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This article is about the region in the United States. For other uses, see Appalachia (disambiguation).

Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from southern New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.^[1] While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S. state of Alabama, the cultural region of Appalachia typically refers only to the central and southern portions of the range. As of 2005, the region was home to approximately 23 million people.^[2]

Since its recognition as a distinctive region in the late 19th century, Appalachia has been a source of enduring myths and distortions regarding the isolation, temperament, and behavior of its inhabitants. Early 20th-century writers focused on sensationalistic aspects of the region's culture, such as moonshining and clan feuding, and often portrayed the region's inhabitants as uneducated and prone to impulsive acts of violence. Sociological studies in the 1960s and 1970s helped to deconstruct these stereotypes, although popular media continued to perpetuate the image of Appalachia as a culturally backward region into the 21st century.^[2]

While endowed with abundant natural resources, Appalachia has long struggled with poverty. In the early 20th century, large-scale logging and coal mining firms brought wage-paying jobs and modern amenities to Appalachia, but by the 1960s the region had failed to capitalize on any long-term benefits from these two industries. Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government sought to alleviate poverty in the Appalachian region with a series of New Deal initiatives, such as the construction of dams to provide cheap electricity and the implementation of better farming practices. In 1965, the Appalachian Regional Commission was created to further alleviate poverty in the region, mainly by diversifying the region's economy and helping to provide better health care and educational opportunities to the region's inhabitants. By 1990, Appalachia had largely joined the economic mainstream, but still lagged behind the rest of the nation in most economic indicators.^[2]

Contents 1 Defining the Appalachian region 1.1 Etymology and pronunciation 2 History 2.1 Early history 2.2 The Appalachian frontier 2.3 Early 19th century 2.4 The U.S. Civil War 2.5 Late 19th and early 20th centuries 2.6 Modern Appalachia 3 Culture 3.1 Ethnic groups 3.2 Religion 3.3 Education 3.4 Urban Appalachians 3.5 Communications 3.6 Appalachian studies 3.7 Literature 4 Economy 4.1 Poverty in Appalachia 4.2 Appalachian Regional Commission 5 Transportation 5.1 Early Roads 5.2 Water 5.3 Rail 5.4 Highways 6 Popular culture 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Defining the Appalachian region

Since Appalachia lacks definite physiographical or topographical boundaries, there has been some disagreement over what exactly the region encompasses. The most commonly-used modern definition of Appalachia is the one initially defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965 and expanded over subsequent decades.^[2] The region defined by the Commission currently includes 420 counties in 13 states, including all of West Virginia and 14 counties in New York, 52 in Pennsylvania, 32 in Ohio, 3 in Maryland, 54 in Kentucky, 25 in Virginia, 29 in North Carolina, 52 in Tennessee, 6 in South Carolina, 37 in Georgia, 37 in Alabama, and 24 in Mississippi.^[1] When the Commission was established, counties were added based on economic need, however, rather than any cultural parameters.^[2]

The first major attempt to map Appalachia as a distinctive cultural region came in the 1890s with the efforts of Berea College president William Goodell Frost, whose "Appalachian America" included 194 counties in eight states.^[3] In 1921, John C. Campbell published The Southern Highlander and His Homeland in which he modified Frost's map to include 254 counties in 9 states. A landmark survey of the region in the following decade by the United States Department of Agriculture defined the region as consisting of 206 counties in 6 states. In 1984, Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack expanded the ARC's definition to include 445 counties in 13 states, although they removed all counties in Mississippi and added two in New Jersey. Historian John Alexander Williams, in his 2002 book Appalachia: A History, distinguished between a "core" Appalachian region consisting of 164 counties in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, and a greater region defined by the ARC.^[2]

[edit] Etymology and pronunciation

While exploring inland along the northern coast of Florida in 1528, the members of the Narváez expedition, including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, found a Native American village near present-day Tallahassee, Florida whose name they transcribed as Apalchen or Apalachen [a.paˈla.tʃɛn]. The name was soon altered by the Spanish to Apalachee and used as a name for the tribe and region spreading well inland to the north. Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15, 1528 and applied the name. Now spelled "Appalachian", it is the fourth oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S.^[4] After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the mountains themselves. The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutierrez' map of 1562; the first use for the mountain range is the map of Jacques le Moyne de Morgues in 1565.^[5]

The name was not commonly used for the whole mountain range until the late 19th century. A competing and often more popular name was the "Allegheny Mountains", "Alleghenies", and even "Alleghania." In the early 19th century, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either Appalachia or Alleghania.^[6]

In northern U.S. dialects, the mountains are pronounced /æpəˈleɪtʃənz/ or /æpəˈleɪʃənz/. The cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced /æpəˈleɪʃ(i)ə/, also /æpəˈleɪtʃ(i)e/, all with a third syllable like "lay". In southern U.S. dialects, the mountains are called the [æ.pəˈlæ.tʃənz], and the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced [ˈ[æ.pəˈlæ.tʃ(i)ə]]. The third syllable is like the "la" in "latch".^[7][8] This pronunciation is favored in the "core" region in central and southern parts of the Appalachian range. The occasional use of the "sh" sound for the "ch" in the last syllable in northern dialects was popularized by Appalachian Trail organizations in New England in the early 20th century.^[3]

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

Native American hunter-gatherers first arrived in what is now Appalachia over 12,000 years ago. Several Archaic period (8000-1000 B.C.) archaeological sites have been identified in the region, such as the St. Albans site in Virginia and the Icehouse Bottom site in Tennessee. In the 16th century, the de Soto and Juan Pardo expeditions explored the mountains of South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, and encountered complex agrarian societies populated by Muskogean-speaking inhabitants. De Soto indicated that much of the region west of the mountains was part of the domain of Coosa, a paramount chiefdom centered around a village complex in northern Georgia.^[9] By the time English explorers arrived in Appalachia in the late 17th century, the central part of the region was controlled by Algonquian tribes (namely the Shawnee) and the southern part of the region was controlled by the Cherokee.

European migration into Appalachia began in the 18th century. As lands in eastern Pennsylvania and the tidewater areas of Virginia and the Carolinas filled up, immigrants began pushing further and further westward into the Appalachian Mountains. A relatively large proportion of the early backcountry immigrants were Irish protestants— later known as "Scotch-Irish"— who were seeking cheaper land and freedom from Quaker leaders, many of whom considered the Scotch-Irish "savages." Others included Germans from the Palatinate region and English settlers from the Anglo-Scottish border country. Between 1730 and 1763, immigrants trickled into Western Pennsylvania, Northwestern Virginia, and Western Maryland. Thomas Walker's discovery of Cumberland Gap in 1750 and the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 lured settlers deeper into the mountains, namely to upper East Tennessee, Northwestern North Carolina, Upstate South Carolina, and Central Kentucky. Between 1790 and 1840, a series of treaties with the Cherokee and other Native American tribes opened up lands in North Georgia, Northeast Alabama, the Tennessee Valley, the Cumberland Plateau regions, and the highlands along what is now the Tennessee-North Carolina border.^[10] The last of these treaties culminated in the removal of the bulk of the Cherokee population from the region via the Trail of Tears in 1838.

[edit] The Appalachian frontier

Appalachian frontiersmen have long been romanticized for their ruggedness and self-sufficiency. A typical depiction of an Appalachian pioneer involves a hunter wearing a coonskin cap and buckskin clothing, and sporting a long rifle and shoulder-strapped powder horn. Perhaps no single figure symbolizes the Appalachian pioneer moreso than Daniel Boone (1734-1820), a long hunter and surveyor instrumental in the early settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee. Like Boone, Appalachian pioneers moved into areas largely separated from "civilization" by high mountain ridges, and had to fend for themselves against the elements. As many of these early settlers were living illegally on Native American lands, attacks from Native American tribes were a continuous threat until the 1800s.^[11]

As early as the 18th century, Appalachia (then known simply as the "backcountry") began to distinguish itself from its wealthier lowland and coastal neighbors to the east. Frontiersmen often bickered with lowland and tidewater "elites" over taxes, sometimes to the point of armed revolts such as the Regulator Movement (1767-1771) in North Carolina.^[12] In 1778, at the height of the American Revolution, backwoodsmen from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and what is now Kentucky took part in George Rogers Clark's Illinois campaign. Two years later, a group of Appalachian frontiersmen known as the "Overmountian men" routed British forces at the Battle of Kings Mountain after rejecting a call by the British to disarm.^[13] After the war, residents throughout the Appalachian backcountry— especially the Monongahela region in Western Pennsylvania and northwestern Virginia— refused to pay a tax placed on whiskey by the new American government, leading to what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion.^[14]

[edit] Early 19th century

In the early 1800s, the rift between the yeoman farmers of Appalachia and their wealthier lowland counterparts continued to grow, especially as the latter dominated most state legislatures. People in Appalachia began to feel slighted over what they considered unfair taxation methods and lack of state funding for improvements (especially for roads). In the northern half of the region, the lowland "elites" consisted largely of industrial and business interests, whereas in the parts of the region south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the lowland elites consisted of large-scale land-owning planters.^[12] The Whig Party, formed in the 1830s, drew widespread support from disaffected Appalachians.

Tensions between the mountain counties and state governments sometimes reached the point of mountain counties threatening to break off and form separate states. In 1832, bickering between western Virginia and eastern Virginia over the state's constitution led to calls on both sides for the state's separation into two states.^[15] In 1841, Tennessee state senator (and later U.S. president) Andrew Johnson introduced legislation in Tennessee's state senate calling for the creation of a separate state in East Tennessee. The proposed state would have been known as "Frankland" and would have invited like-minded mountain counties in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama to join it.^[16]

[edit] The U.S. Civil War

By 1860, the Whig Party had disintegrated. Sentiments in northern Appalachia had shifted to the pro-abolitionist Republican Party. In southern Appalachia, abolitionists still constituted a radical minority, although several smaller opposition parties (most of which were both pro-Union and pro-slavery) were formed to oppose the planter-dominated Southern Democrats. As states in the southern United States moved toward secession, a majority of Southern Appalachians still supported the Union.^[17] In 1861, a Minnesota newspaper identified 161 counties in Southern Appalachia— which the paper called "Alleghenia"— where Union support remained strong, and which might provide crucial support for the defeat of the Confederacy.^[3] However, many of these Unionists— especially in the mountain areas of North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama— were "conditional" Unionists in that they opposed secession, but also opposed violence to prevent secession, and thus when their respective state legislatures voted to secede, their support shifted to the Confederacy.^[18] Kentucky sought to remain neutral at the outset of the conflict, opting not to supply troops to either side. After Virginia voted to secede, several mountain counties in northwestern Virginia rejected the ordinance, and with the help of the Union army established a separate state, admitted to the Union as West Virginia in 1863. A similar effort occurred in East Tennessee, but the initiative failed after Tennessee's governor ordered the Confederate army to occupy the region, forcing East Tennessee's Unionists to flee to the north or go into hiding.^[18]

Both central and southern Appalachia suffered tremendous violence and turmoil during the U.S. Civil War. While there were two major theaters of operation in the region— namely the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and the Chattanooga area along the Tennessee-Georgia border— much of the violence was caused by bushwhackers and guerilla war. Large numbers of livestock were killed (grazing was an important part of Appalachia's economy), and numerous farms were destroyed, pillaged, or neglected.^[17] The actions of both Union and Confederate armies left many inhabitants in the region resentful of government authority and suspicious of outsiders for decades after the war.^[19][20]

[edit] Late 19th and early 20th centuries

After the war, northern parts of Appalachia experienced an economic boom, while economies in the southern parts of the region stagnated, especially as Southern Democrats regained control of their respective state legislatures at the end of Reconstruction.^[17] Pittsburgh and its surrounding areas in Western Pennsylvania grew into one of the nation's major industrial centers, especially regarding iron and steel production. By 1900, the Chattanooga area and North Georgia and Northern Alabama had experienced similar changes due to manufacturing booms in Atlanta and Birmingham at the edge of the Appalachian region. Railroad construction between the 1880s and early 1900s gave the greater nation access to the vast coalfields in central Appalachia, making the economy in that part of the region practically synonymous with coal mining. As the nationwide demand for timber skyrocketed, lumber firms turned to the virgin forests of Southern Appalachia, using sawmill and logging railroad innovations to reach remote timber stands. The Tri-Cities area of Tennessee and Virginia and the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia became major petrochemical production centers.^[21]

The late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw the development of various regional stereotypes. Attempts by President Rutherford B. Hayes to enforce the whiskey tax in the late 1870s led to an explosion in violence between Appalachian "moonshiners" and federal "revenuers" that lasted through the Prohibition period in the 1920s.^[22] The breakdown of authority and law enforcement during the Civil War may have contributed to an increase in clan feuding, which by the 1880s was reported to be a problem across most of Kentucky's Cumberland region as well as Carter County in Tennessee, Carroll County in Virginia, and Mingo and Logan counties in West Virginia.^[22][19] Regional writers from this period such as Mary Noailles Murfree and Horace Kephart liked to focus on such sensational aspects of mountain culture, leading readers outside the region to believe they were more widespread than in reality. In an 1899 article in Atlantic, Berea president William G. Frost attempted to redefine the inhabitants of Appalachia as "noble mountaineers"— relics of the nation's pioneer period whose isolation had left them unaffected by modern times.^[19]

[edit] Modern Appalachia

Logging firms' rapid devastation of the forests of Southern Appalachia sparked a movement among conservationists to preserve what remained and allow the land to "heal." In 1911, Congress passed the Weeks Act, giving the federal government authority to create national forests and control timber harvesting. Regional writers and business interests led a movement to create national parks in the eastern United States similar to Yosemite and Yellowstone in the west, culminating in the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina, Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Parkway (connecting the two) in the 1930s.^[23] During the same period, New England forester Benton MacKaye led the movement to build the 2,175-mile (3,500 km) Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine and extends into Canada.

By the 1950s, poor farming techniques and the loss of jobs to mechanization in the mining industry had left much of Central and Southern Appalachia poverty-stricken. The lack of jobs also led to widespread difficulties with outmigration. Beginning in the 1930s, federal agencies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority began investing in the Appalachian region.^[24] Sociologists such as James Brown and Cratis Williams and authors such as Harry Caudill and Michael Harrington brought attention to region's plight in the 1960s, prompting Congress to create the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965. The commission's efforts helped to stem the tide of outmigration and diversify the region's economies.^[23] Although there have been drastic improvements in the region's economic conditions since the commission's founding, the ARC still listed 81 counties as "distressed" in 2008.^[25]

[edit] Culture

[edit] Ethnic groups

An estimated 90%^[26] of Appalachia's earliest European settlers originated from the Anglo-Scottish border country— namely the English counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and the Lowland Scottish counties of Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire, and Wigtownshire— and from a related group of Anglo-Scots that had resettled in the Ulster area of northeastern Ireland in the 17th century.^[27] In America, these people are often grouped under the single name "Scots-Irish" or "Scotch-Irish," although along with Ulster Scots the group included the aforementioned northern English and Lowland Scottish, as well as native Irish Protestants. While various 20th-century writers tried to associate Appalachia with Scottish highlanders, highlander Scots comprised a relatively insignificant percentage of the region's early European immigrants.^[27]

Germans were the other major pioneer group to migrate to Appalachia, settling mainly in the northern part of the region in Western Pennsylvania, although some were part of the initial wave of migrants to the southern mountains.^[10] In the 19th century, Welsh immigrants were brought into the region for their mining and metallurgical expertise, and by 1900 over 100,000 Welsh immigrants were living in Western Pennsylvania alone.^[28] Thousands of German-speaking Swiss migrated to Appalachia in the second half of the 19th century, and their descendants remain in places such as East Bernstadt, Kentucky and Gruetli-Laager, Tennessee.^[29] The coal mining and manufacturing boom in the late-19th and early-20th centuries brought large numbers of Italians and Eastern Europeans to Appalachia, although most of these families left the region when the Great Depression shattered the economy in the 1930s. African-Americans have been present in the region since the 18th century, and currently comprise 8% of the ARC-designated region, mostly concentrated in urban areas and former mining and manufacturing towns.^[30] Native Americans, the region's original inhabitants, comprise only a small percentage of the region's present population, their most notable concentration being the reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina. The Melungeons, a group of mixed African, European, and Native American ancestry, is scattered across northeastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia.^[31]

[edit] Religion

Religion has long been one of the most powerful forces in Appalachia. Religion in Appalachia is characterized by a sense of independence and a distrust of religious hierarchies, both rooted in the evangelical tendencies of the region's pioneers, many of whom had been influenced by the "New Light" movement in England. Many of the religions brought from Europe underwent modifications or factioning during the Second Great Awakening (especially the Holiness movement) in the early 19th century. A number of 18th and 19th-century religious traditions are still practiced in parts of Appalachia, including natural water (or "creek") baptism, rhythmically-chanted preaching, congregational shouting, and foot washing. While most church-goers in Appalachia attend fairly-well organized churches affiliated with regional or national bodies, small unaffiliated congregations are not uncommon in rural mountain areas.^[32][33]

Christian Protestantism is the most dominant religious force in Appalachia, although there is a significant Catholic presence in the northern half of the region and in urban areas. The region's early Lowland and Ulster Scot immigrants brought Presbyterianism to Appalachia, eventually organizing into bodies such as the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.^[34] English Baptists— most of whom had been influenced by the Separate Baptist and Regular Baptist movements— were also common on the Appalachian frontier, and today are represented in the region by groups such as the Free Will Baptists, the Southern Baptists, Missionary Baptists, and "old-time" groups such as the United Baptists and Primitive Baptists.^[33] Circuit riders such as Francis Asbury helped spread Methodism to Appalachia in the early 19th century, and today 9.2% of the region's population is Methodist, represented by such bodies as the United Methodist Church, the Free Methodist Church, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.^[35] Major Pentecostal movements within the region include the Church of God (based in Cleveland, Tennessee) and the Assembly of God.^[36] Scattered Mennonite colonies exist throughout the region.^[37]

[edit] Education

Though the region is often characterized as educationally deficient, the inhabitants of the region established log cabin colleges as early as the 1790s and instilled a strong sense of education, literature, music and the arts. Appalachians have also preserved much historical lore today. For example, Appalachian people have preserved significant historical medical knowledge.^[38] People in the community know are skilled herbalists, able to find, identify, harvest, and prepare various plants of medicinal value. Ancient arts, such as beelining, would be more likely to be familiar to an Appalachian person than one from other areas.

[edit] Urban Appalachians

In the 20th century, many from the area migrated to northern and midwestern cities such as Detroit, Cincinnati, and Chicago in search of jobs, and these cities still contain enclaves of Appalachian culture.

[edit] Communications

In the 1940s through the 60s, Wheeling, West Virginia became a cultural center of the region because it had a clear-channel AM radio station WWVA, which could be heard throughout the entirety of eastern USA at night. Although stations such as Pittsburgh's KDKA and KQV were 50 kilowatt clear channels that dated back to the early 1920s (as well as spanning all the east coast in signal strength), WWVA prided itself on rural and farm programming that appealed to a wider audience in the rural region.

[edit] Appalachian studies

Appalachia as an academic interest was the product of a critical scholarship that emerged across the disciplines in the 1960s and 1970s. With a renewed interest in issues of power, scholars could not dismiss the social inequity, class conflict, and environmental destruction encountered by America's so-called "hillbillies." Appalachia's emergence in academia is a result of the intersection between social conditions and critical academic interests, and has resulted in the development of many Appalachian studies programs in colleges and universities across the region, as well as in the Appalachian Studies Association.

[edit] Literature

Some of Appalachia's best known writers include: James Agee (A Death in the Family), Wendell Berry (Hannah Coulter, The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge, Selected Poems of Wendell Berry), James Still (River of Earth, From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems), Harriette Arnow (The Dollmaker, Hunter's Horn), Jesse Stuart (Taps for Private Tussie, The Thread That Runs So True), Denise Giardina (The Unquiet Earth, Storming Heaven), Lee Smith (Fair and Tender Ladies, On Agate Hill), Silas House (Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves), Wilma Dykeman (The Far Family, The Tall Woman), Maurice Manning (Bucolics, A Companion for Owls), Anne Shelby (Appalachian Studies, We Keep a Store), George Ella Lyon (Borrowed Children, Don't You Remember?), Pamela Duncan (Moon Women, The Big Beautiful), Chris Offutt (No Heroes, The Good Brother), Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain, Thirteen Moons), Lisa Alther (Kinflicks), Cormac McCarthy (The Orchard Keeper, Child of God), Sharyn McCrumb (The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter), Robert Morgan (Gap Creek), Jim Wayne Miller (The Brier Poems), Gurney Norman (Divine Right's Trip, Kinfolks), Breece D'J Pancake (The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake; nominated for Pulitzer Prize), Elizabeth Madox Roberts ("The Great Meadow, "The Time of Man"), Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel, You Can't Go Home Again), Rachel Carson (The Sea Around Us, Silent Spring; Presidential Medal of Freedom), and Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle).

[edit] Economy

The economy of Appalachia traditionally rested on agriculture, mining, timber, and in the cities, manufacturing. Since the late 20th century, tourism and second home developments have assumed an increasingly major role.

Coal mining, the industry most frequently associated with Appalachia in outsiders' minds, remains important; however, its economic role should not be overstated. Coal is mined only in some portions of the area traditionally thought of as Appalachia.^[39][40] Coal mining employment across the country has generally dropped over the last several decades with increased mechanization, notwithstanding a spike in employment accompanying the coal industry boomlet that started in about 2004.^[41] While with annual earnings of $55,000, Appalachian miners make more than most other local workers, Appalachian coal mining employed just under 50,000 in 2004.^[42][43] Restrictions on high-sulfur coal in the 1980s resulted in the closure of some mines. The high, continuing "legacy" costs associated with earlier mining activities — retiree health care, environmental reclamation, and coalworker's pneumoconiosis (black lung disease) compensation — impact Appalachian coal economics. The region still has very large coal reserves,^[44] however the least expensive, most accessible, thickest seams have largely been mined out, complicating the area's ability to compete with very low cost Colombian, Western U.S. and especially Powder River Basin strip mines. About two-thirds of Appalachia's coal is produced by underground mining, the rest by surface (strip) mining.^[45] Mountaintop removal, a form of surface mining, is a highly controversial mining practice in central Appalachia due to its negative impacts on the natural and human environment.

[edit] Poverty in Appalachia

Poverty in this region has been a problem for many years but was not brought to the attention of the rest of the United States until 1960, by US President John F. Kennedy, who proceeded to establish the the President's Appalachian Regional Commission in 1963. His successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, crystallized Kennedy's efforts in the form of the Appalachian Regional Commission, which passed into law in 1965.[5]

In Appalachia, severe poverty and desolation is paired with the necessity for careful cultural sensitivity. Many Appalachian people fear that the birth of a new modernized Appalachia will lead to a death of their traditional values and heritage. Because of the isolation of the region, Appalachian people have been unable to catch up to the modernization that lowlanders have achieved. In the 1960s, many people in Appalachia had a standard of living comparable to third world countries. The film series "West Virginia", produced during the term of Governor Gaston Caperton, makes the point that at least on some level images of poverty were contrived.^{[citation needed]} Lyndon B. Johnson declared a "War on Poverty" while standing on the front porch of an Inez, Kentucky home whose residents had been suffering from a long ignored problem.^[46] The Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1964^{[citation needed]} stated:

The Appalachian region of the United States, while abundant in natural resources and rich in potential, lags behind the rest of the nation... its people have not shared properly in the nation’s prosperity.

Since the creation of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in 1965, the region has seen dramatic progress. New roads, schools, health care facilities, water and sewer systems, and other improvements have brought a better life to many Appalachian residents.

In 1960, 219 counties in the 13-state Appalachian Region were considered economically distressed. Now that list has been cut in half, to 81 counties, but these are "hard-core" pockets of poverty, seemingly impervious to all efforts at improving their lot.^[47]

Nevertheless, after 40 years poverty remains undefeated in Appalachia. Martin County, Kentucky, the site of Johnson’s 1964 speech, is currently ranked as "distressed" by the ARC. (Distressed is the worst ranking.) The per capita income in Martin County is $10,650, and 37% of its residents live below the poverty line.

On 5 July 1999, President Bill Clinton made a public statement concerning the situation in Tyner, Kentucky. "I'm here to make a simple point," Clinton told the enthusiastic crowd. "This is the time to bring more jobs and investment to parts of the country that have not participated in this time of prosperity. Any work that can be done by anybody in America can be done in Appalachia." Like Johnson, Clinton also brought attention to the areas of poverty in Appalachia.^[47]

The region's poverty has been documented often since the early 1960s. John Cohen documents rural lifestyle and culture in The High Lonesome Sound, while photojournalist Earl Dotter has been visiting and documenting poverty, healthcare and mining in Appalachia for nearly forty years.^[48]

[edit] Appalachian Regional Commission

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was created by the U.S. Congress in 1965 to bring poor areas of the 13 U.S. states of the main (southern) range of the Appalachians into the mainstream of the American economy. The commission is a partnership of federal, state, and local governments, and was created to promote economic growth and improve the quality of life in the region. The region as defined by the ARC^[49] includes roughly 408 counties, including all of West Virginia; counties in 13 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia; and also eight cities in Virginia, where state law makes cities administratively separate from counties. The ARC is a planning, research, advocacy and funding organization; it does not have any governing powers.

The ARC's geographic range of coverage was defined broadly so as to cover as many economically underdeveloped areas as possible; it extends well beyond the area usually thought of as "Appalachia". For instance, parts of Alabama and Mississippi were included in the commission because of problems with unemployment and poverty similar to those in Appalachia proper, and the ARC region extends into Northeastern states, which are never considered part of Appalachia culturally. The ARC's wide scope also^{[50][broken citation]} grew out of the "pork barrel" phenomenon, as politicians from outside the traditional Appalachia area saw a new way to bring home federal money to their areas.

[edit] Transportation

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Appalachia's geography presents special challenges to transportation. In Europe, while mountain ranges presented challenges to transport, they could mostly be avoided. In North America, however, the Appalachian Mountains presented a barrier that could not be easily out-flanked. Initially, European settlers found gaps in the mountains; among them the Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Road.

[edit] Early Roads

Native American trails were the first in Appalachia. One of the earliest used by Europeans was Nemacolin's path, a trail between the Potomac and the Monongahela river, going from Cumberland, Maryland, to the mouth of Redstone Creek, where Brownsville, Pennsylvania is situated.

The French and Indian War created a need for roads through Appalachia. In 1755, General Edward Braddock of the Coldstream Guards was sent to rout the French from Fort Duquesne along the Nemacolin's path. From Fort Cumberland, Braddock's army cut a military trail through the wilderness. This would become known as Braddock's Road. Another was a British military trail built in 1758 by General John Forbes of England from Chambersburg to Pittsburgh during the French and Indian War, later known as the Pittsburgh Road and the Conestoga Road.

The first modern road to be built through Appalachia was the National Road starting at Cumberland, an early hub of Appalachia, generally following Braddock's Road heading west first to Wheeling, VA. Other roads soon followed such as the Northwestern Turnpike and James River and Kanawha Turnpike.

The creation in 1936 of the Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine, also helped open the area to hikers and outdoor enthusiasts from all over the world.

[edit] Water

By 1772, George Washington had identified the Potomac and James rivers as the most promising locations for canals to be built to join with the western rivers. Washington proposed a canal to connect the Potomac River and the Ohio River and founded the Potowmack Company. In 1824, the holdings of the Potowmac Company were ceded to the Chesapeake and Ohio Company. Construction began with a groundbreaking ceremony on July 4, 1828 by President John Quincy Adams. It followed the course of the Potomac River to Cumberland, MD. Had it been completed it would have continued west from Cumberland along the Potomac River and then followed the Savage River crossing the eastern continental divide near present day Deep Creek Lake, and eventually following the Youghiogheny River to navigable waters.

The James River and Kanawha Canal was a project first proposed by Washington when he was a young man surveying the mountains of western Virginia. In 1785, the James River Company was formed, with George Washington as honorary president, to build locks around the falls at Richmond. By then, Washington was quite busy since he was elected president in 1789. The goal was to reach the Kanawha River at its head of navigation about 30 miles east of what is today Charleston, West Virginia. The canal eventually extended 196.5 miles west of Richmond, Virginia, to Buchanan, Virginia. By 1851 westward progress had stopped due to increasing competition from the railroads.

Even today river systems provide transport through barge traffic on the Ohio River system. The Monongahela River is navigable its entire length, deep into the interior of West Virginia, with a series of lock/dams ensuring a 9' depth.

[edit] Rail

The next major transportation leap for Appalachia was the railroad. The Baltimore and Ohio was the first to cross. It was finished to Piedmont, Virginia on July 21, 1851, Fairmont, Virginia on June 22, 1852, and its terminus at Wheeling, Virginia on January 1, 1853.

In 1855 the Norfolk and Western Railway, under the direction of Frederick J. Kimball, began to push across Appalachia. Starting from Big Lick the lines extended to the Pocahontas coalfields in western Virginia and West Virginia and on north to Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Southern Railway linked Charleston, South Carolina and Memphis, Tennessee, crossing Appalachia in 1857 in the Asheville, North Carolina area, although rail expansion halted with the start of the Civil War.

By 1867 the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway had reached the eastern edge of the mountains and was also reaching for the Ohio valley via the New River and Kanawha Valleys of West Virginia. The West Virginia stretch of the C & O was the site of the legendary competition between John Henry and a steam-powered machine; the competition is said to have taken place in a tunnel south of Talcott, West Virginia near the Greenbrier River. In 1888, the C&O built the Cincinnati Division, from Huntington, West Virginia down the south bank of the Ohio River in Kentucky and across the river at Cincinnati, connecting with the "Big Four" and other Midwestern Railroads.

Henry G. Davis started the West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway in 1880 in the ensuing years it opened a huge swathe of timber and coal territory in northern West Virginia to use. It started in Piedmont, West Virginia and pushed west creating such towns as Elkins, Davis and Thomas. It pushed east to Cumberland, Maryland where it connected with traffic from the C&0 Canal and National Road. West from Elkins, West Virginia Davis created the Coal & Coke Railway to Charleston completing another crossing. These eventually formed the core of the Western Maryland Railway. The Western Maryland's Connellsville Extension was built west from Cumberland, Maryland, to Connellsville, Pennsylvania, beginning around 1906 and was completed in 1912.

Today the crossing of the Eastern Continental Divide by the West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railway is now abandoned and is used as a Rails to Trails area. The other crossings are either part of CSX or Norfolk Southern Railway and remain the only rail crossings of Appalachia. Cumberland, Maryland still serves as a major rail hub for Appalachia where two main lines head west.

[edit] Highways

In 1880 the Good Roads Movement was formed. They knew outside of cities, roads were dirt or gravel, mud in the winter and dust in the summer. In its early years, the main goal of the movement was education for road building in rural areas between cities, such as Appalachia, to help rural populations gain the social and economic benefits enjoyed by cities where citizens benefitted from railroads, trolleys and paved streets. This eventually led to the auto trail system of highways. The first crossing Appalachia was the Lincoln Highway which would later become US 30. This was closely followed by the Dixie Highway first planned in 1914, to connect the US Midwest with the Southern United States crossing Appalachia following what is now US 25. Other auto trails crossing Appalachia include Jefferson Davis Highway, Lakes-to-Sea Highway, Lee Highway, and National Old Trails Highway.

The next great leap in transportation was the creation of the U.S. Highway system in 1926, replacing the auto trails. The longest primary US highway contained in Appalachia is US 11 traversing the eastern side. US 21 was another primary US highway, but much of its route has been decommissioned and replaced with Interstate 77, these make/made up the North-South routes. East-West Routes include US 30, US 33, US 40, US 50, US 60, and US 70. Many spur routes such as US 220 and US 119 service various parts of Appalachia.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was the first long-distance rural controlled access highway in the United States and also the first one to cross Appalachia. It was known as the "tunnel highway" because of the seven mountain tunnels along its Appalachian route. In October 1, 1940 the first section of Turnpike opened, running from US 11 near Carlisle (southwest of Harrisburg) west to US 30 at Irwin (east of Pittsburgh). Crossing was completed with the Western Extension, from Irwin to US 22 east of Pittsburgh, opened August 7, 1951. The remainder opened to traffic on December 26, 1951, taking the highway west almost to the Ohio state line.

The Turnpike remained the only superhighway crossing Appalachia until the interstate system that was authorized by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Today 7 Interstates cross Appalachia east to west starting with Interstate 86, Interstate 80, Interstate 70, Interstate 64, Interstate 26, and Interstate 40. There are 3 interstates crossing North to South. These include Interstate 75, Interstate 77 and Interstate 81.

However, despite the fact that the region is crisscrossed by many U.S. and Interstate highways, those routes primarily serve cross-country traffic rather than the locals themselves. Towns closer to the major highways and nearer to the many larger cities fringing the region (Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Columbus, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., etc.) are disproportionately better-off than rural regions in the mountainous interior. Instead of being tied to the land, jobs in the towns tend to emphasize industry and services—important signs of a more diversified economy. Nonetheless, aside from the major urban centers along its perimeter, the entire Appalachian region still suffers from population decline and the loss of younger residents to the cities.

To reverse decline and spur economic growth, Appalachian governors have prioritized the creation of a modern highway system accessible to local residents as the key to economic development. As a result, in 1965, the Appalachian Regional Commission created the Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS) which was the first highway system designed specifically to service Appalachia. The ADHS was designed to generate economic development in previously isolated areas, supplement the interstate system, connect Appalachia to the interstate system, and provide access to areas within the Region as well as to markets in the rest of the nation. The ADHS is currently authorized at 3,090 miles, including 65 miles added in January 2004.

These routes are known as corridors. They are build to a higher standard than US Highways, but less than Interstate standard, although some such as Corridor E were built to be interstates.

[edit] Popular culture

This section is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (August 2008)

• The motion pictures Coal Miner's Daughter (based on the life of noted country singer Loretta Lynn), Where the Lilies Bloom and Songcatcher (see also "Songcatcher" below) attempt an accurate portrayal of life in Appalachia.
• Songcatcher (2000) - written and directed by Maggie Greenwald, starring Aiden Quinn and Emmy Rossum. The film takes place in rural Appalachia in 1907 and features the "lost" ballads of the Scots-Irish brought over in the 1800s and a musicolgists' quest to preserve them.
• Rock band Rage Against the Machine made reference to the poverty of Appalachia in the song "Ashes in the Fall" on the album The Battle of Los Angeles.
• The Waltons, a long-running family TV serial, based on Earl Hamner's youth, was set in the mountains of Virginia.
• The Appalachian town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia has been the setting of several best-selling novels, including The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox, Jr. and the Big Stone Gap series by Adriana Trigiani.
• Stranger with a Camera^[51] is a documentary film from Appalshop about the representation of Appalachian communities by outsiders in film and video.
• Country Boys is a documentary film by David Sutherland showing three years in the lives of two teenagers growing up in eastern Kentucky.
• Homer Hickam's book Rocket Boys and its movie adaptation October Sky are slightly fictionalized versions of his childhood and teenage years in Coalwood, a coal camp in Southern West Virginia.
• The 1972 film Deliverance takes place in southern Appalachia. The film is often held responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes of the region.
• The 1987 film Matewan fictionalizes a real-life clash between West Virginia coal miners, supported by union organizers, and coal companies in the 1920s. Scenes depicting the town were actually shot in Thurmond, West Virginia.
• The 1632 series, an alternate history book series created by Eric Flint, features the fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia (based upon the real-life town of Mannington, West Virginia) transported to Germany in the time of the Thirty Years' War.
• Large-format photographer Shelby Lee Adams, himself a son of Appalachian out-migrants, has portrayed the Appalachian family life sympathetically in several books.
• Composer Aaron Copland composed music for a ballet called Appalachian Spring.
• Composer Frederick Delius wrote a tone poem entitled Appalachia, and Alan Hovhaness wrote another named To the Appalachian Mountains (Symphony no. 60).
• Kopple, Barbara (Director). (1976). Harlan County, USA [documentary film]. Harlan County, Kentucky: Cabin Creek Productions.
• Author Catherine Marshall wrote Christy, loosely based on her mother's years as a teacher in the Appalachian region. This became the basis of a short-lived television series of the same name in 1994.
• In the popular arcade racing game Cruis'n USA, Appalachia appears as one of the courses.
• Since the 2004 season, Saturday Night Live has shown an occasional sketch called "Appalachian Emergency Room" about the hijinks at an anonymous rural hospital.[6]
• In the 2005 film adaptation of The Dukes Of Hazzard, the Dukes stop at a red light in Atlanta in which they are approached by a group of African Americans who call them hillbillies. Luke Duke (Johnny Knoxville) responds under his breath "Appalachian Americans".
• The book Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver explores the ecology of the region and how the removal of the predators, wolves and coyotes, has affected the environment.
• The book "Rough Lumber: Stories from Spurlock Creek," by Justine Felix Rutherford, describes growing up in rural West Virginia during the Great Depression.
• Heavy Metal band Baroness has a song entitled "O'Appalachia" on their first full length album Red Album

[edit] See also

The six physiographic provinces of Appalachia:

• Appalachian Plateau
• Allegheny Mountains
• Valley and Ridge
  • The Great Valley
• Blue Ridge Mountains
• Piedmont

Other Appalachia-related topics:

• Appalachian Ohio
• Appalachian Trail by state
• Appalachian State University
• Ozark culture
• Settlement schools
• Social and Economic Stratification in Appalachia
• Upland South
• Urban Appalachians
• Whiskey Rebellion

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Abramson, Rudy and Haskell, Jean, editors (2006). Encyclopedia of Appalachia, University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 1-57233-456-8
• Biggers, Jeff (2006). The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America (New ed.). Shoemaker and Hoard. ISBN 1593760310. 
• Caudill, Harry M. (1962). Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-13212-8. 
• Dotter, Earl. "Coalfield Generations: Health, Mining and the Environment" Southern Spaces, 16 July 2008.
• Eller, Ronald D. (2008). Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-2523-7. 
• Kephart, Horace (1922). Our Southern Highlanders (New and revised edition ed.). Macmillan. ISBN 0-87049-203-9. 
• Light, Melanie and Ken Light (2006). Coal Hollow. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520246546
• Olson, Ted (1998). Blue Ridge Folklife. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-023-0
• Sarnoff, Susan (2003). "Central Appalachia – Still the Other America". Journal of Poverty (The Haworth Press) Volume 7 (1 & 2): 123–139. doi:10.1300/J134v07n01_06. http://www.journalofpoverty.org/JOPABS/JPOABS21.HTM. 
• Walls, David (1977). "On the Naming of Appalachia" An Appalachian Symposium. Edited by J. W. Williamson. Boone, NC: Appalachian State University Press.
• Williams, John Alexander (2002). Appalachia: A History. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-5368-9

[edit] External links

• Appalachia at the Open Directory Project
• "Appalachia: Hollow Promises", a comprehensive 1999 series of articles on the region and the ARC published in the Columbus Dispatch
• Appalachian Center for Economy and the Environment
• Digital Library of Appalachia
• Morehead State University Center for Virtual Appalachia