| This dissertation examines the settlement changes that occurred in Clinton County, New York during the middle of the nineteenth century. Much of this change was a direct result of the demise of an original base for economic growth and development, the county's lumbering and iron industries. While much research has been accomplished within historical geography and other fields on the growth and development of regions, relatively little work has been done on how and why regions stop growing and developing and how regions adjust to their changing situations geographically.;After the War of 1812, the county witnessed a relatively steady growth and expansion of population, economic activity, and small scale urbanization, stimulated by an increasing demand for local products and an expanding transportation network. Much of the expanding economic activity was predicated on several lumbering and iron industries which, in turn, stimulated the growth of several communities throughout the county.;By the 1860's, however, this county growth and development had stabilized, as shown by decreasing rates of population growth, decreasing ethnic diversity among that population, slowed growth rates in secondary economic activities, and a change in the settlement structure of the area. The county, in a collective response, attempted to adjust to this changing developmental picture by trying new economic activities such as potato starch-making, the production of wooden producer and consumer goods, and various agricultural activities. By and large, these were usually only moderately successful.;At the same time, regionally external businesses and corporations became more active in the county's affairs. Typified by the extensive activities of the Delaware and Hudson Company, much of the subsequent economic expansion, diversification, or development took place at the stimulation and under the control of these external interests. This, in effect, made the region an economic dependency of these external interests, and had a large impact on the county's settlement form and content.;Information on the distribution and location of population, industrial activity, and trade was obtained from federal and state censuses, business directories and reference books, and local histories. Newspaper articles, contemporary accounts and recollections, and volume on travel experiences also were used to examine the geographical change in settlement pattern and interaction at a local scale over a critical thirty years for the area.;The increasing externally-induced economic activity in the county was focused on one community, the county seat of Plattsburgh. Plattsburgh became the entry and exit point for the external interests, as well as the regional focus for industry, commerce, transportation, and information. Because of this, the urban structure of the county changed from a basically rank-order one to that of a primate nature with Plattsburgh as the primate center. Plattsburgh became an urban point of agglomeration with the concentration of people, industry, business, and transportation within an area of but marginal regional growth. This occurred while the other communities of the region stopped growing and, in cases, lost population and economic activity.;The impact of this period of adjustment to regional stabilization was pervasive and long lasting. The present day patterns of settlement and regional interaction are very much the same as those which formed during the period 1850 to 1880. Plattsburgh remains the primate urban center and there are no other communities in the county today that are more than lower-order villages, hamlets, or ghost towns. This study has focused on the economic and settlement aspects of the regional adjustment process, rather than on the social dimensions of change. Consequently, the adjustment model that is elaborated upon in the thesis emphasizes the economic variables of change. |
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