Town sees trucks as roadblock to tourist trade : The rediscovered failed utopia wants to detour 18-wheelers to clear path for visitors.

You can hear it miles before you see it--a giant hum that tumbles through the still mountain air.

Then the hum becomes a roar, and, VROOOMMMM! there goes another 18-wheeler.

For residents here, it is a constant reminder that utopia is no more.

Danger and just plain frustration with the noise are driving townsfolk and their supporters to lobby to get the trucks off Highway 52, which cuts through town. But in a larger sense, their effort is just the latest of many in Rugby’s 110-year struggle to survive.

Rugby was founded in 1880 by British author and social reformer Thomas Hughes, who named it after the noted English school where he studied and about which he wrote in the novel “Tom Brown’s School Days.” Like hundreds of other would-be utopias in this country, this one was rooted in the ideals of cooperative living, improving conditions for working people and wiping out elitism.

And Rugby, like many other model towns, failed to thrive as its settlers had envisioned.

As John Egerton, grandson of one of the Rugby settlers, wrote in his book, “Visions of Utopia”: “One of the common characteristics of utopias is their impermanence.”

Hughes established Rugby to provide a haven for younger sons of upper-crust Britons. He believed the younger sons were trapped between two conventions: inadequate allowances from their parents, who gave the eldest sons most of their wealth, and the social prohibition against their earning a living through ordinary work.

Rugby, tucked away in the Cumberland Mountains of east Tennessee, would be a haven for these young men and others. “Our wish is to preserve the natural beauties of this place for the people who live and visit here, and make them a constant means of educating the eye and mind,” Hughes said.

The town grew to a peak population of about 450 in 1884, but a host of problems--including poor management, fires, disease, drought and continuing losses suffered by financial backers--rode Rugby into the ground. Even before Hughes died in 1896, his dream clearly was shattered.

Now, after several reorganizations and land deals, the town, current population about 75, has emerged as a tourist attraction. Rugby drew 75,000 visitors last year.

They come to see what remains of Hughes’ utopia: 22 of the 70 original English-style structures, including restored Victorian cottages, a library bearing Hughes’ name, a Carpenter Gothic-style church and a “public house” called Newbury House, where guests are greeted by a bob-tailed cat on a porch full of rocking chairs.

The streets have names such as Parringdon Road, Donnington Road and Newbury Road. Several of the current residents were born in England, making the town sound a bit British.

Not far from Newbury House is Highway 52, also called Central Avenue. It runs right past the library, the commissary, the church and the visitors’ center. Residents, afraid that Rugby’s ambience will be crushed under truck wheels, have appealed to state and federal officials to build a bypass for the heavy vehicles. The project’s cost is estimated at $7.8 million.

Ironically, the busy two-lane road exists because a community leader campaigned for it back in the 1930s as a way of breathing life into the town.

Now, said Barbara Stagg, executive director of Historic Rugby Inc., rerouting trucks around the town--while leaving the road open to visitors--would amount to “saving the village.”

Stagg worries that tourists, enthralled and distracted by the sights, will wander into the path of an oncoming truck. Also, she said: “Truck traffic is the only thing today that detracts from the 19th-Century atmosphere.”

Lobbying efforts to move the truck route have included a resolution by the Morgan County Commission, as well as an appeal to Gov. Ned McWherter from a group of visitors to Rugby.

That group, an elder hostel tour made up of people from around the country, spent a week in Rugby last spring, then wrote the governor that the “numerous large coal-hauling, construction and commercial trucks powered by loud and sometimes smoke-emitting diesel engines” affected the “tranquility and safety of Rugby visitors” day and night.

Stagg, herself a lobbying machine, believes the efforts will pay off. She said that state officials “continue to be interested and concerned about the long-term future of Rugby.”

Staff researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.