Garden Spot
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the Old Order Amish, and the Selling of Rural America
by David J. Walbert
Within the borders of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, lies some of the richest farmland in the Western Hemisphere. Barely fifty miles from Philadelphia, the county has been a model of agricultural prosperity and stability for nearly three hundred years, and its farmers—particularly its Pennsylvania German farmers—have since the time of the American Revolution been widely considered some of the most capable in the nation. That agriculture has remained the focus of Lancaster’s economy into the late twentieth century is a testament not only to the land and those who farm it, but also to the tenacity of the idea of Lancaster, held by residents and outlanders alike, as the "Garden Spot of America."
Since World War II, Lancaster County has been beset by a series of challenges
to its rural identity. Tourists, drawn by the unique culture of the Amish
and by the beauty of the rural landscape, have flooded the county each
summer since the early 1950s, and the industry of motels, restaurants,
gift shops, museums, and outlet malls that has grown up to accommodate
visitors has threatened to overwhelm the bucolic landscape that originally
attracted them.
In the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands
of these tourists came to stay, and residents again accommodated them,
building houses, retirement homes, and shopping centers on ground that
had once been productive farmland. Farmers, meanwhile, have faced rising
property taxes and land values that make development attractive and farming
increasingly impractical. The past ten years have seen a groundswell of
concern for the county’s rural character and its residents’
way of life, and planning commissions, preservation trusts, and community
groups have tackled the problem with great energy, much debate, and mixed
success.
Some of the problems facing Lancaster County are common to many rural
places. During the so-called "rural renaissance" of the 1970s,
urban and suburban Americans moved back in droves to small towns near
larger metropolitan areas. Technological and economic changes in farming
since the 1940s have put mounting pressure on small family farmers, and
millions have been forced off the land.
But Lancaster’s problems are made unique
by its role in popular American culture as a quintessentially rural place.
Long-time residents, newcomers, and visitors all cherish Lancaster’s
identity as the Garden Spot. The presence of the Amish is essential to
that identity, but is also immensely complicating, for while the Plain
People are doubly vital to Lancaster’s economy—as both the most
rooted of the county’s farmers and the primary attraction of the
hundred-million dollar tourist industry—they are also a thorn in
the side of ruralites who want to portray the county as a progressive,
modern place where people can live and do business. Lancaster’s prosperity
depends not only on the reality of an agricultural economy, but also on
the image of rurality. Because image and reality are often incompatible,
planning for the future can be extremely difficult.
Although the problems facing rural communities like Lancaster have serious
economic causes, I argue that their root is primary cultural. In the twentieth
century, the city has replaced the country as the focus of American culture,
and ruralites wanting growth and progress have looked to urban models.
As American society has moved further from its agrarian roots, ruralness
has come to be associated with the past, with a simpler time of peace
and plenty when harmony prevailed.
This idea of the city-as-future and the
country-as-past has aggravated the troubles of rural America since the
Second World War. When urbanites see a rural community as an attractive
lost Arcadia, their money can serve as a wedge for their ideas and force
ruralites to accommodate their desire for peace, quiet, and recreation.
Farmers and other rural residents needing to make a living are often forced
to the opposite extreme, advocating progress at any cost; while ruralites
who want to preserve farmland and other open space from development may
be seen by their neighbors as catering to urban fantasies or as "living
in the past."
Americans’ failure to envision a model
for rural progress—a present and a future that preserve the essential
character of a rural place—has allowed the city to turn the country
into a kind of economic and cultural colony.
Garden Spot is a study of portrayals of Lancaster County as a
rural place, by urbanites and ruralites, residents and outlanders alike,
and of the practical impact that those portrayals have had on the county
and its residents over the past several decades.
I begin with a brief overview of the county’s
development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing on the
growth of the idea of the "Garden Spot." In the twentieth century,
I explore such topics as rural education and school consolidation; tourism
and portrayals of the Amish; portrayals of family farmers and their real-life
struggles; popular descriptions of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking; issues
of growth and development; and efforts, particularly in recent decades,
to preserve the county’s rural character. Each of these issues provides
a window into the feelings of Lancastrians about their home and those
of outsiders about Lancaster as a quintessentially rural place.
More broadly, however, this is a book about the role of rural America
in popular American culture. At the heart of the study is the question
of what is rural? How many people can live in a rural place without
urbanizing it? Does the rural character of a place depend on a peaceful
and bucolic landscape and on "quality of life," or on an agricultural
economy of productive farms? Is the presence of open space fundamental,
or is the nature of the community more important? Is "progress"
possible without urbanization, or is true rurality incompatible with modernity,
by definition a thing of the past?
These questions have, of course, no easy
or definitive answers, but they must be addressed and openly debated by
ruralites if there is to be any independent future for rural America.
It is my hope that this book will provide a springboard for that debate.
Garden Spot is published by Oxford University Press (2002). It is available from your local bookseller through booksense.com as well as through Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. You can also order directly from Oxford.
More: Lancaster County Links
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