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- This article is about the modern area called Appalachia. For the Mesozoic island, see Appalachia (Mesozoic).
Appalachia is a term used to include a region in the eastern United States that stretches from the state of New York to Alabama. Surrounding the Appalachian Mountains, it includes rural, urban, and industrialized regions. Although parts of the Appalachian Mountains extend through Maine into Canada, New England is usually excluded from the definition of the Appalachian region.
Over twenty million people live in Appalachia, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, covering largely mountainous, often isolated areas from the border of Mississippi and Alabama in the south to Pennsylvania and New York in the north. Between lay large areas of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and Ohio.
Culture
Prior to the 20th century the people of Appalachia were geographically isolated from the rest of the country. As a result, they preserved the culture of their ancestors (most of them English, Scottish, and Ulstermen) who settled the region in the 18th century, a culture of a strong oral tradition (including music and song), self-sufficiency, and strong religious faith. They were seen as hillbillies of limited intelligence. Coal deposits in the region were tapped in the latter half of the 19th century and drew a new wave of immigrants, from Ireland and Central Europe. With this industrialization came increased urbanization.Long characterized as economically underdeveloped, Appalachia has received more sympathetic treatment by historians and anthropologists in recent decades. The Foxfire project, an anthology of writings that first began to appear in 1972, appealed to the counterculture and gave the region new visibility in academia. The completion 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.
A long-running series of documentary films by Appalshop take a historical and critical view of the region, including especially such endemic and pervasive problems as those associated with coal mining (shaft mining and strip mining), poverty, and related social issues.
See also: Appalachian folk music, Appalachian English, Melungeon.
Appalachian Regional Commission
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was created by Congress in 1965 to bring the 13 Appalachian states 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 13-state region stretching along the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. The region includes 406 counties, incorporating all of West Virginia and counties in 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The ARC is a planning, research, advocacy and funding organization; it does not have any governing powers within the region.The ARC's geographic range of coverage was defined broadly to cover as many economically underdeveloped areas as possible; it extends beyond the area usually thought of as "Appalachia". For instance, parts of Alabama and Mississippi were included in the commission because of similar problems with unemployment and poverty. The ARC's wide scope also grew out of the "pork barrel" phenomenom as politicians from outside the traditional Appalachian area saw a new way to bring home federal money to their areas.
Popular portrayals
- The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry RFD were humorous looks at mountain life.
- The motion pictures Coal Miner's Daughter (based on the life of noted Country singer Loretta Lynn), Where the Lilies Bloom and Songcatcher give a more sensitive and accurate portrayal of life in Appalachia.
- The Waltons, a long-running family TV serial, based on Earl Hamner's youth, was set in the mountains of western Virginia.
- The Appalachian town of Big Stone Gap 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.
- 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 Southern West Virginia.
- Since 2000 the hit alternate history (now in the 'double-digits') books in the 1632 series portrays the culture as one filled with adaptable pragmatic individuals, 'self-proclaimed' hillbillies far from the stereotypical 'dumb' hillbilly modality as the author's protagonists are the many 'citizens' of the fictional town of Grantville, WV. The majority works (anthologies) in the collaborative fiction project make this 'fractured' protagonist all the more effective and do much to spit in the eye of derogatory stereotypes of the regions peoples.
- In King of the Hill, Boomhauer, a main character, speaks with a rapid Appalachian accent.
Name and Pronunciation
There is variation on how to pronounce the word "Appalachia," which is often a source of good-natured (generally) humor. People from the south tend to say /æpə'lætʃʲə/ (appa-LATCH-a), while others, especially from the northeastern US, often say /æpə'leɪʃʲə/ (appa-LAY-sha).* The term "Appalachia" itself (as well as "Appalachian") comes from the Apalachee tribe, historically located in northern Florida, from which the de Soto expedition allegedly took the name and applied it to the mountains themselves.Further reading
See also
External links
- Virginia's Appalachia Region
- "Appalachia: Hollow Promises", a comprehensive 1999 series of articles on the region and the ARC published in the Columbus Dispatch
"Appalachia"