Cultural Landscape Change and the Function of Hamlets in Southwest Wisconsin: Updating Trewartha’s Classic 1943 Study

Eight decades ago, geographer Glenn Trewartha published “The Unincorporated Hamlet: One Element of the American Settlement Fabric” in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. His research proposed a description for hamlets and examined their roles as rural commercial and social centers through fieldwork conducted in more than 58 hamlets in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. Trewartha used his observations to develop a typology of cultural landscape morphology that reflected patterns and arrangements of buildings used for residential, commercial, and social functions. This study reexamines the state of the hamlets identified in Trewartha’s influential study. Through a mixed-methods approach that incorporates geospatial technology and site visits to 42 of the hamlets, a new typology of rural hamlets is proposed that reflects the degree of decline, maintenance, or growth they have witnessed over the last century. This methodological approach of examining continuity and change in the material culture and landscapes of hamlets is intended to be applicable elsewhere in the United States.