultural transformation due to the intensity of its real and symbolic reliance on a heavy industrial economy. During the 1950s and again during the 1990s, the city reinvented itself first as a center of corporate administration and later as a ‘post-industrial’ center of the high-tech and service sectors. However, this transition remained largely confined to select neighborhoods and certain booming suburbs, while the remainder of the region struggled with high unemployment and out-migration throughout much of the postwar period. This contrast was especially visible in comparison with nearby smaller cities, such as Homestead, Pennsylvania; Wheeling, West Virginia; and Steubenville, Ohio that desperately sought to tap into the growing areas of prosperity. By the 1990s, this process called into question the social and cultural bonds binding the region, and my dissertation ends with an examination of what new social and cultural framework, if any, has risen to take the place of the ‘Steel Valley.’

Chapter Outlines

“Constructing the Steel Valley” introduces the Steel Valley region and explores its evolution through World War II. I loosely divide it temporally and by theme, arguing that by the mid-twentieth century the region inhabitants are bound culturally by a consensus based in corporate paternalism and bolstered by the business-union agreements established during World War II and subsequent contracts. I also explore the relationship between geographic, demographic and political issues that result in a region marked by fragmentation on local, state and even national levels.

“Planning for the Periphery” investigates the evolution of the countryside and its changing

relationship with other parts of the region. Beginning with a vignette on the crossing of

Interstate 70 by an enormous coal shovel in 1973, the chapter explores the coal industry in the Ohio Valley and the tensions it created in the rural areas of southeastern Ohio. I focus on the economic and social impact of the decline of family farming and later the collapse of the coal industry on out-migration, inter-regional commuting, and the creation of rural identity. I also explore the experiences of residents in three communities with various histories and differing levels of dependence on coal mining and other heavy industries.

“River of Industry, Ribbons of Concrete” focuses on issues of consumption in the small

metropolitan areas along the river in Ohio and West Virginia. The chapter analyzes the area’s evolution on three levels – regional, municipal, and institutional within the context of increasing federal involvement. I begin with an analysis of the development, or lack thereof, of the region’s highway system. With the decline of railroads, the lack of good highways weakened historical links with Pittsburgh and isolated the area. Next, I examine the overall failure of urban redevelopment in the communities of Steubenville, Martins Ferry, Wheeling and Weirton to either create jobs or stem the tide of out-migration. This sets the stage for my third topic--the evolution of the health care industry, which, like highways and urban development, the federal government also heavily subsidized. With the aging of the region’s population, the Medicare program was especially important for the region as hospitals overtook mines and mills as the area’s primary employers.

“Steel and Silicon” explores the development of postwar Pittsburgh as a ‘Renaissance City’ seemingly well prepared to handle the decline and eventually collapse of the region’s heavy industrial base. The post-war evolution of Southwestern Pennsylvania and its major metropolis, Pittsburgh, differed in a number of significant ways from the more peripheral areas of the Steel Valley in Ohio and West Virginia. Due to its size, the area had a significant voice in state and national politics and was able to secure significant resources for roads, infrastructure investments, and economic and community development programs. However, these improvements were not distributed equally throughout the region, allowing areas such as the Golden Triangle, the campuses of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, and select suburbs to make the transition to a service/high tech economy while the industrialized river valleys were left to bear the brunt of 1980s economic dislocations.

“From Salvation to Sprawl” examines the rise of Pittsburgh’s suburbs from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. Undeveloped areas to the city’s north, west and east were the primary beneficiaries of postwar infrastructure development as the regional highway system connected to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Interstate System in the 1950s. In addition, changes in manufacturing techniques allowed employers to relocate from the crowded river valleys to new spacious suburban locations, often in campus-style industrial parks sponsored by both private and public-sector developers. By the late 1970s, residents and community leaders in the region’s declining rural and urban areas increasingly looked to the suburbs as models for development as well as employment centers for their increasing population of unemployed steel workers. However, conflicts over new highway construction programs exposed the fault lines that had developed between the older urban communities and their suburban neighbors.

“Steel Valley No More?” picks up the regional narrative during the 1990s as area residents, community leaders and business elites cope with the realities of a post-industrial metropolis. While some communities continued to pin their hopes on the still-significant remnants of the coal and steel empires of the past, others look to other industries such as health care, recreation, or high-tech manufacturing as the best hope for the region’s future. Departing from the fragmented vision of the postwar years, leaders in some communities launched promotional programs emphasizing their regional connections and proximity to the central city. In its “Burb of the ‘Burgh” campaign, the economically devastated city of Steubenville, Ohio recast itself as a prime residential and light-manufacturing suburb with rapid access to the Pittsburgh airport. I explore this reformulation of local and regional identities with an eye to explaining their significance for the future of the Steel Valley.