Introduction R. Douglas Hurt (bio) This special issue of New York History emphasizes the agricultural and rural history of New York, with essays ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.1 Not all agricultural history can be considered rural history, and rural history does not necessarily mean agricultural history. This issue is particularly noteworthy because some essays challenge conventional or at least consensus wisdom about the interpretation of agricultural history, while others focus on rural issues that are not agriculturally related. These essays help us better understand the history of New York, and they are suggestive for new ways to consider the agricultural and rural history of the state. Louis Tremante offers a compelling new interpretation of agriculture in the New York City vicinity during the mid-nineteenth century. Tremante challenges the theory of Johann Heinrich von Thünen, whose spatial model of settlement explained the production specializations of farmers in relation to distances from a city center. Instead, Tremante argues that agricultural development near and outward from New York City depended on population growth, land values, immigration, fertilizer supply, and retail markets. Each "driver" changed the agricultural emphasis in the New York City area in different ways from Thünen's use of geography and concentric rings to explain the reasons for agricultural expansion. Jason R. Sellers discusses the ways that Native Americans in the Hudson Valley negotiated European culture to their best advantage by using the Dutch and English settlements as sources of supply—that is, [End Page 261] resources which they integrated with their autumn and winter hunting and spring and summer farming patterns. British control and more extensive agriculture changed the environment by permitting invasive plants and soil erosion, all of which contributed to biological diversity and a new ecological system that strained the traditional Native American food supply. British settlements and agriculture continued to provide resources for subsistence, but they also forced the Native American population to make cultural adjustments as their numbers decreased. Nancy Berlage analyzes the ways in which the American Farm and Home Bureaus used pageants and plays, written by members, usually women, to promote agricultural improvement through the application of science to farm and home. The members of the farm and home bureaus believed that various new or improved farming and household methods that improved efficiency and profitability could be learned by watching members enact a particular process or convey a specific idea to help viewers improve their daily tasks in the field, barnyard, and home. Berlage uses the Broome County Farm Bureau as an example of how and why farm men and women should consider the Bureau an essential part of agricultural life. Farm men and women could rely on the bureaus which associated closely with the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station and its extension agents to convey the importance of science to improve their lives. Farm women also used the pageants and plays to convey the importance of civic responsibility. The farm and home bureaus always stressed the importance of change, and the bureaus' pageants and plays helped farm men and women understand the importance of adopting progressive farm and home practices through theatrical expressions intended for persuasion. Cynthia Falk uses the photography of Arthur Rothstein to investigate the Otsego Forest Products Cooperative located in Phoenix Mills. As a photographer for the Farm Security Administration during the late 1930s, Rothstein recorded the forestry work in the county. He sought to show farmers the potential for cooperatives and selective timber cutting on their non-productive lands to improve income. He also used his photography to advocate the adoption of new improved technology and marketing strategies. Working from Cooperstown, Rothstein was as much a sociologist as a photographer, and his images give us a window to a past where the federal [End Page 262] government championed the importance of cooperatives and he recorded rural life—homes, farms, and people—in an age soon gone. Patricia Houser traces the effects of water contamination at Mahopac, New York, where in the mid-1870s city people vacationed in the summers to enjoy fresh air, the outdoors, and nice hotels far from New York City. In many ways Mahopac was a bucolic...