| Abstract: | ABSTRACT. In the nineteenth century, local‐scale roads in central Kentucky were built subject to local knowledge and cultural tradition but within the context of legal authority and folk‐ or science‐based engineering precepts. This study demonstrates how legal and engineering standards‐though conceived as transcendent and objective‐were in fact contingent on the region's physical attributes as well as its cultural traditions and character. Thus local road alignment and construction have been influenced by and contingent on local knowledge, dialogue, and debate since frontier times. |
