The Nineteenth‐Century Evolution of Local‐Scale Roads in Kentucky's Bluegrass

Abstract

ABSTRACT. In the nineteenth century, local‐scale roads in central Kentucky were built subject to local knowledge and cultural tradition but within the context of legal authority and folk‐ or science‐based engineering precepts. This study demonstrates how legal and engineering standards‐though conceived as transcendent and objective‐were in fact contingent on the region's physical attributes as well as its cultural traditions and character. Thus local road alignment and construction have been influenced by and contingent on local knowledge, dialogue, and debate since frontier times.

Finding Honduras' Forgotten Camino Real: Persistence of a Dream

“…Consequently, the evolution of any particular path or road can provide a great deal of insight into the culture that created and maintains it, as well as longer‐term perspectives on landscape change. Indeed, geographers have frequently used paths, roads, and highways to examine the cultural landscape as well as to provide insight into the material workings of place, culture, and time (Newton , Raitz and O'Malley , Rees , Wagner , West and Parsons ). In the historical geography of the New World, some of the most compelling examples of historical road networks are the Spanish caminos reales (main routes established by official decree).…”