ABSTRACT

This chapter examines in greater detail rural urban relationships as railroads and industrial technology reshaped human patterns of residence and work in the piney woods. It focuses on the piney woods of Mississippi and the adjacent coastal meadows. Corn, cattle, cotton, pigs, sheep, lumber, and turpentine were the primary products of the piney woods in the antebellum era. Limited population growth occurred as settlers instead flocked to the prime agricultural lands along the Mississippi Yazoo delta and the Tombigbee River in the western and north-central portion of the state. Pine belt counties were among the fastest growing in the state between 1900 and 1910, exceeding the 15 percent rate of population growth for Mississippi as a whole. The chapter concludes the piney woods constitute a unique bioregion in Mississippi which developed at a distinct chronological pace and with different rural and urban patterns to the rest of the state.