Mapping Textiles and Tourism in West Georgia

Jamie Bynum, Graduate Research Assistant, GIS Specialist, and Researcher, University of West Georgia, Center for Public History

Digital history is a quickly growing field that is being used more and more every day. This field is one that has a multitude of applications and uses for both academia and the public, which is crucial to the field of public history. The work I have completed over the last two years has utilized digital history to bring the history of the textile industry to the public.

At the time of writing this article, I am a graduate student at the University of West Georgia graduating with a Master of Arts in Public History and certificate in Museum Studies in May of 2022. Since January of 2020, I have worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for the university’s Center for Public History, directed by Dr. Ann McCleary and Keri Adams, M.A. My work has almost exclusively been for the Center’s West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail project. This project aims to bring the heritage and history of the textile industry to the public in a way that highlights tourism, local exhibits, and community.

Due to my Bachelor of Arts degree holding a minor in Geographic Information Systems, I was asked to help with the creation of maps to better put forward the history of west Georgia’s textile industry. These initial maps were completed using Esri’s ArcGIS Story Maps, which uses maps to tell stories from across all fields of study. What makes this program unique is that the maps are not static but interactive and are able to attract more attention from the public. Later, I began creating maps using Esri’s ArcGIS and ArcGIS Pro programs to create both static and animated maps for my thesis project.

The textile industry in West Georgia was and continues to be a significant aspect of many communities. Many communities within our region were founded around the textile mills in the form of mill villages, which were groups of houses built specifically to house their workers. This expansive landscape of the textile industry is one that can be fully studied and appreciated with the use of maps and visual sources. Not only were textile mills located adjacent to their mill village, but also near other mills and their mill villages. The congregation of these mills and villages were the foundation of many modern communities. Our project aims to bring the history of the textile industry not only to researchers but to the descendants of those whose story is being told.

The first step in completing these maps was to decide what program we were going to use and what visual aspects we wanted to include. Story Maps was the best choice as it allows the use of photographs and a layout that shows all the location points together to tell a more comprehensive story. Another potential program was Google’s Tour Creator; this program did not work as well for what we wanted to create and has since been discontinued. Picking the program also came with picking aesthetic features we wanted each map to have that would make it identifiable as belonging to our project. Due to the pandemic, we were unable to contact the company and pursue the full customization

Behind-the-scenes view while working with ArcGIS Pro.

we were looking for but were able to add our logo to the heading of the map.

The next step in this process, and the most important step, was determining what locations related to the textile industry would best tell the region’s story to the public. For this, we decided to include major textile mills and mill villages, historical societies, museums, and libraries that house information on the textile industry, and other buildings directly tied to the textile industry or the people who worked within it. All these locations would lead the public either to research the textile industry or view from afar its lasting impacts, as many locations are privately owned and not open to the public.

While deciding locations for the maps, we also kept in mind what would be accessible to the public whilst going to these communities in-person. This project is unique in that it is for both historical information and tourism. We encourage visitors to the website to take advantage of the Story Maps for each location, explore the various communities throughout west Georgia, and share their own stories about their hometown and family’s textile history. With a sizable number of locations to be mapped, fellow graduate student Jarrett Craft and I found and logged the coordinates and addresses of each location that would be featured on the Story Maps. Within the program, it is possible to use an address, set of coordinates, or drag and drop the marker to denote the location of each point. We used these markers to sort locations by those open to the public, privately owned, and demolished. I then set out to create the maps.

For each location on the maps, we wanted a photograph to accompany it. Jarrett Craft was especially helpful in helping me gather historic photographs. We decided it would be best to have a mix of historic and modern photographs to show how the overall textile industry has evolved over time. If we were unable to get usable historic photographs for a location, I took modern photographs. This was completed in two trips: one to the most northern community of our trail, and one to the most southern. I am now adding any new or missed locations to these story maps, which can be seen on each respective community page of the project website.

After completing these maps, I turned my attention to a new set of maps created using ArcGIS and ArcGIS Pro. These maps, used for my thesis project, look at the

types of textile mills and machinery count in relation to waterways and railroads. My thesis looks at these maps and analyzes them in reference to waterways and railroads as sources of both power and transportation. Two sources I used for these maps are the USGS waterways shapefile and the railroad shapefile created by Jeremy Atack of Vanderbilt University. These resources have information on major railroads across the United States.

The data collected for the Story Maps was incredibly useful in this second project. For example, the data contained information about how many spindles and looms were operated in each mill. All information was put into spreadsheets based on the year the data was collected. With so many mills, several had incorrect information that needed to be remedied. This highlights an issue with digital history: it is all too easy to have the wrong data present when completing projects. However, an advantage of digital history is that it is easier to catch mistakes with the utilization of technology.

Digital history is a great tool to study history and display information. Some applications of digital history include maps, document digitization and virtual tours. Deciding which application works best for a specific project takes time and careful consideration. Story Maps are great for tourism as they are interactive and are good at showing qualitative data, while ArcGIS maps are better for historical research and showing quantitative data. While there are some drawbacks, such as paywalls, technology malfunctions, and accessibility issues, there are significant advantages. This up-and-coming field of research allows historians to reach diverse audiences in new and engaging ways, which is important to expanding the field of history. Technology is becoming more widely available every single day and should be utilized to its fullest potential.

This most extensive of the maps shows the entirety of the West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail.