Appalachia ( ) is a geo-cultural region located in the Appalachian Mountains in the east of North America. While its geographic boundaries stretch as far north as New Brunswick and Newfoundland, Canada, the Appalachian Regional Commission's (ARC) borders begin in the Southern tier of New York and continue south through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains into northern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, with West Virginia near the center, being the only state entirely within the boundaries of Appalachia. The cultural area that has been traditionally perceived as Appalachia, also known as "Old Appalachia", is generally defined as a subregion inside of the ARC's boundaries. In 2021, the region was home to an estimated 26.3 million people.
Since its recognition as a cultural 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 often engaged in yellow journalism focused on sensationalistic aspects of the region's culture, such as moonshining and clan feuding, portraying the region's inhabitants as uneducated and unrefined; although these stereotypes still exist to a lesser extent today, sociological studies have since begun to dispel them.Abramson, Rudy. Introduction to Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), pp. xix–xxv.
Appalachia is endowed with abundant natural resources, but its residents have struggled economically and have long been associated with poverty. In the early 20th century, large-scale logging and coal mining firms brought 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, specifically the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA was responsible for the construction of hydroelectric dams that provide a vast amount of electricity and that support programs for better farming practices, regional planning, and economic development.Faqir S. Bagi et al. "Federal funding's unique role in Appalachia." Rural America/Rural Development Perspectives 14.1 (1999): 14-21. online
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.
Definitions
Since Appalachia lacks definite physiographical or topographical boundaries, there has been some disagreement over what the region encompasses. The most commonly used modern definition of Appalachia is the one initially defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in 1965 and expanded over subsequent decades. The region defined by the commission includes 420 counties and eight independent cities in 13 states, including all 55 counties in West Virginia, 14 in New York, 52 in Pennsylvania, 32 in Ohio, 3 in Maryland, 54 in Kentucky, 25 counties and 8 cities in Virginia,In Virginia, all municipalities incorporated as "cities" are legally separate from counties. 29 in North Carolina, 52 in Tennessee, 6 in South Carolina, 37 in Georgia, 37 in Alabama, and 24 in Mississippi. When the commission was established, counties were added based on economic need, however, rather than any cultural parameters.
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 8 states.John Alexander Williams, Appalachia: A History (Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina Press, 2002) 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.
In the Encyclopedia of Appalachia (2006), Appalachian State University historian Howard Dorgan suggests the term "Old Appalachia" for the region's cultural boundaries, noting an academic tendency to separate the southwestern and northeastern extremes of the ARC's pragmatic definition. The term "Greater Appalachia" was introduced by American journalist Colin Woodard in his 2011 book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, defines "Greater Appalachia" in his 2012 book, The Lost Majority, as including both the Appalachian Mountains region and the Upland South, following Protestant Scotch-Irish migrations to the southern and Midwestern United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Upland South region includes the Ozark Plateau in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, an area which is not included in the ARC definition.
Toponymy 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 village of indigenous peoples near present-day Tallahassee, Florida, whose name they transcribed as Apalchen or Apalachen (). The name was altered by the Spanish to Apalache (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.After Florida, Dry Tortugas and Cape Canaveral: After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the Appalachian Mountain range. The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutiérrez's 1562 map; the first use for the mountain range is the 1565 map by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues.Walls, David (1977), "On the Naming of Appalachia", in An Appalachian Symposium, pp. 56–76. Le Moyne was also the first European to apply "Apalachen" specifically to a mountain range as opposed to a village, Native tribe, or a southeastern region of North America.Blaustein, Richard (2003), The Thistle and the Brier: Historical Links and Cultural Parallels Between Scotland and Appalachia, p. 21.
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".Stewart, George R. (1967). Names on the Land. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
In southern U.S. dialects, the mountains are called the , and the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced , both with a third syllable like the "la" in "latch".Walls, David (2006). "Appalachia". The Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press), pp. 1006–07.Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1993), p. 102. This pronunciation is favored in the "core" region in the central and southern parts of the Appalachian range. In northern U.S. dialects, the mountains are pronounced or . The cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced , also , all with a third syllable like "lay". The use of northern pronunciations is controversial to some in the southern region. Despite not being in Appalachia, Appalachian Trail organizations in New England popularized the occasional use of the "sh" sound for the "ch" in northern dialects in the early 20th century.
History
Early history Native American hunter-gatherers first arrived in what is now Appalachia over 16,000 years ago. The earliest discovered site is the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, Pennsylvania, which some scientists claim is pre-Clovis culture. Several other Archaic period (8000–1000 BC) archaeological sites have been identified in the region, such as the St. Albans site in West Virginia and the Icehouse Bottom site in Tennessee. The presence of Africans in the Appalachian Mountains dates back to the 16th century with the arrival of European colonists. Enslaved Africans were first brought to America during the 16th-century Spanish expeditions to the mountainous regions of the South. In 1526 enslaved Africans were brought to the Pee Dee River region of western North Carolina by Spanish explorer Lucas Vazquez de Ayllõn. Enslaved Africans also accompanied the expeditions of Fernando de Soto in 1540 and Juan Pardo in 1566, who both traveled through Appalachia.
The de Soto and Pardo expeditions explored the mountains of South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, and encountered complex agrarian societies consisting of Muskogean-speaking inhabitants. De Soto indicated that much of the region west of the mountains was part of the domain of Coosa, a country centered around a village complex in northern Georgia.Hudson, Charles. The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566–1568 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), p. 17. 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. The French based in modern-day Quebec also made inroads into the northern areas of the region in modern-day New York state and Pennsylvania. By the mid-18th century the French had outposts such as Fort Duquesne and Fort Le Boeuf controlling the access points of the Allegheny River and upper Ohio River valleys after exploration by Celeron de Bienville.
European migration into Appalachia began in the 18th century. As lands in eastern Pennsylvania, the Tidewater region 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 Ulster Scots—later known as "Scotch-Irish", a group mostly originating from southern Scotland and northern England, many of whom had settled in Ulster Ireland prior to migrating to AmericaDavid Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed (Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 605–782—who were seeking cheaper land and freedom from prejudice as the Scotch-Irish were looked down upon by other more powerful elements in society. 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, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and western Maryland. Thomas Walker's discovery of the 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.