MIT Seminar on Environmental and
Agricultural History
“Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Georgia's 'Little Grand Canyon'
and Conservation in the South”
Paul Sutter
Associate Professor of History, University of Georgia
Known as Georgia's "Little Grand Canyon," Providence Canyon State Park
protects some striking canyon and badland formations in west central
Georgia. But this spectacular spot resulted from massive erosion
allegedly produced by negligent cotton farming during the 19th
century. Providence Canyon is the biggest erosion gully the South has
produced and was famous back in the 1930s. During that decade, the
locals tried to make it into a national park, insisting that it was a
natural formation of unparalleled scenic beauty. Meanwhile, national
soil conservationists and environmental reformers consistently invoked
it as the poster-child of southern soil abuse, a potent visual symbol
of human-induced environmental degradation. I will examine what it
means to preserve as a park the results of an environmental disaster,
how two groups could interpret the place in such diametrically opposed
ways, and how we might interpret the place today in ways that would
help us to rethink the relationship between southerners, their soils,
and the politics of environmental representation.
Friday, September 26, 2008
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095
Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge
Sponsored by MIT’s History Faculty and the Program in Science,
Technology, and Society. For more information or to be put on the
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