A Brief History of the Shotgun House It is unquestionable that humans adapt to their environments and, provided sufficient time, inhabitants become experts in meeting their goals within their environment. These adaptations can be overlooked by outsiders, changed through culture contact, and/or forgotten. When cultural adaptations and traditions are applied in an environment, these can become part of the vernacular landscape. According to Henry Glassie (1965:2), “The objects that man has learned to make are traditionally termed material culture. Culture is intellectual, rational and abstract; it cannot be material, but material can be cultural and ‘material culture’ embraces those segments of human learning which provide a person with plans, methods, and reasons for producing things which can be seen and touched.” Glassie (1968) and Deetz (1977) discussed the concept of a “mental template,” and i t was through this template that humans adapted and made lasting impressions upon the landscape. However, within a culture there is individual variation such as two individuals who speak the same language may use different dialects (Glassie 1968). Wells (1986:1) stated, “Approached as artifacts, the concrete results of architectural decisions made by common people in the course of ordinary lives, vernacular buildings have yielded new and sometimes startling insights into the cultures they represent.” A vernacular approach views structures as artifacts that have established a lasting impression on the landscape. Vernacular or folk architecture, although hard to define, is recognized easily. Fred Kniffen (1965:549) saw folk housing as a reflection of, “cultural heritage, current fashion, functional needs, and the positive and negative aspects of noncultural environment.” James Deetz (1977:65) defined it as, “traditional and conservative; it exhibits great variation in space and relatively little change over time.” Dell Upton (1983:263) understood the complexities of this term, “…I have always avoided defining this term. When pressed, my preference is to define vernacular architecture not as a category into which some buildings may be fit and others not, but as an approach…” From log houses to the gas station, the study of vernacular architecture covers a vast majority of buildings. According to Camille Wells (1986:3), “By now, it