ABSTRACT
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) marked and promoted the transcontinental Jefferson Davis Highway (JDH) with the purpose of colonizing public space to assert a Lost Cause narrative of memory. Delving into the reception of the JDH in specific locales illuminates how this narrative and ideology gained credence. Lionizing Jefferson Davis serves to confirm the Lost Cause ideology central to UDC beliefs. The monuments in Washington State remained largely uncontested for most of their history. As in San Diego, the UDC relied on the legitimizing power of the physical memorial, thus keeping the monuments free from political controversy. The UDC privileged physical monuments over legislative backing. They understood how a public monument could produce cultural space to colonize collective memory. In the wake of the Civil War, the battlefield shifted to the realm of memory, and the UDC sought to assert and legitimize its contested version of a romantic South.
