152 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
The United States modernized so quickly in the
second half of the nineteenth century that by 1913
it had a greater industrial output than Germany,
France, and Britain combined. Before the widespread
use of oil and gas in the twentieth century, this new
economy of factories, steamships, and railroads was
fired largely by coal. Refined as coke, coal was also
essential to the production of steel. And there was
no more important source of coal in the nineteenth
century than Virginia and West Virginia.
The exploitation of coal depended upon the
relatively new science of geology. In the 1830s and
1840s Virginia geologist William Barton Rogers
undertook the first geological survey of the state in
order to advance prospects for mining in its western
regions. Yet Barton found little support for his
efforts in a state that was largely controlled by the
slaveholders of the eastern Piedmont and Tidewater
regions, who were thoroughly invested in agriculture.
(The dependence upon slavery in the eastern part of
Virginia is apparent on page 142. The virtual absence
of slavery from the mountain regions also partly
explains why those counties formed the new state of
West Virginia during the Civil War and remained loyal
to the Union.) In the early 1850s Rogers proposed
a second geological survey of Virginia, which the
legislature rejected. Discouraged, he returned to
his position at the University of Virginia, and in 1853
left the state altogether to found the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Rogers may have left Virginia, but his geological
research indelibly shaped the region’s postwar
development through Jedediah Hotchkiss. In fact,
just as Rogers was heading north out of Virginia,
Hotchkiss was heading south. Born in New York,
Hotchkiss taught in the coal towns of Pennsylvania
as a teenager, indulging his love of botany and
geology in the surrounding area. He then settled in
Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and took up surveying,
a skill that made him invaluable to the Confederacy
during the Civil War. As an aide to General Stonewall
Jackson, Hotchkiss ranged widely through Virginia
and produced some of its most detailed and accurate
topographic maps.
After the war, Hotchkiss combined his surveying
experience with his knowledge of geology to reinvent
himself as a mining engineer and consultant. When
state leaders asked for help promoting Virginia’s
UNEARTHING COAL
Jedediah Hotchkiss, “Map of Virginia,”
in Virginia: A Geographical and Political
Summary, 1874
economy in the 1870s, he responded by mapping the
state’s geology and mining prospects. In Hotchkiss’
view, the state’s future lay not in agriculture, but coal.
Using Rogers’ earlier research, Hotchkiss highlighted
the enormous western coal beds in gray in order
to attract both labor and capital. Though counties
are named, they are secondary; more important to
Hotchkiss is the relationship between geology and
the progress of railroad and canal construction. This
was, above all, a map outlining the state’s economic
future. Notice as well that Hotchkiss references the
state survey undertaken by Rogers from 1835 to 1841,
a reminder of how little support had been given to