12. WPA Guides

A few things that particularly intrigued me were in the New York WPA guide.  I was surprised to find that by and large, it is the same history I would give today to a tourist on one of my food tours.  On my tours we look at both the history behind the neighborhood and the history of the food itself.  In he case of the Great Depression era food I was intrigued by the origin of processed food.  Surprisingly it was in the 1700’s when Napoleons troops were starving in Russia, that he offered a reward to anyone who could make food that would keep.  Nicholas Appert after fourteen years of experimenting developed a method of placing food in corked bottles which were then boiled.  This worked until the bottles started to break in transit.  In 1810 Peter Durand developed the idea of steal covered with tin, the tin can.  Frozen food originates with Clarence Birdseye.  He noticed on an expedition to the arctic that meat left in the arctic air was still fresh tasting months later.  Upon experimentation he concluded that mere freezing wouldn’t work. The trick was to have a sudden sharp drop in temperature, so he invented the “Quick Freeze Machine”.  And that’s the history of our modern day processed food.

In some ways I’m glad I wrote this blog late because I had time to reflect on our Tuesday class discussion.  I was struck by the course’s title and how it’s meaning differs from how I originally perceived it at the start of the semester.  In a strange but “cool” way I now think this course is about the journey of travel in America.   We have watched the beginning of traveling in America, how it started from a necessity to find work, as in the Grapes of Wrath.  Then we saw it morph into a half necessity: a perceived necessity to show reality and the lack of necessity to travel for work.  This is showcased in the writers and photographers.  Lastly we see the middle class begin to travel.  Overtime all of America has started to travel.  As a result, travel must therefore be a part of what makes America, America.  This marriage of travel and the American identity is finally merged in the WPA guides.  As we said in class these guides were half guidebook and half ethnographies.  And so, we can see the journey of travel in America laid out in our course step by step.

In looking at the WPA guide for my home state of Minnesota, I could not help but be drawn to the section on the small town of Fergus Falls where I grew up. The guide does the town justice, and in fact discusses some aspects of the town’s history of which I was not even aware.
 
The guide discusses the founding of the town by Joseph Whitford who explored the northwestern region of Minnesota under the patronage of James Fergus, after whom the town is named. Beyond this more general knowledge however, the guide also includes some lesser known antidotes. For example, the guide looks back on the first postmaster of the town, a German immigrant who could not read English and so would simply spread the town’s postage out on a table in order for the residents of the community to peruse the letters and pick out which were theirs.
 
The guide also describes the main structures and attractions of the town which remain much the same today. For instance, the city Historical Society Museum of Minnesota (now known as the Otter Tail Historical Society) which exists in the basement of the city hall and to which I was taken every year on a class trip from kindergarten through eighth grade is still one of the town’s primary attractions and is still open 9-5 on weekdays as the guide reports.  The guide also discusses the town’s largest building, the Fergus Falls Mental Hospital which at the time was the second largest such asylum in Minnesota. The mental hospital is still in operation today and has in fact raised in prominence to become the largest such hospital in the Midwest. The guide also discusses the architectural details of the city hall and courthouse which remain virtually identical to the guide’s description today. Even the two flower mills mentioned in the guide can still be seen alongside the Otter Tail river today but are no longer in operation.
 
It is also still true, as the guide details that Fergus Falls is still home to one of the largest dairy farming co-ops in the country and to which my family’s farm (The Daily Dairy) and the dairy farms of many of my friends families still belong.  Moreover, the Otter Tail Power Company, which is mentioned in the guide, is still the areas predominant employer, probably employing roughly a third of the town today. The only difference is today Otter Tail Power or OTTR is listed on NASDAQ and is a market leader in the area of wind energy.   
 
In conclusion, I think of all the pieces we have read, this one was the most interesting for me personally. I am amazed at how little my small town has really changed over the last eighty years and also feel a  new sense of pride in my origins, leading me to believe that the WPA guides not only inspired Americans to travel, but reaffirmed their pride in their own regional identities.

What is about recessions, bleak times, that sometimes it spawns the best in us?

Think the Federal Writers Project in the 1930’s under the Works Progress Administration.
Now, think of the additional $ 50 million funding to the National Endowment of the Arts included in the American recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
 

Much of the National Endowment remains controversial though. The Endowment, dedicated to “supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education,” has its fair share of detractors. 

In 1981,when he entered office, President Reagan took it upon himself to abolish the Endowment over a three-year period. In 1989, David Wildmon, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson, prominent conservative figures, attacked Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ for anti-christ bigotry. Fellow photographer’s, Robert Mapplethorpe, exhibit at the Corcoran Exhibition of Art was cancelled due to the same reasons.
   
Conservative media only increased attacks in subsequent years. The NEA Four, Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes,had their grants vetoed by the then chairman, John Frohnmayer because it was deemed controversial. Finley took the Endowment to the Supreme Court, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley. The court stated in its judgment, “the NEA Chairperson shall ensure that artistic excellence and artistic merit are the only criteria by which applications are judged.

More recently, under President Obama, conservative blogger Yosi Sergant alleged that the Endowment was directing artists to create works of art promoting President Barack Obama's domestic agenda, shedding new light into the Endowment.
 

But history, sometimes, can show us the future. The Federal Writers project was not without its critics, including W.H Auden. But the writers produced an impressive 275 books, 700 pamphlets, and many other writings like leaflets, radio scripts, and transcripts, including “America Eats,” and the American Guide Series.

Maybe when the dark clouds hovering our economic future clears up, who knows, we might have art, a legacy of our life and times.

That is an ideal worth achieving. 

Well it seems as though our class has come to the end of our journey in The Travel Habit. We’ve seen many pictures, read many stories, and voiced a lot of our opinions and angles on each. Never is it more fitting to look once further at the nostalgia end of things by reading the WPA guides in a world many of in our family can remember with near precision.
 
At home this weekend, I decided to bring my laptop over to my grandparents to show them what the roaming writers during the Depression thought about their summer home.
 
“When I first saw the place, I wouldn’t have described it any differently,” said Louis San George (my Grandad), 93, of the Ocean County Jersey Shore point, Long Beach Island, “thirty years later, it barely looked any different.”
 
Both my Grandad and my Grammy (Grandpa and Grandma to you!) were both lucky and successful enough to, in the early 1960’s, purchase a small cottage-type summer home on the sliver of sandbar off of the New Jersey mainland, known as Long Beach Island. L.B.I., as many now know it, is still one of the last bastions of non-uniformity along the Jersey Shore; only someguidos.
 
“It was the early 60’s when we first came down to look at places. We didn’t know what we wanted but we knew we wanted a place like this,” said my Grammy, 90, a mother of three boys including my Dad.
 
Like described in tours 35a and b in the New Jersey guide, Long Beach Island comes to life staged in all its sandy, Norse fishing village glory. Congruent with the times, the WPA guide for this little outcropping of civilization provided people like my grandparents with a jumping-off point from which to begin their search for a second, more sea-faring home.
 
“They would speak with such candor and eloquence, we couldn’t help but make some of the same trips. They embellished a little bit, but nevertheless, they were the ones that first pointed it out to us,” said the grandmother of her four well-vacationed grandkids.
 
There were still chicken coops and cottages in the 60’s when my grandparents made their purchase of little more than a plot of sand, and now, the island stands as a hub for both the wealthy and the middle class during the nice months, still complete with the meager ever-present landmarks from an island’s past not much older than the WPA guides themselves.
 
My grandparents were living the very American dream so vividly absent from 1930’s America and so clear in each of our readings this semester. And oddly enough, they only knew about the place that would be their new home and live out that dream because of the very depression that caused so much turmoil and destroyed so many families. Without the Federal Writers' Project, not only would many people been out of a much-needed job, but so many families might have been out of a future.
 
“Had we never seen those beautiful pictures, we might never have even heard of the place,” said my Grammy.
 
The W.P.A. guides were more than just a jobs for Americans when work was scarce, they were the modern mappings of the future golden years of America.

I chose to investigate the WPA guide entitled “Here’s New England: A Guide to Vacationland,” since I grew up in Connecticut and currently live in New York (not part of New England technically, but close in proximity and interesting in contrast). The guide seemed particularly directed towards those residing in cities (specifically New York City) who would desire to experience something more pastoral, overtly historical, and peaceful – a satisfying compliment to the bustling modernity of commercial, industrialized areas.

I found the format of the guide rather telling of the type of vacationing most people were doing or wanted to do at this time. It is presented in the order of towns one would follow if traveling by automobile with the intention of seeing many places in a relatively short period of time. This coincides with the travel habit described in our previous readings. Similar to the tone of a tour guide (“And on your left you have…, and coming up on the right we can see…”), the descriptions are interspersed with reminders that the typical reader is driving along a particular route that will allow him to see all of these places in a particular sequence. The leisurely ease of travel is also expressed through the writing style, which makes certain never to mention anyone “driving” or putting forth any effort; rather phrases such as “this road will take you” or “you will then be brought” are used, as if the road itself is guiding the reader on an uncharted, “natural” adventure.

I grew up in a small suburb of the city of Danbury, Connecticut. It was interesting to read about Danbury’s two points of appeal at the time this WPA guide was written: its hat factories, and its hosting of the annual Danbury Fair. At this time these two features drew many tourists (especially the Fair which was quite famous). The guide also mentions its Main Street, which apparently was “Western Connecticut’s busiest marketplace” (I’m not sure if this still holds true), as well as its numerous public swimming and picnicking locations. These attractions are still going strong today, though some of their appeal has manifested itself in a different way.

The hat factories, for example, are no longer really in use, but remain a point of pride for the city and are likely still included in modern guidebooks. The Danbury High School sports teams use “The Hatters” as their name, and the city is often referred to as “Hat City,” for example. The Danbury Fair no longer goes on, but the mall built on the fairgrounds is called “The Danbury Fair Mall.” Old pieces of carousels and other fair equipment are used to decorate the mall as well as other places in the city. Main Street is still incredibly busy and families and tourists frequent the recreational areas.

 I’m sure this pattern is not at all uncommon. Attractions are likely to remain the same (or similar) over the decades, but the reasons for their appeal are inevitably subject to change. The concept of the “attraction-that-once-was” is kind of strange, but I’m glad it exists and thrives. People seem just as willing to travel to an area that once was home to a no longer existing attraction, as they are to find an existing one.

In reading through some of these guides, I was immediately struck by the incredible difference between these and modern tourism publications. Modern publications are much more about flash and advertising, whereas these offer a rather dry and comprehensive overview of the history and culture of various cities. As Christine Bold mentions inThe WPA Guides: Mapping America, these guides are partially responsible for building the stereotypes that now surround many American cities. After all, one of their functions was to document and demarcate the cultural lines of the various towns.
 
I imagine that it is partially due to the efforts of the WPA that modern tourist publications are less comprehensive. Of course the argument can easily be made that in the Twitter era, people looking to visit Los Angeles would go cross-eyed if travel guides included sections on the Santa Fe and Pacific Railroad price wars of the late 1800s. Since the publication of these guides, travel bureaus have learned that such topics do not hold the attention of the average traveler. Though since the Twitter generation is also the Google and Wikipedia generation, history or railroad buffs could just as easily access this more comprehensive data if they so pleased.
 
Additionally, one might just as easily make the argument that owing to the popularity of these guide books over the years, the general American consciousness has absorbed a certain amount of knowledge about the various US cities, albeit in a more generalized form. Though comprehensive, the heart of the WPA guides helped with cultural branding for the various towns, and with this cultural branding ingrained in the American consciousness, modern advertisements can play to their audience with a sort of shorthand.
 
One of the more successful modern guidebook series is the Not for Tourist guides. They offer much more information than the 30-second “Come to California!” TV spots or the hotel-lobby brochures, but are also much less comprehensive than the gargantuan tomes of the WPA guides. They are clear and concise. In the reading selections for last week it was noted that one of the reasons for the success of motels was their sheer convenience and lack of pretense. Though the WPA guides set the bar high in terms of pure volume of information, they also branded the cities, and with this cultural branding it allowed tourism bureaus to focus on what they needed to sell about their city. Travelers do not necessarily want to know all there is to know about their destination—a couple pertinent facts and a few points of interest are all the casual traveler needs. While it may have been necessary in the 1930s to lay a foundation of knowledge for the new practice of tourism, the modern traveler needs a sense of spontaneity to their adventure, and these comprehensive tomes simply would not do.

Know your audience. This is a key tenet of demographically targeted advertising. And that is what these books are, they’re advertising for parts of America that could really use your tourist money right about now. And since it’s the depression, everywhere could use the tourist money right about now. And so these guides exist, advertising the various tourist destinations the fifty states offer the discriminating middle-class adventurer. And if this advertising is going to work it has to not only make Maine, or Mississippi, or wherever, seem attractive to tourists, it’s to identify which tourists are going to be drawn to the offering of each particular state and tailor their guide to appeal to that tourist.

And so despite the similarity between these works in terms of their format, divided into sections discussing the history, geography, etc. of the state in question, each takes on a distinct voice and style to suit a particular type of tourist. The guide to Maine for instance, is incredibly erudite and academic. Its descriptions of the history, geography, flora, and fauna of the state read like a textbook. The flora and fauna are arranged like birdwatcher’s almanac, long lists of esoteric species. The discussion of the geography breezes through the geological history of earth, dropping the names of eras with ease, not bothering to wonder whether its audience knows what the Pleistocene Era is. It discusses the history of the state with an eye to evidence and fact. There is a long discussion of the use of red ochre between various native civilizations of the northeast. There is a comparison made between the tools and weapons of the people of Newfoundland as compared to the Eskimos. Essentially, it presents Maine as a place for the erudite thinking man, and the man of nature. Essentially, it advertises itself to anyone who fancies himself a bit of Ernest Hemingway.

Mississippi’s guide, on the other hand, opens, in defiance of the otherwise very similar format, with an introduction titled “What is Mississippi?” Throughout this introduction, and in a tone that carries across much of the actual book, Mississippi is presented as an experience. It is a place that wears its culture and history on its sleeve, a place that, to use a parlance anachronistic for the 1930s, one can ‘get into the groove of.’ It directly references Faulkner in the text, and, though I am unfamiliar with his work so I could be misinterpreting this, the attempt to include in all the numbers and information what its authors clearly feel is the freewheeling spirit of Mississippi.

I’m honestly not sure how much these guides can really tell us about American attitudes to travel in the 1930s, but it certainly says something about the development of such advertising mainstays as “branding” in the 20th century.

Reading the guide book to New York City made me realize just how different the dissemination of information was in the 1930s, and the effect that it had on the way people perceived, dreamed about, and romanticized cities. Today, we can learn about the basic statistics of any city in an online encyclopedia, virtually cruise the streets on Google maps, find the best restaurants and places to go on yelp, or even meet people with common interests on Facebook before arriving (Not that I recommend that at all). But back then, the allure of great cities like New York was spread by word of mouth, or by artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald who romanticized it in literature and from films that used the city as their backdrop. People who were curious enough would have to go there to find out for themselves, rather than looking up videos on Youtube or the travel channel.


These guidebooks were the start of the proliferation of information about travel destinations that is so accessible to us today. The guide employs a strategic and effective mix of useful factual information, poetic prose romanticizing the city, great illustrations of the city, and beautiful black and white photography of various neighborhoods and landmarks. It notes in the preface, “This volume is a detailed description of the communities and points of interest in all the five boroughs of New York City. It attempts, also, to indicate the human character of the city, to point out the evidence of achievements and shortcomings, urban glamor as well as urban sordidness”. The book also features quotes by famous people to entice prospective tourists, such as this one by Henry Hudson: “It is as beautiful a land as one can hope to tread on”. The guide highlights some of the points of interest such as the New York Public Library, Coney Island, Central Park, the World’s Fair grounds, and Wall Street. Equally, it notes  the human character of the city, including the high society types like the Astors, Woolworths, Phipps’, and Rockefellers, as well as the ethnic neighborhoods of Harlem, Chinatown, and Brooklyn.

A perfect illustration of how the guide seeks to mix factual information with a depiction of the urban glamor and urban sordidness of New York, can be found in a passage that reads, “In the city, night workers, their footsteps sharp, irregular on the quiet streets, return home. A water wagon rolls by. Bands are still playing in half a dozen night clubs. In the Upper East Side, in the Upper West Side, in the Gashouse and Hell’s Kitchen, in Chelsea and Greenwich Village, the faint and broken ringing of the alarm clocks come to the empty street. Another day, another dollar. Don’t forget to tell the laundryman not to starch my shirts! Slowly the air between the buildings fills with light…The boy who came to be a writer is waked in his mid-town room and dresses for his shift on the elevator. In Chelsea the girl who came to be an actress launders her stockings. The boy who was going to Wall Street sprawls on his bed, wincing as each cry cuts into his dream of the smell of fresh hay and warm milk…Night draws to a close. Bands are still playing behind closed doors of a half dozen night clubs.”(P.51) The guide book seems to present the same romanticized stereotype of New York that is prominent today. A restless mixing pot of various cultures, with endless attractions to see. A place where everybody has big dreams, and opportunities and vice are abundant. Although there is no challenge in acquiring any sort of information on any given city these days, at least certain romanticized versions of cities still exist in our culture.

Obviously, when choosing a WPA guide to peruse, I—like most everyone else—needed to find one for my home state--in my case, South Carolina.  It wasn’t in the database provided, but I suppose that’s what Google Books is for.
 
Reading through the 1941 pamphlet, I couldn’t help but have a bizarre near-déjà-vu experience of third-grade social-studies class, the year we only learned about South Carolina (a topic revived for eighth grade as well).  It is strange to relearn a lot of the forgotten, but important state history that I naïvely learned as a child, though perhaps without as critical of an eye as now.  I even learned things I had never heard before: the politics of the Upcountry vs. the Lowcountry and the moving of the capitol; that Spanish moss and the pineapple are in the same plant family (Bromeliads, in case you are wondering; also, am I stupid for not knowing that pineapples don’t grow on trees?!?!). 
 
But the Writers’ Project hoped that this would happen.  The introduction states almost immediately the duel function of the “Guide to the Palmetto State.”  It is meant for tourists embarking around the country, but also for South Carolinians to bolster their own state knowledge and pride (though the latter may already be taken care off—“South Carolinians are among the rare folk in the South who have no secret envy for Virginians.  They have a love for their own state which is a phalanx against all attacks of whatever order (3).”)  The WPA guides promote travel and cultural exchange, but also provide a sense of solidity and unity within each state.  It is still more exciting to read about our home states today because it reinforces a feeling of place, home, and culture within us, just as it would have to a 1940s reader.
 
I found this tension interesting because it complicates the purpose of the WPA guides.  How do they function within their respective states and within the nation as a whole?  The guide’s first section is titled “Who is the South Carolinian?” and attempts to typify and rationalize the social and cultural characteristics of South Carolinians—by this, of course, it is meant the white descendents of those who colonized the area, as is fairly directly mentioned in the “Indians” chapter of the guide.  It seems, however, that these descriptions of the “Upcountryman,” ‘Lowcountryman,” etc. are geared toward those who can place themselves within the social classifications, giving a sense of cultural heritage to things that perhaps seemed like common facts.
 
Our own looking back seems to be nostalgia for a childhood past, and there is something to be said for comfort, despite the endless fantasies and realities of mysterious places.  Perhaps, even for foreign states and countries, we search for the familiar in the exotic; travel is perhaps more about our own stories and relations and selves than the places we are experiencing.  I place myself into the descriptions of a South Carolina guide because of my upbringing in a way not too dissimilar from dreaming of a future vacation.  The guides make us feel at home in our own states and country, a perhaps alternate route to the mission of “finding the real America” we’ve been discussing throughout the course.

As I began reading the WPA guide to Maryland: The Old Line State, I was first struck by this bizarre and declarative definition.  “The Old Line State”?  As it turns out, Maryland supposedly got the nickname, “The Old Line State” from George Washington who was proud of the Maryland Line Troops. I have absolutely no idea what the Maryland Line Troops were, and have the hardest time imagining armies tromping around my hometown, but this is why I loved reading this guide to Maryland.

Did you know that in the 1800s, Baltimore (according to the guide it is pronounced, Bawlamur, which is still accurate to this day) was second only to New York City as port of entry for immigrants arriving from Europe.  I had no idea! What a fun fact (and this guide is full of fun facts)!  This makes sense because Baltimore is a town of neighborhoods celebrating their individual heritages such as Hollandtown (pronounce Highlandtown) or Germantown, and of course the sizable Little Italy.  These are what people miss when they come to visit Baltimore and are turned off when it isn’t the kitchy touristic town they were hoping for.  Too bad they didn’t read the WPA guide before they visited and they would know how amazing Maryland is.

Also, I had no idea that my town, Catonsville, was originally named Johnnycake (there’s an elementary school called Johnnycake elementary where kids are stabbed, I know that), named after an inn that was famous for its cornbread!  What great reasoning for naming a town.  But wait, there’s more.  I had heard a rumor that the church behind my house (if you cut through my neighbor’s yard) was where John Wilkes Booth went to school, and the guide has confirmed this! 

Another fantastic thing I read was that, “To the true Northerner, the accents of a Marylander have a pronounced suggestion of a Southern drawl, while to a Virginian and Carolinian, the Marylander’s pronunciation may frequently be tainted with the harshness of the Yankee tongue. “  When I was in Florida and Alabama this summer everyone thought of me as such a Yank and considered Maryland to be a far Northern state, while many people in Maryland consider themselves to be quite southern (maybe because of our customs). 

When reading about Baltimore, they discuss available accommodations, which are “119 hotels and tourist homes, auto and trailer camps in auto homes.”  I wonder where these auto and trailer camps were, because today, camping in Baltimore would just be immensely dangerous, but a funny site.  Yes, times have changed. See here, “…Baltimore’s relative purity is owing not to indignation but to indifference. Sin does not flourish because there is little demand for it.”  There’s a description that went out the door when “The Wire” came on television.

But yet there are so many amazing quotes that encapsulate Baltimore. “BALTIMORE (20 alt., 804,874 pop.) proud, self-sufficient, sits beside the Patapsco river, looking nostalgically to the South but turning to the North for what it takes to make a bank account grow…. Baltimore may be an ugly city, but it is charming in its ugliness… [Then when talking about Baltimoreans] Resentful of alien criticism, they reserve to themselves the right to curse the city’s shortcomings with might and main”.   I wish I had read this before, when I was living as a proud Marylander and Baltimorean.  I also wish I knew who penned these accurate phrases.  Make me a WPA writer too!

In her criticism of the WPA's American Guide books, Christine Bold says that the series "transforms local culture into a tourist attraction, and the tourist attraction into a symbol of national loyalty, in order to reproduce patriotism as a form of brandname identification." I couldn't agree more, and I think the combination of the guides' local pride and exhaustive detail make them an incredibly valuable resource. The information found in the series provides Americans with detailed information about possible vacation destinations and their own hometowns and states.

Okay, so maybe they're a little biased. In the introduction to the New Jersey one, the writers mention the "mountain people who have lived for 150 years in ignorance and poverty akin to that of Southern hill folk." I'm going to hope that the passage is only a representation of a different, less politically correct time. But even so, the detail of the books is incredible. New Jersey lists town events statewide, and places like Philadelphia give the street addresses for every place of interest, organized by categories like art collections and music venues. If you want to ignore everything else and simply take them for the wealth of historical facts and contemporary (well, at the time) cultural information, they're a treasure trove of useful information for tourists, new residents, and long-time locals alike. While I think local pride can get a little out of hand at times (there are too many sports fan fights to even bother trying to find a single one to link to), the competition between the states and regions forced locals to make arguments for why their areas are culturally and economically important. In doing so, Americans learn more about themselves and why exactly they live where they do. In a time like the 1930's, with so much agitation, travel, and discontentment, Americans needed something to help bolster their connections to their homes and give them a better sense of place. And if they did have the luxury of traveling for leisure, the guides gave useful information on what to expect in the country's other states. Much like any other infrastructure overhaul, the American Guide series bolstered the nation's self-image systematically and thoroughly. It may not have involved the backbreaking manual labor usually associated with economic progress, but the series was just as necessary.

New Jersey or “The Garden State” has a bad reputation amongst most New Yorkers and American citizens. There is the perception that New Jersey is associated with the mafia (The Sopranos), and is populated with guidos and guidettes (The Jersey Shore, and The Real Housewives of New Jersey). It has also been voted the third dirtiest state in America. In a New York Times article, Dr. Mappen put it best when he said, “New Jersey has been treated as a place of low taste and lack of sophistication.” Still New Jersey is able to generate revenue with a $36 billion tourism industry. Furthermore, New Jersey’s poor reputation has been propagated mostly by the media and does not always merit its maligned status.
 
During the 1930’s the WPA created a guide of New Jersey to entice tourists to visit. New Jersey, A Guide To Its Present and Past; compiled and written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey, depicts information about New Jersey ranging from its history, architecture and cultural landmarks, but perhaps that most intriguing section describes New Jersey’s folklore.  
 
One of New Jersey’s most infamous folk villains is the Leeds Devil, the official state demon. As an infant, his mother did not want the baby the stork dropped off and, instead, requested a new baby who became the Leeds Devil. According to the legend, the Leeds devil spent his adolescence in a swampland because he was also dismissed from the family. The Leeds Devil is described as “Cloven-hoofed, long-tailed, and white; with the head of a collie dog, the face of a horse, the body of a kangaroo, the wings of a bat and the disposition of a lamb.”  After becoming an adult, he began to stay out late and became “widely known to the population of southern New Jersey” for his antics. The legend also states that the Leeds Devil never hurt “a soul, nor violated even a local ordinance.” One report claims the Leeds Devil was just working on his thesis, A Plutonian Critique of Some Awful Aspects of Terrestrial life, for his doctor’s degree at the University of Hell.
 
This information from the folklore section poses the question of why include a passage about the Leeds Devil when the purpose of the guide is to promote tourism? The guide states and reiterates that the demon has the disposition of a lamb and has never caused any trouble. Thus, he is nothing to fear.  Additionally, he simply coexists with all the New Jerseyans. Perhaps, he is simply just a story to tell during a camping trip in dark New Jersey camp site.
 
 An SNL clip of New York Governors Elliot Spitzer and David Patterson hating on New Jersey:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/72445/saturday-night-live-update-gov-paterson-and-spitzer

There are many things you can read when looking at the WPA travel guides from the 1930s. I decided to narrow my scope to the WPA guide from my hometown, New York City. In  “New York city guide; a comprehensive guide to the five boroughs of the metropolis,” I read the sections on the West Side and Lower West Side, and discovered that many of the places I grew up around in the early 1990s are still very similar to how they were described in the 1930s.
 
Washington Market was the name of the playground I grew up going to that was across the street from Washington Market, which “the name [of] Washington Market [was] used to designate the entire wholesale produce section and city-owned Retail Market, a block square building…” (74). There is still a market there and is frequented by both neighborhood locals and tourists.
 
The interesting things were also learning new things about my neighborhoods history such as “the market section, comprising a world of its own, is the Syrian Quarter, established in the late 1880’s at the foot of Washington Street from Battery Place to Rector Street. A sprinkling of Turks, Armenians, Arabs, and Greeks also live there” (76). I never knew that there was a population like this in my neighborhood. Additionally I didn’t know that there was such a distinct population as to warrant it being called a ethnic “Quarter,” which incidentally begins basically at the doorstep of my childhood apartment (where my parents still live).
 
I decided to then take the opportunity to see what the school situation was like back in the day in my home city where I have gone to school my whole life. I looked up “performing arts” in “New York learns; a guide to the educational facilities of the metropolis”. On page 29, I found my high school, in its original form, that both me and my Uncle attended (he in the 1950s and me in the 2000s). “High School of Music and Art. Students with unusual artistic abilities have been provided with a school of their own. The purpose of the High School of Music and Art…opened in 1936 at the suggestion of Mayor F.H. LaGuardia…” for whom the school was subsequently renamed after, and was called when I went there, “is not to graduate artists and musicians, but to provide students with a background for professional instruction. Applications for admission greatly exceed enrollment, the school having set itself for a maximum of 1,800 students. Musical aptitude tests are required for admission.” (29). Oh how much things change (at the time Stuyvesant High school was still an all boys school), and yet how much they stay the same (I took that musical aptitude test to get into my high school in 2003).

(source).

I read the WPA Guide about Massachusetts, where I am originally from. I have to tell you, I think they were on to something! The guide even made me want to go back to Boringtown, Massachusetts. In school, we never learned anything about Massachsuetts, so the WPA guide piqued my interest in the very town I had grown up in my whole life! 
 
Who knew that Look Park was given to Northampton by a widow of Mr. Look, renowned prophylactic toothbrush maker! Even more shocking is the knowledge that Jonathan Edwards (not to be confused with John Edwards), in response to the impending violence became one of the foremost preachers in New England and help to start The Great Awakening!
 
Even more intriguing is the thought that The Daily Hampshire Gazette – still our most prominent paper – was started to try to help and settle some of the turmoil after Shay’s Rebellion. Or how about the fact that Massachusetts, with all of its universities is thought of to be one of the most potent education centers of the country!
 
It does make me wonder, what would writers write about Massachusetts and Northampton today?
 
So I checked out their website, and figured out that not much has changed – another characteristic key to the identity of Western Massachusetts! The restaurant at the hotel is a suggested attraction as its name bears the original hotel name. It even looks pretty similar to the way it did  in the 1930s. One big change though? Northampton’s claim to fame of basically being the gay capital of the world. This was an interesting contrast to the WPA guides that really barely touched upon social movements at all. All social movements they documented has something to do with gaining independence or something else  very American. There is also a lot more documentation of artists and writers.  It is sort of easy to see through the WPA’s manipulation of what is interesting, and what is relevant to a town these days but I wonder if their motivations of kickstarting the economy were as obvious in the 1930s.
 
It got me thinking about what the modern tourist does. I either use the NYTIMES travel section or the Internet. Websites like Yelp and Lonely Planet now do all the work for us, going so far as to even connecting with airlines to purchase tickets and whatnot.
 
The WPA guides are fascinating because they essentially make every American State, and even down to the city and some small town lever, seem like a special place. There is a rich history everywhere! All you have to do is look around!
 
Were there to be WPA online guides today, I could see a potential resurgence in American tourism of America. I can picture Northampton’s web page, with the historical sigts in the WPA guide from the 1930s, plus some claim to fame about the Slow Food movement or the locavore movement. The WPA mentality plus a little exploration of what is trendy could do a similar thing to what the introduction of the WPA guidebook said – create jobs! There is a certain nostalgia happening right now that makes us want to get to know our roots a little bit better, I could see the resurgence of camping, of traveling about on a dime, of seeing America. 

As soon as I began to read these WPA travel guides, I realized that they would make no sense to me unless I had some connection with the place.

That said, I began by reading about the town from which I graduated high school: Marblehead, Massachusetts.


I first visited Marblehead as a tourist myself, while I was still living in California. To me the town seemed like any other upper-middle class yachting town in New England: cute, quaint, and antique, if not a little dull. So imagine how surprised I was upon reading:

“Said a Marblehead of a later day- “Our ancestors came not here for religion. Their main end was to catch fish.’ As might have been expected from such ungodliness, early Marblehead was a favorite with the powers of darkness. Many a citizen mat Satan himself riding in stat in a coach and four, or was chased through the streets by a corpse in a coffin. The eerie lament of the ‘screeching woman of Marblehead’ resounded across the harbor, and Puritan Salem hanged old ‘Mammy Red’ of Marblehead who knew how to turn enemies’ butter to blue wool. Within a decade unruly Marblehead was without regret permitted to become a separate town, ‘the greatest Towne for fishing in New England’ “ (Massachusetts, 272).

Either the writers of the Massachusetts panel didn’t take their job very seriously and took it upon themselves to become intoxicated on the job (is isn’t that difficult to believe, Massachusetts can get pretty mind-numbingly dull), or prissy little Marblehead* might actually have an interesting past. I once heard that Marblehead was the place where they sent all the drunks from Salem, this must have been what they were talking about.

The tour that the guide takes you around Marblehead is pretty unremarkable. They travel around most of the historical sites that I visited when I first went to Marblehead. As a town very preoccupied with it’s own role in the Revolutionary War and post-colonial history, (as the title of the chapter suggests, Marblehead: Where Tradition Lingers) it isn't that incredible that all of the landmarks are still standing today. Their recommended foot tour would be almost identical to a tour I might take you on. Not much has changed in the past 80 years. Not that it surprises me much.

Next I looked at the California guide, which is structured much differently from the Massachusetts booklet. Instead of the cute “walking tours” found in Massachusetts, most of the California tours appear to be just for cars. I also looked at a few towns that I was familiar with in California. Most of the historical sites are the same missions we learned about in 4th grade, which makes sense. But there does appear to be an emphasis on the beauty, views, weather, and beaches found in California.
 
These guides were probably excellent tools for travelling the US. They are specific and full of enough useful information to make it easy to visit any state or town that you are interested in. I definitely would have used one. Still could for Marblehead, at least.
 
*It must be noted that I don’t actually hate Marblehead or Massachusetts. It’s actually a swell state. Lots history. And apples. And trees. And words conspicuously missing R’s.