Trends
Changing Words
Associated with Urban Edges
Changes in the Land, Water, and Air
Associated with Suburbanization on Long Island and in Los Angeles
Associated with Atlanta's Overall Growth and Transformation by the 1970s: Click here
Figure 2 from the book's appendix—Decline of the “Country.” The number of magazine articles associated with “country” homes and ways peaked in the early twentieth century but declined especially after World War II.
Data Source: Readers Guide to Periodical Literature
Map 3 from the book—Forest Cover in Selected Parts of Long Island, 1944 versus 1967. Whereas the wealthy, often incorporated north shore locales from Oyster Bay to Old Field (in the Stony Brook/Port Jefferson map) retained their trees, much of the rest of Long Island, in the Levittown area (east side of 3) as well as the North Amityville area (west side of 3) did not, except along parkways and in public parks. Source: USGS maps for 1944 and 1967 (which include green patches for forest cover)
Figure 4 in the book's appendix--Rise of “Suburbia”: Articles mentioning in these cities’ major newspapers, 1900 to 1968.
Source: Proquest Historical Newspapers
New Modes of Water Pollution
Map 4 from the book—Groundwater Threats by Income Level. Most of these Superfund Sites contain wastes dumped between 1945 and 1970. Dirty industries and waste dumps, as well as the sites most prone to detergent pollution, lay in tracts with housing values below the Nassau-Suffolk average.
Sources: NHGIS, EPA, and U.S. Housing Census
Associated with Environmentalism
Figure 5 in the book's appendix—The growth of articles mentioning “pollution” precedes those mentioning “environment” but also closely parallels, more so than for other issue mentions. “Population” mentions are high to begin with, mostly in non-environmental contexts.
Data Source: Proquest Historical Newspapers
Map 6—Dustfall by Income Level. Concentrations are from the last comprehensive study of what would become known as “particulate” pollution, in 1955. They show the vulnerability of lower income tracts to this kind of pollutant. But monitoring and resources were shifting toward pollutants afflicting more of the better off corners of the region, notably ozone.
Sources: 1960 study; NHGIS
Figure 3 in the book's appendix—“Nature,” “Environment,””Conservation”: The Long View
Data Source: Proquest Historical Newspapers
Observations
Return of the "17-Year Locusts" to Long Island, May, 1957
by Robert Cushman Murphy, from his journal for that year, in Murphy Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia