| In the 1970s and 1980s, people living on the rural waterfront of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, first in Virginia and then in Maryland, began sighting what they believed was a sea monster. The press labeled it "Chessie," in honor of the estuary, and the monster quickly became a regional sensation. Sighting reports proliferated around the Bay region, especially in areas of significant tourism and development, and led to the creature becoming both an official and unofficial icon for the region. In 1985, the Maryland Senate discussed protecting Chessie under state law, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service subsequently used the monster to teach children about Bay cleanup.;This dissertation approaches the Chessie phenomenon as a cultural artifact, its manifestations the result of profound cultural changes confronting rural America in the postwar era. Monster sightings were a symptom of the suburbanization affecting non mainstream America from the 1950s to the present, as formerly rural places became increasingly oriented to urban ideals and lifestyles. Chessie appearances derived from postwar prosperity, which not only enabled mass suburbanization but also an ethic of consumerism. Attracted to nature for its aesthetic value, Americans entered rural areas where people tended to regard nature as a workspace essential to production, not consumption.;Chessie exemplified the clash between these different views of nature. Tourists and recently transplanted residents saw the monster---not natives. When local workers, who worked on the water and knew it intimately, denied claims of monster sightings their views were challenged and disregarded. The fact that Chessie was seen and not contradicted, and that sightings proliferated, symbolized the triumph of commodified nature in rural America. In turn, monster sightings also indexed to the rise of mass suburban development, especially on the waterfront, and the tendency of such development to displace not only local people but also laborers. The use of the monster as a symbol for environmental awareness in the mid-1980s handily harnessed these connections with suburbia, transforming Chessie into a didactic figure that simultaneously legitimated and critiqued the post-industrial economic and cultural order. |
