8

Introduction

This part of the Global Report is about the Appalachian Mountains which dominate the eastern half of North America. The purpose is to encourage discussion on these mountains specifically, and on mountain issues generally.

Most mountain systems are isolated from major population centres and from significant industrial growth. The Appalachians are not. Surrounded by more than half the population and two-thirds of the industry of North America, the Appalachians have experienced in full force the impact of Homo sapiens on a mountain ecosystem. But despite major environmental stresses, the Appalachians have not been domesticated as has the rest of the eastern part of the continent. Their ecology has rebounded, and continues to diversify as the contemporary inhabitants of the Appalachian region seek new ways to integrate conservation and development needs.

Because the natural history, cultural heritage, and historical development of the Appalachian Mountains have been well documented, the region may provide an historical model for other mountain ranges currently undergoing environmental and cultural change. It is within this context of environmental and social change that we describe the Appalachian Mountains, their physical environment, natural resources, cultural setting, and the past and present trends in development. And the Appalachians, it should be noted, are one of the few examples worldwide of a post-development mountain system.

The Appalachians in outline

The Appalachian Mountains stretch as a range 2 600 km from the St Lawrence River of Canada southwestward to Georgia and Alabama in the USA, covering 18 degrees of latitude—nearly the entire east coast of North America. This physical barrier exercised a dramatic affect on nearly everything but the continental glaciers that ground over the northern section before retreating 12 000 years ago. This impact of the Appalachians plays a central role in the biological differentiation of the eastern United States; they are a pivotal influence on the weather experienced not only within the mountains but also throughout the east coast of the continent; they have a historic role in the
settlement of both Native American populations and the ecologically much more disruptive European populations; and, finally, they may serve to demonstrate how a mountain ecosystem can recover after ecological and developmental trauma.

Biogeography

Biologically, the Appalachian Mountains are the primary determinant of the ecology of eastern North America. These mountains are central to shaping weather patterns, generating large areas of heavy precipitation on the west and rainshadows on the east. Low human population density and less accessible terrain allow the mountains to remain predominantly forested, serving as a significant refuge for a diversity of natural flora and fauna adjacent to an increasingly domesticated half of the continent. The ecological diversity preserved by the mosaic of habitats in the mountains creates a biological species variety not present elsewhere in temperate North America.

The relict ridge-top tundra of the northern Appalachians and ridge-top spruce-fir forest of the central and southern areas are today’s reminder of the glacial tundra and dark blanket of boreal forest that retreated slowly northward with the glacial ice. This boreal mix, today called the Appalachian Extension, still ties the Appalachians biologically not just to Canada but also to the northern ranges of Asia and Europe. Following the retreating spruce came the warmer, lighter green, and ecologically richer hardwood forests that are familiar today, with mesic (moist land) mixtures of great variety on the wetter western slopes and xeric (dry land) mixtures on the drier eastern slopes. The highly varied geology of the range—predominantly sedimentary to the south, becoming igneous and metamorphic to the north—combines with precipitation, temperature and slope to allow a rich variety of habitats. Ecologically the Appalachians are one of the most diverse areas in the global Temperate Zone. At the southern end the Great Smokies section alone possesses a greater species mix than any other American area north of the tropics.

Settlement

The influence on humans of the mountains arose from the way the barrier slowed down the Native American migration eastward during the Paleo, Archaic and Woodland phases just as it later slowed European movement in the opposite direction. Extensive Native American communities developed much earlier in the western Mississippi Valley than along the east coast. Once eastward penetration was achieved and migration began, these early Americans used the mountains intermittently and variably as the climate and their cultural development permitted. The dominant groups rarely inhabited the rougher sections unless forced to by another group—thus presaging Euro-American use and settlement of these mountains.

Initial European exploration of North America occurred in the early 1600s with the Dutch trading up the Hudson River for fur, the English settling farmland north in New England and south in Virginia, and the French circling the north end of the Appalachians via the St Lawrence River and the Great Lakes for fur trading. Dutch traders going up the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers very early bisected the Appalachians almost exactly where geographers would later divide the northern and central-southern sections. The boundaries drawn early on by the fur trade dictated European penetration of the mountains for a century or more until European disease and technology overwhelmed Native American populations beyond the Allegheny Front. The French traded down the western flank of the mountains into the midwest, forming alliances with the Iroquois Confederacy, alliances that would eventually plague the English settlers headed west, ending in the French and Indian War. Then European, mainly English and Scotch-Irish settlers, invaded the central-southern Appalachians and made the land their own. In the northern Appalachians less organized tribes sometimes survived but were pinched between the French in the north and the English in the south and had no opportunity for refuge in the cold peaks of the Whites, Greens, or Adirondacks. However, near Katahdin in Maine, the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Tribes managed to hold on to an existence in the spruce woods.

Resource extraction

Resource exploitation began in the northern Appalachians where there was more effective access from the coast on both sides of the mountain range, the French northward, the English southward, and where easy river access up the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers allowed better interior access. In the northern region central Maine and the heart of the Adirondacks remained relatively untouched until the late 1800s.

The resources of the central and southern Appalachians far exceeded, in economic value, the resources of the northern section; but these resources were low in value without the organizational, financial, and technical resources required to extract them. During the early 1800s coastal forest resources dwindled, while population was augmented by on-going immigration from Europe, and the technology of the Industrial Revolution developed. Then in the mid-1800s the remaining northern spruce forests, Katahdin and the Adirondacks, were entered with dam-building technology allowing river transport for the timber. New railroad technology brought development to the Pennsylvania coalfields. In 1852 the eastern seaboard became linked with Ohio. Finally, in 1874, a mainline railroad was built over the rugged Allegheny Front from Virginia to Ohio, opening up the heart of what became known as Appalachia. The age of resource extraction developed quickly and boomed for only forty years before beginning a steady decline that is either continuing or stable today depending on how it is measured. Where logging operations cut and moved on, often with massive fire in their wake, the land was almost without value. The lower slopes were usually settled and the higher slopes tended to eventually come under government reclamation as National Forest or state preserves. In a few cases extreme inaccessibility or a surveyor’s mistake left old- growth forest standing.

Environmental resilience to the extraction period has been uneven but sometimes remarkably good in this temperate climate, though few areas have recovered their climax communities, and the massive fires after the logging changed the biology of some areas dramatically. Logging continues but on a localized scale. The disruptive impact still goes on as coal mining also continues as a widespread industry, utilizing strip-mining technology which disrupts large areas and requires a smaller workforce than before. Newer environmental problems are becoming apparent and, while not as immediately dramatic as mass logging or mining, may be more pervasive. Atmospheric pollution, including acid rain and heavy metal deposition, reaches every part of the biosphere from twig end to root tip, from eagles to soil bacteria and permeates the chemical reactions of life. Widespread chemical application to forest and farm, including pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer, is deeply implicated in runoff into Appalachian rivers and groundwater, and results in contamin
ation of human water supplies in the mountains and downriver in the lowlands. In some local areas, acid mine drainage poses an additional problem.

Cultural development

The culture of the Appalachians developed with some common threads and, depending on the catharsis of change experienced, with some different results. In a dominantly agricultural society, people who settle mountains accept: second choice in land; frugality of lifestyle; and isolation from outside contact. As a result, from the north through the south in the Appalachians, agricultural cultures predominated with farm families cobbling together subsistence livelihoods through a combination of seasonal opportunities rather than any single livelihood. These might include cropping, herding, hunting and gathering, logging, trapping for fur, and distillation of whiskey from cropped grain. Fur and whiskey were the earliest value-added cash crops from the mountains, more easily transported to markets than lumber or coal. Indeed, the sale of Appalachian whiskey was so successful that it sparked the first non-Native American challenge to the authority of George Washington’s fledgling United States government, when Pennsylvania mountain farmers challenged the excise tax on their main cash crop in the Whiskey Rebellion. The federal government prevailed but affirmed in the mountain people a hostility to government that persists to this day through much of the Appalachian range.

Appalachian culture was initially not unlike the rural culture of the lowlands where it originated. After several generations, however, isolation fostered both independent development and insulation from the changes of the lowlands. A relationship developed between Appalachian people and the land and forest that was nurturing in both economic and emotional ways. Given the knowledge the people developed of how to utilize the land, with minimal cash income a farm family could carve out a livelihood. The timber and coal extraction era of the late 1800s and early 1900s broke this isolation for a while, but by then the culture for the most part was entrenched. Even today from New England through the southern Appalachians—outside the coalfields —farming, frugality, and multiple small-scale income sources are cultural traditions.

The coalfield experience during the extraction period was different, and the trauma that occurred to both the people and the land lasts to this day. The land and forest became not nurturing but threatening. Where logging camps came and left, coal camps came and stayed; where the settlement of forests and farmland was gradual, the settlement of coal camps was a sudden and massive influx of workers. Pennsylvania coalfield development occurred before the Civil War on what became Union territory. Coalfield development southward, in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, occurred after the Civil War in what had been Confederate territory.

In the southern fields the coal developers were mostly northerners with finance, technology and legal sophistication behind them. There land ownership was a mix of large patents dating from the Revolutionary War plus land held by southerners desperately impoverished by the Civil War, individuals often having little appreciation of the implications of the technology or of legal manoeuvring. Control of the land and resources shifted even further to large holdings which were controlled by corporations, and they increasingly exercised this control from outside the coalfields. Coal towns were populated primarily by immigrants from Europe and the eastern United States, largely from the still depressed south. This work-force spent long days working under dangerous conditions with lives oriented by, and family economics frequently controlled by, the mining companies. The coal miner’s life was hardly the independent yeoman’s existence of the nearby areas. Housing was normally set on steep hillsides or in narrow valleys near the mines where instability or flooding were common. In these areas the industrial operations of mining (mainly coking) polluted the soil, air and water.

A mine family’s interaction with the land and forest (contrasted with the farmer’s) was frequently negative. The focus of a miner’s life was within the rhythms of an industrial operation that responded to a national economy, not the farmer’s rhythms of sun and season that were buffered by their greater self-sufficiency from the boom and bust of the national economy. By economic measure the miner earned much more than the farmer, but the miner’s overhead expenses were far higher, his life’s options fewer, and his job security lower. The miner’s answer to this outside control was to form unions to confront the companies; and even today, in an overall Appalachian culture of independent, stubborn people, unions are found mostly only in the coalfields from Pennsylvania to Kentucky.

Economic development

Economic development after the extraction period has been uneven for most of the Appalachian range and to a great extent has been a function of the relationship between the mountains and the lowlands, where dense settlement, intense development and financial power are more characteristic. The relationship is one of interdependence, but the greater power is invested in lowland culture, both overt, as in political and financial power, and indirect as in better formal education and access to information. The mountain realm has become for the lowlands a useful extension, a place to gain raw materials, find cheap labour, seek recreation, and most recently to dump garbage. Today resource extraction, mainly coal, oil and gas, and timber, represents the economic base of part of the range. Manufacturing and tourism have become the main economic base of most of the rest. The current national shift from manufacturing to a service economy means a net loss of jobs in these mountain areas. Agriculture, once universal through the Appalachians, is currently unimportant in formal economic measures but remains a critical part of the informal economy and, possibly more important, of the economic and emotional buffer of the culture in the face of broader economic boom- bust cycles.

Improved roads and widespread broadcast reception, especially through satellite TV, have substantially lowered the feeling of isolation in the mountains and raised the question of to what extent economic development is compatible with cultural preservation. Mountain people, in common with most people, want better lives. Now, their attempts to define what "better" means are heavily influenced by the consumer-oriented society surrounding them and the temptation of higher wages in jobs away from their land.

Meanwhile, land values in many areas have increased, sometimes dramatically, in response to tourism and recreation. A few benefit in the short term, but absentee ownership and control have increased. Many people in mountain communities can no longer afford even land for housing. This slow subtraction of land from the cultural equation invites further dissolution of the traditional relationship. Cultural resilience becomes lowered in a way analogous to lowered environmental resilience in the face of atmospheric pollution.

In conclusion, despite all the changes now affecting the Appalachian Mountains, perhaps their dominant feature is their resilience. Environmentally, the Appalachians have been assaulted by agriculture, by timberin, and by mining. Despite major soil erosion in some regions, typically less than one hundred years after this assault the mountains recover with remarkable vigour. Culturally there is also remarkable resilience. In a continent that has absorbed wave after wave of migrant peoples and melded diverse cultures into an American culture, the Appalachian culture remains surprisingly distinct and intact, a cohesive culture surrounded by the enormous population, dynamism and economic pressures of the East Coast of the USA. How long the biology of these mountains or the culture of their peoples can continue to be so resilient is a major question given the new and perhaps more pervasive impacts of influences now entering these mountains. n

Questions raised in the global context

As a mountain range within a highly industrialized region, and as a range in which environmental and social changes have been extensively documented, the Appalachian Mountains experience offers lessons relevant to conservation and development initiatives within the range in addition to parallels to post-development forces at work in other ranges of our world. The following points are advanced not as conclusions but as the basis for a longer- term Appalachian analysis:

1) The Appalachians are a mountain range with a 200 plus year history of wholesale resource (renewable and non-renewable) extraction by outside interests with little regard for environmental and social impacts or for the future. Most of the profits from this resource extraction were removed from the mountain communities and little was replaced in the way of physical and social infra
structure. Are the Appalachians a useful case study for "development" based on resource extraction currently taking place in other regions of the world?

2) Social and environmental problems within the Appalachians have been and are being addressed almost solely by federal and state agencies. Nonprofit organizations such as churches, clubs, institutes and universities have had a relatively small impact compared with their role in the rest of the United States. How does this diminished private sector role parallel the experience of other mountain regions?

3) The Appalachian socio-economic experience typically took one of two forms: either a serf-like existence within a company town, where land, housing, commerce, work and opportunity were controlled by one economic force, the company; or an independent yeoman-like existence with agricultural families drawing on diverse skills and resources to create a livelihood. Is this bipolar experience typical for other developing mountain areas?

4) After initial isolation, the mountains, mountain people, and mountain resources have been developed mostly by forces from the surrounding lowland areas, becoming a well-used extension of the nearby industrial and population centres. What is the real cost mountain communities and environments must pay for the growth and maintenance of adjacent lowland society?

Physical and cultural profile of the Appalachian Mountains

Physiographic, political and cultural divisions

The Appalachian Mountains span 2 600 km as a great barrier chain that parallels the east coast of the North American continent. Geologically, the Appalachians can be traced around the North Atlantic to a geologic unity with the hills of Iceland, Scotland and Ireland. Culturally, this link across the oceans was also made later when the Scotch-Irish played a large role in the Appalachian settlement.

The Appalachian Mountains, as with all mountain belts, are divided into regions in order to clarify physical and cultural diversity, and for planning purposes. These include geographic and political versions, as well as cultural perceptions.

The most generalized, a geographer’s definition, is a physiographic system dividing the Appalachian Mountains into northern, central and southern regions (Figure 8.1). The northern Appalachians lie in northern New York State, New England and along the St Lawrence River in Canada. The central Appalachians lie from southern New York State to an imaginary line which trends due west at latitude N 38 degrees (south of Washington, DC). The highest mountain in the central Appalachians is the 1 482 metre Spruce Knob in West Virginia. The southern boundary of the southern Appalachians lies within Georgia and Alabama where the mountains meet the coastal plains of southeastern North America. The highest peak of the entire Appalachian Mountains, Mt. Mitchell (2 037 m), lies near the southern end. Mountains included are the southern Allegheny Mountains in the east and the southern Allegheny Plateau (locally, the Cumberland Plateau) in the west.

The central and southern Appalachian Mountains are further subdivided into several physiographic regions or "provinces". These provinces are, from west to east,

1) the Appalachian Plateau

2) the Ridge and Valley

3) the Blue Ridge, and

The Appalachian Plateau Province is an uplifted plateau dissected by deep river valleys lying to the west from New York to Georgia.

The Ridge and Valley Province lies east of the plateau, starting with the high backbone of the Allegheny Front. It extends from southern New York to northern Georgia and is characterized by a trellis drainage of northeast-southwest trending valleys and ridges whose orientations have been determined by the structure of the underlying folded and faulted sedimentary rocks.

The Blue Ridge Province is a range of mountains stretching from southern Pennsylvania to northern Georgia and standing out in clear relief between the Piedmont to the east and the Great Valley to the west.

The Piedmont ("foothill") Province is a region characterized by flat to rolling uplands, which lie between the coastal floodplains of the eastern United States and the rugged mountains of the Blue Ridge.

Appalachia, as a political designation (Appalachian Regional Commission; Raitz and Ulack, 1984), is the area starting in the north with two counties of the Allegheny Plateau in western New York, and stretching southward through the central and southern physiographic regions on into surrounding lowlands of Mississippi in the southwest and the Piedmont along the southeast flank (Figure 8.2). The Appalachian Mountains as a cultural, or local, definition of region is sometimes ill-defined or conflicting in its boundaries. Some generalizations are appropriate to understanding the Appalachian range and the people who live in the mountains.

In the northern Appalachians the major cultural definitions coincide with the mountain ranges because of the dividing rivers or lowlands. Moving southward the Catskill Mountains of southeast New York are geographically isolated by the Hudson, Susquahanna and Delaware Rivers and are locally distinct. Westward and southward of the Catskills the cultural boundaries are less easily defined and seem to be based on distance on the north-south axis (along the ridges) and geography on the east-west axis (across the ridges).

Also used are the terms north, central, and south Appalachians to refer to general areas of the entire range. There is, in this case, no relation to physiographic provinces.

Statistics about and references to "Appalachia" are sometimes difficult to compare because of the different definitions used for that region. Only valid comparisons have been attempted here.

Geology and geomorphology of the Appalachian mountain range

Geology

The physiographic provinces of the Appalachian mountain range have been determined primarily by the geologic history of the region, including both the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic tectonic history of the Appalachian mountain belt, and the Pleistocene and Holocene glacial and post-glacial history.

The present-day geological structure of the Appalachian Mountains is the result of three continental collision events that occurred during the Paleozoic era, between 570 and 245 million years ago: the Acadian, Taconian and Appalachian orogenies (mountain-building events). Most of the New England and Canadian region of the northern Appalachians is underlain by metamorphic and igneous rocks of primarily Precambrian to Middle Paleozoic age, including the granites of the Adirondack, Green and White Mountains, and the slates of the Green Mountains (Figure 8.3). This "Appalachian" metamorphic and igneous belt can be traced through the Blue Ridge Province to northern Georgia and eastern Alabama
(Figure 8.3). This belt extends eastward into the Piedmont. Motion along a fault between the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge mountains is responsible for the Blue Ridge Front which divides the two regions (Figure 8.3).

West of the Blue Ridge mountains lies the inner fold and thrust belt of the Ridge and Valley Province. The rocks of this region are sedimentary rocks of Paleozoic age. Differential resistance to erosion between the different types of layered sedimentary rocks within the fold and thrust belt is responsible for the "Ridge and Valley" character of this province. In some regions (e.g. the Grandfather Mountain region of North Carolina) metamorphic rocks of the Blue Ridge Province have been thrust over the sedimentary rocks of the Ridge and Valley Province, and erosion through the overlying metamorphic rocks has resulted in tectonic windows. Differential erosion of the metamorphic and sedimentary rocks in these regions has resulted in the formation of valleys known locally as "coves".

West of the inner fold and thrust belt of the Ridge and Valley Province, and south of the Adirondacks metamorphic complex, lie the Allegheny and Cumberland Plateaus. Together they form the Appalachian Plateau, which is underlain by gently folded and faulted Paleozoic platform sediments deposited on the eastern margin of the North American crust during the Paleozoic era. These Paleozoic sedimentary sequences include the coal-bearing strata of the Pennsylvanian period (approximately 320 to 285 million years ago) and the oil and gas-rich strata of the Eastern Overthrust Belt in the Allegheny Plateau.

Stretching of the North American continental crust, associated with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean during the Triassic period, resulted in the formation of fault-bounded grabens, or depressions, which were filled with sedimentary rocks. The St Lawrence, Hudson and Connecticut River valleys of the northern Appalachians have formed along these depressions.

Geomorphology

The most striking geomorphological division within the Appalachian mountain range is that between glaciated and non-glaciated regions. Between approximately 500 000 and 10 000 years ago much of the North American continent was covered with ice sheets up to one mile thick. At the southern margins of the various ice sheets that advanced during the Pleistocene, large terminal moraines were deposited. The Ohio River marks the approximate southern limit of ice in the west.

One result of the Pleistocene glaciation is that the geomorphology of the northern Appalachians is strikingly different from that of the central and southern Appalachians. The northern Appalachians are characterized by glacially carved mountains and valleys: mountains and mountain ranges are generally rounded and oriented in a north-south direction (the direction of advance and retreat of the glaciers), and the valleys generally display the classic U-shape of glacially carved regions. Cirques or cwms are also present. The lowlands of the northern Appalachians often have a hummocky nature due to underlying glacial
sediments deposited during the retreat of the glaciers. This hummocky landscape, along with the high clay content of the glacial sediments, is responsible for the numerous low-lying wetlands found in the northern Appalachians.

Another characteristic geomorphological feature of the northern Appalachians is the presence of numerous lakes which are now an important part of the tourist industry in the northern Appalachians.

South of the limit of glaciation the geomorphological character of the Appalachians has been defined by the action of water on a geologically highly varied landscape. The different erosion-resistant properties of the metamorphic rocks of the Blue Ridge Province and sedimentary rocks of the Ridge and Valley Province are responsible for the present northeast-southwest orientations of ridges and valleys throughout the rest of the Appalachians.

Climate

As a result of its northeast-southwest orientation and its topographic relief, the Appalachian
mountain range displays great climatic variation. Between northern Alabama (USA) and the St Lawrence River (Canada), the Appalachian Mountains span almost 18 degrees of latitude. Average annual temperatures range from 18 degrees Celsius (C) in the highlands of Alabama to 4 degrees C in the Katahdin and 2 degrees C in the Notre Dame Mountains (Figure 8.5). Average January temperatures range from 7 degrees C in northern Alabama and Georgia to only minus 23 degrees C in the far north. Of greater importance to agriculture is the variation in the growing season, or the average number of frost-free days between the last frost in the spring and the first frost in the fall. The growing season varies from 210 days in the highlands of northeast Alabama to less than 90 days in the mountains of the northern Appalachians (Figure 8.6).

The Appalachian Mountains are blessed with a fairly abundant and constant precipitation as either rainfall or snow, which is evenly spaced throughout the year. Average annual precipitation ranges from about 70 to 170 cm per year, showing a decrease to the west across the Allegheny Plateau and to the north up to the Adirondacks. Local variations can be dramatic, however, because of the rainshadow effect caused by the high ridges of the Ridge and Valley. Pickens, West Virginia, receives over 260 cm annually while Upper Tract, West Virginia, 80 km east, receives about 84 cm. Spruce Knob, highest of the Ridge and Valley peaks, lies between the two places.

The Adirondacks and the ranges through New England to the Notre Dame Mountains of Canada endure a combination of precipitation from the Great Lakes (the "lake effect"), the tendency of North American continental weather patterns to funnel through the northeast, and proximity to the Atlantic Ocean on the south. Local humour revolves around how fast the weather changes, the prevalence of fog, and the accumulation of snow.

Winters in the northern Appalachians are significantly more severe than those of the central and southern Appalachians. While virtually none of the precipitation in the valleys of the far southern Appalachians occurs as snow, in the mountains of the northern Appalachians annual snowfall averages of over 300 cm are common, and peaks of over 600 cm annually occur at Tug Hill on the west of the Adirondacks and in Quebec west of the Notre Dames, both attributed to lake effect. While the severe winters of the northern Appalachians make for a shorter growing season, they are also responsible for the booming ski industry of the Green and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire. Snowfall along the Blue Ridge of North Carolina in the southern Appalachians is only 36 cm per year. However, despite low annual snowfalls, there is a developing ski industry in the Ridge and Valley supported by artificial snow-making equipment and cold winters.

Variability, mentioned above in relation to northeastern weather, is also a characteristic of weather southward along the mountains, though it does not appear as clearly in charts as it is experienced by mountain dwellers. Mountains are the playground of weather systems. The Appalachian Mountains bear the interplay of cold, dry Arctic air from the north and warm, moist ocean air from the south, intermixed with a prevailing weatherstream from the west. The prevailing westerly weatherstream brings the midwestern pollution stream through the ranges as well, with increasingly severe consequences to forest and human communities over the years.

While tropical storms (e.g. hurricanes) rarely reach into the Appalachian Mountains, when they do they may result in extremely heavy rains which, in turn, may cause floods, landslides and debris avalanches.

Biogeography

The geologic, geographic and climatic variables discussed above through 2 600 km of the Appalachian Mountains from Alabama (USA) to Quebec (Canada) generate a great mosaic of habitats. Factors determining specific habitats and their biotic communities are numerous and sometimes quite subtle. Their interplay is very complex and in many aspects still poorly understood. This constant, slow interplay continues and changes through time. All through the mountains as glaciers come and retreat, erosion wears away the land, and climate changes. The southern half of the Appalachians were likely to have been tundra, while the northern ranges were under ice (Strausbaugh and Core 1970). The tundra retreated slowly northward with the ice, followed by a dark green wave of spruce forest, and finally by the hardwood forest communities more familiar to us today. Relict colonies exist in West Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere consisting of Canadian plant associations assumed to have been left behind with the retreat of last glaciers (ibid.). Some examples are Cranberry Glades, a rare West Virginia bog-like habitat; Ice Mountain, a West Virginia sandstone cliff where ice persists into and sometimes through the summer, supporting several Canadian plants; and possibly the ridge-top spruce and heath communities that exist as far south as North Carolina.

Biogeographical changes up to 1600 (before Euro-American settlement) normally occurred very slowly, over millennia. Catastrophic fire may have played a significant role in coniferous forests, where dead needles are held on the tree for a time in many species, and crown fires spread in the tight stands. In hardwood forests fire was not considered to be a major factor but rather a very localized one (Shelford, 1963).

Biogeography in the mountain environment is thought not to have been significantly affected by Native Americans with the possible exception of the grass "balds" and heaths discussed below. Euro-American settlement and a new level of tool technology brought changes at a much swifter pace starting in 1700s. Changes really gained momentum in the 1800s. First impact was on the Canadian and New England ranges, where the mountains are closer to the coast, river access is more immediate, and a burgeoning industrial economy needed fuel and material. Further south the forests of the broad coastal plain and Piedmont, and the agricultural economy buffered the mountain forests a few years longer. In 1852 the Pennsylvania coalfields were reached by a railroad, which was pushed on west to Ohio. By the mid-1800s, the blast furnaces of western Virginia’s iron mines had depleted the available forests for charcoal, railroad technology had advanced enough to consider building on across the mountains via the New River to the Ohio River, and the more efficient band sawmill had been developed. In the 1870s simultaneous wholesale logging and coalfield development began in the central and southern mountains, a little later than in the Pennsylvania fields. The forests were said to be growing faster than they could be cut, but in little over a generation there were only remnants left: a surveyor’s mistake at Gaudeneer, West Virginia; some inaccessible coves that became Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina; and a few others (Clarkson 1964). The chestnut blight, discussed below, was introduced by Euro-American activity and wiped out the dominant tree of a widespread forest community during the early 1900s.

Forest communities develop through successive seres (sequential developments of groups of plants at the same place over a period of time). Within a particular climax region, all seres on different habitats converge into the same general climax community given enough time (Shelford, 1963). Thus maple-beech forests are found on soils ranging from limestone, granite and shale to sand and peat. Much of our Appalachian forest today is a sere of the original climax type, for instance after logging, pin cherry is common in the south and paper birch in the north.

Three major human factors affecting recent great change in Appalachian forests and specific habitats are site history, current management, and pollution (Shelford 1963, Bormann, 1982). Throughout the Appalachians the forest conditions that existed before 1600 are almost entirely gone with some biotic communities existing in remnant but incomplete form and some not at all (Shelford 1963).

Site history includes past logging, agriculture, fire and management practice including re
forestation. Management can have widespread and sometimes unpredictable results, delaying sere progression toward climax community at unwanted stages that may degrade economic usefulness, ecological diversity or both. Wild animals such as squirrel and deer have been shown to have very high impact on forest regeneration, consuming in some cases nearly all a seed crop on a regular basis and browsing seedlings of preferred species to extinction. Thus managing for deer can influence forest development in major ways that are often detrimental to climax species (ibid.). Allowing domestic animals to graze in forests, traditionally an Appalachian practice, has high impact in similar ways, and has long been discouraged by the Soil Conservation Service. Except for some early selective cutting of white pine in New England for ships’ masts, logging practice historically through most of the Appalachians has been to clearcut anything of economic value. Fires of heroic proportions often followed, burning out seed stock, mother trees, saplings and even soil. Reforestation efforts in the 1930s frequently used Scots pine (P. sylvestris) in both the north and the south of the Appalachians, a tree now considered inferior to native species for both lumber and wildlife (Little, 1980).

Current management practice mirrors the discussion under site history except that selective cutting and modified clearcutting are also now widely practised, whereas the scale of logging is small and localized.

Pollution, in a regional form such as acid rain (Figure 8.7), is increasing and can affect whole forest sections. It is being investigated for its effects on the root and foliage zones particularly of the northern coniferous forests, the resultant spruce budworm infestation of stressed trees, and death of great stretches of forest (Mello, 1987). Decline in the sugar maple forests, with resultant impact on the maple syrup industry, has been linked to acid rain.

Five separate plant-forest community types are generally recognized in the Appalachian Mountains. These communities are as follows:

1) the alpine tundra

2) the boreal forest

3) the transition forest

4) the mixed deciduous (mesophytic) forest

5) the Appalachian oak forest (Figure8.8) (Daubenmire, 1978; Sutton and Sutton 1988).

1) The alpine tundra: Alpine tundra in the Appalachian Mountains is restricted to portions of the northern Appalachians that lie above 1 500 metres. Common plants of the alpine community, which are generally outliers of the arctic tundra, include various blueberry-cranberry shrubs (Vaccinium), mountain heather (Phyllodoce caerulea), willows (Salix), and mountain alder (Alnus viridus). Attempts are being made to protect these high mountain regions.

2) The boreal forest: The boreal forest of the Appalachian Mountains is primarily a spruce-fir association that covers the Notre Dame Mountains in Canada and much of northern Maine, including the lowlands. The black bear and the raven are associated through most of the range. In the north the association consists of white spruce or red spruce and balsam fir (Picea glauca, Picea rubens, Abies balsamea), with moose and black bear as dominant animals.

Along the Extension white spruce fades out in favour of red, and near Spruce Knob, West Virginia, the last of the balsam fir gives way to Frazer fir (Abies fraseri). This southern association exists in intermittent form on peaks to Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina. Deer replace moose south of the Adirondacks. The once extensive red spruce forests of the Appalachian Extension, comprised of dense stands of large trees often one metre in diametre, have been removed. Most of that original spruce range is occupied by transition forest.

3) The transition forest: The transition forest, or the Northern Hardwoods and Spruce Forest, was originally the dominant forest type of the lower elevations in the Adirondack, Green, White and Katahdin Mountains (Figure 8.8). These forests are dominated by sugar maple (Acer rubrum), birch (Betula), American beech (Fagus grandifolia), balsam fir (Abies balsamea), balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera), and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis). Red spruce at one time was also common in the transition forest. All but perhaps 5 per cent of the original forests of New England have been logged.

4) The mixed deciduous forest: The mixed deciduous, or mixed mesophytic forest covers the Allegheny and Cumberland Plateau regions from western Pennsylvania, through West Virginia to Kentucky and Tennessee (Figure 8.8). These forests include mixed stands of beech (Fagus), sugar maple (Acer saccharum), basswood (Tilia americana), yellow poplar or tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), red oak (Quercus rubra), white oak (Quercus alba), hickory (Carya), magnolia (Magnolia), birch (Betula), and white ash (Fraxinus americana).

Of particular interest in the southern Appalachians are the virgin forests found in "coves", historically inaccessible valleys generally above 1 500 m. These "cove forests" were spared by the lumber industry due to their inaccessibility and were later protected in scattered regions of the central and southern Appalachians, including the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Within these forests several species of trees from the eastern US attain record size, and some trees are as old as 500 years. These indicate the nature of the old-growth forest that once covered the western Appalachians. These forests include yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) up to 10 m in circumference, eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) up to 6 m in circumference, yellow buckeye (Aesculus octandra) up to 5 m in circumference, yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis) over five m in circumference, and sugar maple (Acer saccharum) up to 4.5 metres in circumference. White ash, beech and northern red oak are also of unusual size and age in these forests.

5) The Appalachian oak (chestnut) forest: The Ridge and Valley and Blue Ridge Provinces were once covered by the oak-chestnut forest (Figure8.8), which included chestnut (Castanea dentata), red oak (Quercus rubra), chestnut oak (Quercus prinus), white oak (Quercus alba), and tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera). White oaks were dominant in the valleys, while chestnut dominated the hillsides up to 1 500 to 1 700 m, at which point the northern hardwood forest of beech, sugar maple and birch became dominant. During the early 20th century the imported chestnut blight killed most stands of chestnut in the Appalachian Mountains. The chestnut, as a once dominant species in the Appalachian oak-chestnut forest, has never recovered (Irland, 1982). As with most of the Appalachian Mountains the oak-chestnut forests were almost entirely cut over. The only virgin oak-chestnut forest left is found in the Shenandoah National Park of Virginia.

Cultural geography of the Appalachian Mountains

Humans have lived in the Appalachian Mountain region and used its natural resources for almost 12000 years. From the time of the first Native Americans through to our present era, the mountains have fostered cultures and lifestyles different from, but interrelated with those of the adjoining lowlands. Many writers have characterized mountain life as isolated, and a debate over whether the Appalachians should be considered a separate culture has been ongoing for over a hundred years (Billings et al., 1986). However, a true cultural geography of the Appalachian Mountains region must take into account the highland-lowland connection.

Also of importance in the cultural study of any mountain system is the concept of verticality, first elaborated for cultural systems by the Andean archaeologist John Murra (1972). Simply put, verticality holds a correspondence between marked changes in elevation, ecological zones and human resource use.

Ethnicity, religious belief, political organization, social customs—all are interwoven into a cultural fabric that offers a distinct history and future possibilities. It is far too easy, when considering challenging or harsh environmental zones like mountain systems, to reduce cultural practices to adaptive strategies or responses to environmental dictates. For this reason, the following human geography of the Appalachians is organized around cultural periods. n

The people of the Appalachians: the Native American presence

Until 15 years ago little attention had been given to the question of Native American settlement in the Appalachian Mountains. Conventional wisdom held that the high elevations were themselves too rugged to foster use and that the lower elevations were only sporadically used for hunting. Indeed textbooks in North American archaeology had little to say about the region of, and more often than not, maps of native cultural areas did not address this eastern region, except as "unnamed tribes of the interior" (Kroeber, 1939). However, these blank areas were more attributable to research bias than to non-use—literally, few archaeologists had studied the mountains due to heavy vegetation cover and limited access. Mandates for environmental impact studies on Federal lands forced archaeologists into US Forests in the highlands of the central and southern Appalachians, and researchers in the northern region also began to focus on their highlands. This research generated so much interest in the archaeological community that a regional conference, Upland Archeology in the East, is devoted to the study of prehistoric Native Americans in the Appalachians, and smaller conferences regularly see papers on the subject.

The prehistory of Eastern North America is generally divided into three major cultural periods based on lifeways: Paleoindian (9500 BC to 8000 BC); Archaic (8000 BC to 1500 BC); and Woodland (1500 BC through historic contact at ca. AD 1600). While dates for these periods vary according to latitude, and various names are given them by archaeologists, they represent three major shifts in subsistence and social complexity: a nomadic, hunting focus; a semi-nomadic, generalized hunting and foraging lifeway; and a settled, agricultural focus.

The Paleoindian period represents the first human incursions in the region. Undisputed archaeological data place the beginning of this period at 9500 BC, although earlier claims have been made for the eastern United States (Gardner, 1989). The period is most easily recognized by its diagnostic artifact, the Clovis spearpoint, a beautifully made long thin blade almost always manufactured from microcrystalline lithic material (jasper, chert, flint). Climatic studies indicate that although the Pleistocene glaciation was waning, the colder wet climate was still a reality for these early pioneers.

The Paleoindian tool kit reflects a dependence on hunting, and the settlement pattern indicates a fairly nomadic existence, probably in small groups. However, at the western base of the Virginia Blue Ridge is the Flint Run Complex, a series of Paleoindian sites on the Shenandoah River near Front Royal that give evidence of seasonal permanence surrounding a jasper quarry. Evidence of a structure from the lower levels of the site may represent the earliest "house" in eastern North America (ibid.).

The Archaic period includes a long stable adaptation to an environment that offered a host of plant and animal resources. The early period probably saw a continuity with the Paleoindian lifeway, as the toolkit still shows a dependency on hunting; however, this gave way to generalized foraging by the middle of the period (6500 BC) when moderating temperatures encouraged the replacement of the coniferous forest with a more modern deciduous one in the Appalachians. Along with this came a plethora of small mammals, fowl, mast, riverine plants, and finally fish runs by about 3500 BC, all of which are thought to have been utilized by Native Americans. By the middle of the period, the toolkit reflects foraging focused on specific resources and perhaps a shift to a technology that relied more on wood. New artifact types include grinding stones, axes, stone flake tools for woodworking, basketry, and net sinkers for fishing. Settlement pattern studies indicate that these people were less nomadic than their Paleoindian ancestors, moving on a seasonal basis that included time spent in the mountains.

That population during the Archaic period grew in the Appalachians is based on an increase in the number of sites dating to this period. Interestingly, the high elevations do evidence human use, beginning with the Early Archaic in the central and southern Appalachians, and spearpoints dating to about 8000 BC have been recovered from the Blue Ridge from Maryland through the south. The dominant species of the forest, the chestnut, provided tremendous quantities of food for humans and animals, alike.

In the north high elevations were being used by about 7500 BC. By the latter part of the period, movement was probably reduced even more, with large base camps in the lowlands and highlands encouraging shifts twice a year. In the winter and spring the floodplains of major river systems were used by extended family groups, and large fire hearths yield evidence of fish processing. In the summer, these groups appear to have broken apart into smaller groups, perhaps hunting and gathering plants but coming together at upland base camps for the fall nut harvest. This focused foraging way of life was pan-regional, with similar settlement patterns being seen throughout the Appalachians.

The Middle and Late Archaic periods signaled a population explosion, the beginning of social complexity and perhaps territoriality among native peoples, with trade in non-local materials such as soapstone, rhyolite and greenstone becoming prevalent in the central and southern Appalachians. Also at this time is the appearance of stone bowl technology to provide storage, an indicator of long-term settlement.

The Woodland Period in eastern North America is tremendously complex, including permanent settlement and probably warfare, the Adena-Hopewell Mound Builder Cultures of the Midwest, the Mesoamerican influences of the Mississippian Cultures of that region and the Southeast, and the development of chiefdoms on the eastern flanks of the Appalachians. Fuelling much of this complexity were technological changes, particularly plant domestication and agriculture and storage technologies. Ceramics became a common addition to the toolkit by the Early Woodland period. There is little doubt that populations increased exponentially in the Midwest, beginning with the Middle Woodland period so that by about AD 900, Cahokia, a city of over 60 000 people, sat on the banks of the Mississippi at St Louis. This had important implications for the Appalachians, which may have functioned as a barrier from eastern expansion until about AD 1200.

By the late Woodland, the Ridge and Valley Province of the southern Appalachians was included in the Mississippian tradition, based on maize agriculture, bottom-land farming and compact towns. These populations were the direct ancestors to the Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw of the early historic period. The high elevations were probably still used on a seasonal basis, but the Little Ice Age of this period (AD 1300-1700) may have reduced the success of agriculture, forcing a renewed dependence on hunting. The mountains are filled with small hunting camps dating to this period.

When Cahokia fell between AD 1300 and 1400, massive migrations eastward resulted in the replacement or assimilation of long-lived Proto-Siouan indigenous populations and cultural traditions in the central Appalachians. A new tradition became prevalent in the region, including villages surrounded by fortifications, new ceramic traditions that mirrored those of the Midwest, and new storage technologies (large underground pits). These indigenous peoples of the Blue Ridge had formed confederacies by the end of the prehistoric era, possibly for protection against both the Iroquois and Europeans.

The history of what is now the most famous native group of the Appalachians, the Cherokee, is difficult to trace into the prehistoric period. Their way of life was dramatically altered with European advancement toward the Appalachians in the early 18th century as were the lives of all native peoples throughout the Appalachians.

(Sources: Trigger, 1978; Ritchie, 1971; Kinsey et al., 1972; Gardner, 1986; Lewis and Kneberg, 1958; Chapman, 1985; Goodyear et al., 1979; Jennings, 1977; Friggin, 1980.)

The early historic era: The native population, fur trading and European exploration

After the arrival of European explorers in the western hemisphere during the late 15th century, the native populations had only about 200 years before their numbers declined to near extinction in some cases, primarily due to diseases such as smallpox. The Appalachians provided a refuge for populations that were able to survive as remnants, but even before actual Europeans made their way to the mountains in the 17th century, their diseases had preceded them via trade routes, and it is now believed that the massive die-off of the native population began years before European settlement.

At AD 1600, the Appalachians were home to the speakers of five major language families: Iroquoian, Susquehannocks, Shawnee (Central Algonguin), Siouan, Iroquois (Cherokee) in the south-central Region; and Muskogean in the southeast. The Iroquois Confederacy may have numbered 20 000. The Susquehannocks have been estimated at 15 000 for this early period, The Cherokee controlled the area from southwest Virginia through north Georgia, possibly numbering 22 000 in 1650.

One historical fact about this period stands out above all else when considering the European impact on the native populations of the Appalachians: the fur trade. Furs and pelts, including beaver, fox, deer, bison, otter and mink, were in great demand by European markets, and almost as soon as Europeans established themselves in eastern North America they began trading with native peoples. The Appalachians were rich with wildlife, and trade routes among native peoples were quickly established into the interior. The Iroquois and Cherokee, in particular, coalesced their power because of the control they maintained over the interior fur trade.

By the first half of the 16th century, four European nations, the Swedish, Dutch, French and English, had placed settlements on the Atlantic seaboard with the French and English making headway into the interior by that time (Figure 8.9). The first European to explore what is now western Virginia, John Lederer, noted that in 1671 there were few natives in the Piedmont, and virtually none in the Shenandoah Valley. Early historic records indicate conflict between the Algonquins, Iroquois and Shawnee in Pennsylvania and West Virginia during this early period. By the late 17th century only remnant groups lived in Pennsylvania. Refugees from the Iroquois allied with the Dutch and French as well as the English. The Iroquois were able to maintain their control over restricted tribal lands with small state reservations today in upstate New York. Indeed these people including the Mohawk are highly visible in the Native American Rights movement and have been recently involved in legal battles over land rights.

The Cherokee had gained considerable power in the southern Appalachians, but they were forced to cede territory in South Carolina to the English in the 1720s, a process which continued throughout much of the 18th century. By 1791 they had ceded all land in the Blue Ridge east to the foothills as well as much of Tennessee and were forced to emigrate west along the Trail of Tears by 1838. Those who still remain in the mountains of North Carolina today on the Qualla Reservation are the descendants of a thousand refugees who escaped the forced removal and hid in the highlands.

The dynamics of Native American politics and cultural alliances were very complex during the early historic period, but one outcome was common—most Native Americans died from disease and to a certain extent warfare and the remainder were highly restricted by the new American government or completely removed to yet unsettled parts of the west. With the approaching quincentenary of the Columbian exploration of the western hemisphere, the American populace as a whole will be faced with difficult questions concerning the modern Native American presence. The Appalachian Mountains afforded some groups refuge until the mid-19th century, but little is left of their native lifeways today.

European settlement in the Appalachians

After the initial years of colonizing the eastern seaboard and trading in the interior, the English began settling the Piedmont and Ridge and Valley from New York south through Georgia by the late 17th century. The French placed sporadic settlements in the interior to facilitate trading, and the north Appalachians were initially influenced by their culture. German immigrants fleeing Europe for religious and political freedom began settling the Great Valley from Pennsylvania south through North Carolina during the first quarter of the 18th century. But the mountains themselves were not truly opened up for settlement by Euro-Americans until after the Revolutionary War (Figure 8.9). The reasons that the mountainous region was not opened up for settlement until that time may be traced to the Proclamation of 1763, a British proclamation coming in the aftermath of the French and Indian War, which forbade all European settlement beyond the Appalachian Front (Raitz and Ulak, 1984) (Figure 8.11). The westward land was set aside as Indian territory as compensation for the Native assistance during the war. However, some settlers defied the line, especially in the South, and this may have been the cause of many Native groups siding with the British during the Revolutionary War. Whatever the reason, the mountains were not secured for Euro-American settlement until the beginning of the 19th century.

Euro-Americans in the Appalachians

Appalachia has been referred to as a mosaic of cultures, comprised of peoples of various ethnic and religious backgrounds. Geographers point to three cultural hearths out of which the Euro-Americans who settled the Appalachians came: New England, Middle Atlantic, and Chesapeake Tidewater (ibid.). These were quickly joined by Germans and Scots-Irish in the early 1720s and were later joined by Welsh, French, Huguenots, Irish and Swiss in the central and southern Appalachians. The Hudson Valley was a hearth for English and Dutch in New England, and the Middle Atlantic was nurtured by English and German religious refugees. By 1727 over 20 000 Pennsylvania Dutch, the German groups that originated in the Palatinate, were living in the lower Susquehanna Valley. Some began to move west along with thousands of Scots-Irish Presbyterians. Each group brought with it cultural traditions expressed in architecture, farm layout and agrarian practices. While the Germans seemed to prefer the valley floors of the mountainous regions, the Scots-Irish settled on mountainsides with small farmsteads (ibid.). Their migration into the central and southern mountains resulted in perhaps the most enduring association of a cultural group with a geographic region in American history. The
mid-18th century marks the beginning of what has been called "Appalachian Folk Culture", and the isolated Scots-Irish farmsteads in the Appalachian highlands are cultural icons today. These are the people who in large part became the miners and loggers of Appalachia in the late 19th century.

The 50 years between 1725 and 1775 saw German and Scots-Irish expansion south through the Great Valley into the Carolina frontier, a trend which resumed after the American Revolution. However, with the Potato Famines of the 1840s, large numbers of Irish began coming to the north-central Appalachians for mining jobs. Western Pennsylvania in particular became a core of Irish immigration. With the growth of the anthracite coal and steel industries in this region during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eastern European immigrants from the Ukraine and Hungary began to arrive in large numbers, some settling in West Virginia. Unlike their western European predecessors, these immigrants came to company towns, not farms. They eventually settled surrounding towns in the anthracite region, and many later moved to major industrial cities such as Pittsburgh.

The underdevelopment of the central Appalachians

Almost thirty years of research and massive financial support from public and private agencies have been directed toward the study of social problems, poverty in particular, in the central and southern Appalachians. "Appalachia", the cultural area defined as being centred in the coalfields and isolated hamlets of this region, sprang into the American consciousness in the early 1960s when the social welfare programmes of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations exposed the impoverished economic and health conditions of the "Mountain People". Indeed, in the minds of many people, the term "Appalachia" is synonymous with the Appalachian Mountains, so that the cultural term is confused with the geographic region and poverty is assumed throughout (Raitz and Ulak, 1984; Precourt, 1983).

However, Appalachia as a cultural area has a specific history dating to the mid-19th century, and its social problems connected with poverty have followed it since that time. Today it is agreed by many who live there, including social scientists who study the region and public officials who govern on both the local and federal level, that chronic economic and human despair have persisted here to the present day. "Today Appalachia is in a state of economic crisis that is as deep as the one which called the War on Poverty into being more than twenty years ago" (Gaventa, 1987). The number of central and southern Appalachia residents living in poverty increased by 2.5 million between 1979 and 1983, "bringing the poverty rate in the region to almost 20 per cent" (ibid.).

Given the amount of attention focused on the region and the establishment of a federal agency, the Appalachian Regional Commission, to oversee development and renewal, why has poverty continued to shape this region? In part, the answer lies in the way in which the central Appalachians have been characterized by those who control the funding for development and renewal projects. The models that have been used to explain why poverty persists have failed to consider the sheer complexity of variables that contribute to the history and will shape the future of the region.

History of Appalachia as a cultural area

The history of the Appalachia as a "cultural region with inherent social and economic problems" (White, 1978) began after the Civil War. At the end of Reconstruction, signalled by the Compromise of 1876, the South and other rural areas were devastated by the post-war recession. The compromise, which encouraged business expansion at the expense of federal intervention on the local level, generated great interest in the mineral wealth of the mountains. With non-interference being the order of the day, there was little if any regulation concerning how land and mineral rights were obtained and the descendants of Scots-Irish
immigrants compensated.

As early as the 1890s, popular articles appeared in the print media about the "southern Mountaineers", one in Atlantic Monthly going so far as to characterize them as "Our Contemporary Ancestors" (Frost, March 1899). Their legendary feuds were followed in newspapers with little mention that these disagreements often arose over questions of land rights. Their settlements, based on extended kinship and separated by the
geography of the mountains, lent themselves to isolation and local autonomy, a characteristic "typical of most preindustrial rural communities" (White, 1987) but interpreted by the new outsiders as "backward", and in some instances "less than human" (Precourt, 1983) for not participating in progress. Some authors attributed their lack of integration into society at large as a sign of genetic deficiency (Raitz and Ulak, 1984), speculating that their ancestry could be traced to convicts and indentured servants.

Their largely agrarian way of life was rapidly replaced by one in which their livelihood was dependent on single industries such as mining and timbering, as well as the accompanying marked fluctuations. The labour wars of the early 20th century in the region are testimony to attempts by miners to gain just compensation for their work, and many historical accounts of the coal towns and timber camps reveal the poverty and poor health conditions of the region. By the 1930s the first large-scale federal assistance programmes were implemented under the National Recovery Act to alleviate some of the social and economic problems, but there is little evidence demonstrating success (ibid.). From the period of the 1930s through the early 1960s the region became more removed from the rest of the country, and new businesses did not move into the region due to geographic isolation and lack of infrastructure. With the 1960s came a new round of large federal programmes, including the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965, which created the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to deal with the problems of the region.

Just how bad is it today?

Studies conducted in the mid-1980s indicate that the central Appalachians or more specifically the 85 counties whose economy is based in the coal industry in southern West Virginia, southwest Virginia, north central Tennessee, and eastern Kentucky have recovered little since the implementation of 1960s social welfare programmes. In nearly one-half of the counties per capita income was less than 60 per cent of the United States average (Appalachia, March 1985). During the worldwide recession between 1981 and 1983 central Appalachia lost more than 500 000 jobs, many in the mining and manufacturing sector. According to the ARC in the first four years of the decade the Appalachian region lost two and one-half manufacturing jobs for every one that had been created in the 1970s (Gaventa, 1987). Between 1982 and 1987, 250
textile mills closed in the southern Appalachians. Unemployment rose to 16 per cent, over one-third higher than the national average (Appalachia, March 1985). In the coalfields unemployment
officially peaked at 30 per cent, but this rate is not thought to represent the real rate, which should include those who have dropped out of the labour market or have taken part-time jobs for lack of full-time employment (White, 1987).

Recent conversations with Dr Cecil Bradfield, a sociologist who conducts programmes out of the Red Bird Mission in Clay County, Kentucky, reveal that the real unemployment rate there was estimated at 40 per cent in mid-1991. Of the population 60-70 per cent is living in sub-standard housing. Concomitant with these figures is the increasing problem of domestic violence believed by social workers to be the result of frustration on the part of unemployed males whose wives find employment in the service sector.

The figures for education are not encouraging. It is estimated that in many central Appalachian counties less than one-third the populations have a high school diploma (Appalachia, December 1984), and drop-out rates were near 30 per cent as of 1985 (Appalachian Data Bank Report No.1). Functional illiteracy rates affect 30 per cent of adults in this region, and almost half of the unemployed adults are considered functionally illiterate (ibid.).

In 1985 the House Select Committee on Hunger held hearings on the continued problem of hunger in the central Appalachians (White, 1987). It was determined that federal budget cuts of the early 1980s for revenue sharing programmes were particularly damaging to the small communities in this region, reducing assistance to health clinics and other social services.

Clearly, the War on Poverty in the central Appalachians was not won during the 1960s, and impoverished conditions continued in the region. Solutions to these problems have been proposed over the years by federal, regional and state agencies, non-profit service organizations and other groups, and many of these programmes have taken as their starting point the identification of the sources of poverty. Through the 1980s two models were used to pinpoint the sources—the Culture of Poverty model and the Colonialism model. Both assess blame, the former placing it with the poor of the Appalachians; the latter with external interests that control the resources of
the region. Both, however, are inadequate for
describing the difficulties facing the central Appalachians.

The Culture of Poverty

First developed in the mid-1960s by anthropologist Oscar Lewis to describe the generational poverty of Puerto Rico, the Culture of Poverty model was applied to the central Appalachians to describe what was believed to be a similar lifestyle and outlook. According to Lewis, chronic poverty engenders the development of a culture and a personality that perpetuates failure and non-
integration (1966). Upward mobility, a desired trait in the culture at large, is inhibited. An attitude of fatalism pervades the community outlook. Kinship ties are the core of the community and family members dependent on each other for economic, and emotional support find migration an impossibility, even if work becomes available in other areas. The poor accept their lot in life, taking solace in religious promises of a hereafter in which they will be rewarded for their early suffering. Thus, poverty becomes both the fault and the solace of the poor, who are passive but deviant carriers of their culture. According to analysts, the underdevelopment of the central Appalachians becomes a function of Appalachian character (H. Lewis et al., 1978).

This model has since been heavily criticized on several fronts. Most obvious is the point that Oscar Lewis's model was first developed in an urban setting and is not indiscriminately applicable to rural areas. The misuse of the model relies on an unstated but accepted universal standard of poverty and implies that those who do not attempt to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" are somehow deviant. Wright (1971) notes that in rural communities, members view interdependence and loyalty to family as positive traits that have historically been characteristic of rural life. H. Lewis and Knipe (1978) argue that the Culture of Poverty model exaggerated the negative aspects of Appalachian culture and held what is really a sub-culture to definitions more applicable to the culture at large.

It has also been pointed out that the poverty is itself a stigma, and a community’s self-image, once stereotyped by negative traits such as "poor" or "backward", is damaged in a fundamental way (Precourt, 1983). Due in part to the realization that the culture at large either holds them in contempt or feels pity for them, the "poor" lose what control they feel they have over their lives and come to mistrust and withdraw from their labellers. The literature of the Appalachians is filled with
anecdotes by residents of the central region who were told in the early 1960s that the lives they led were miserable. Precourt recounts the experience of John Stephenson, now Director of the Appalachian Centre at the University of Kentucky, who remembers, "I, like so many people raised near the Appalachians, was not so aware that we had such problems until someone informed me....In truth, I still think of the mountains as a corner of heaven first and a national disgrace second."

However, it is important to note that no critic of the Culture of Poverty model denies the impoverished conditions of the region. A call for the proper study and understanding of the Appalachian culture is not the refusal to recognize real
problems. In fact the greatest challenge to the Culture of Poverty model comes from those such as H. Lewis et al., (1978), who argue that the blame for the impoverished conditions of the central Appalachians is not with those who live there, but rather those of absentee status who own and control the resources of the region. This shifting of blame to external sources resulted in the Colonialism or Exploitation model.

Colonialism in Appalachia

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s the Colonialism model held sway in the regional conceptualization of poverty. According to Lewis (1978), "Appalachia is a good example of colonial domination by outside interests" (read: coal, timber and manufacturing interests, as well as the federal government), who exploit the natural resources and people of the mountains through the complete control of their livelihood and environment. This model points to the historical domination of the region by outside corporations, whose irresponsibility to workers and the natural environment have left the region with little, as well as the taking of land by the federal government, which displaced families who had lived in the mountains for generations.

According to the Colonialism model, the issue is one of power and decision-making which, once removed from the hands of those who live in the region, are turned on them for the sake of capital accumulation. In its most extreme form, the Colonialism model advocated "throwing the invaders out" by returning the control of the region to its residents through land and tax reform. In its more moderate form, the model pointed out that many economic undertakings in the Appalachians, including tourism, TVA development, coal mining, timbering, extractive enterprises and the "Colony of Appalachia", (which provided the fuel for the Industrial Revolution in the United States), always subjected the area to the removal of its wealth and left behind little for the people who lived there permanently.

Whether extreme or moderate, all researchers who propose the Colonialism model as applicable to the central Appalachians agree that poverty and underdevelopment are functions of "the exploitative conditions institutionalized in the region" (ibid.). In this way, fatalism and passivity are seen as adaptive traits that make sense in a cultural milieu in which individuals have no control over their lives. These characteristics, typed as deviant by the Culture of Poverty model, are viewed as predictable responses in a colonial situation.

The Colonialism model included four components which its adherents argue are characteristic of the central Appalachians:

The Colonialism model was proposed not only because its adherents sought to correct the ethnocentrism of the Culture of Poverty model but also because they were interested in offering scientific explanations for the true causes of poverty. The psychologism inherent in the Culture of Poverty model was seen as very unscientific (Lewis et al., 1978), made up of the tools of other colonials whose work supported the exploiters of Appalachia. This new explanatory tool of the 1970s was also developed by researchers who had either been raised in Appalachia, educated elsewhere and returned, or had worked there long enough to see the unfairness in the negative stereotyping that was part of the Culture of Poverty model. Indeed, there is a strong sense of advocacy on the part of these researchers to correct common misconceptions about "hillbillies". There is also a tremendous sense of anger directed toward the agencies of the federal government and corporate interests that have historically caused the impoverishment of the Appalachians.

Unlike the Culture of Poverty model, the Colonialism model has not been rejected by professional academics and locals. Various formulations of it are found in much of the contemporary analyses of the Appalachians. However, the agreement on a major cause of poverty has evidently not been effective in solving the problem, and there is dissatisfaction on the part of some researchers that the Colonialism model does not completely account for the experiences of those living in poverty. In the late 1980s a new model was proposed by David White (1987), a social psychiatrist and professional social worker whose research focused on the economic distress of the central Appalachians.

His Social Epidemiological model draws from both of the previous models and proposes that any comprehensive look at the region must admit that single causes for poverty misrepresent the complexity of the problems facing the people who live there. He calls for a holistic approach which includes a "diagnosis" of endemic "disease", the acceptance of multiple causes for chronic poverty, and the development of "prevention" strategies. While it is not yet clear how much success this model has met with or how widely accepted it is, it appears to be a more realistic assessment of poverty in the central Appalachians.

The Social Epidemiological model

According to White, the economic and social well-being of the Appalachian people (host of the disease) is "the predictable consequence of political and economic arrangements" (the agent of disease) interacting with the history and culture of the region. In this characterization alone, poverty is seen as part of a system in which both internal and external forces are joined. While the major problems are still identified as absentee land ownership, extractive industries and exploitative relationships, and an ineffective Federal policy for the region, these must be considered in the context of the host—the social, geographical, and cultural realities of the central Appalachians. The agent is the precipitating factor necessary to cause the disease but is not sufficient in itself. The expression of the disease results from the interaction of the host and agent.

White’s model includes the people of Appalachia as contributing to their disease, thus allowing them some control over their lives but does not engage in "blaming the victim", the drawback of the Culture of Poverty model. The Social Epidemiological model clearly accepts the Colonialism model’s assessment of the external cause of poverty but is more interested in determining the importance of multiple external causes not simply an ambiguously defined sector of colonialism. White argues that this approach avoids "the ‘all-or-nothing’ characteristic of a single causative model" (ibid.). Thus, the Culture of Poverty model is useful for explaining the role of the host in perpetuating the disease but views the way of life associated with poverty as an perennial effect not an original cause of the disease. Precourt (1983) makes a related point in noting that many of the characteristics of the mountaineers once viewed as virtuous, independence, self-sufficiency, resoluteness, are the same traits that led to their undoing by reinforcing isolation in the face of a situation that probably called for aggressive, united action, against the extractive economies of outside interests that overtook the region in the later 19th century.

At the same time the major contributing factor to the disease is the hundred-year history of extraction and its environmental and social consequences. While this has been described elsewhere in a larger paper, thus making a chronology redundant here, it is important to note that the contemporary expression of the disease (poverty) is traced by White to very specific causes: inadequate local tax revenues and services in coal-bearing regions due to a structure that does not properly assess absentee owners; lack of economic development and diversification; loss of agricultural lands; and lack of sufficient housing (1987). He points out that more than 77 per cent of the coal-rich acres of central Appalachia are owned by out-of-state corporations that take little responsibility for the areas they control and have been successful in manipulating local and Federal policies in their favour. In addition, the Federal government returns inadequate compensation in the form of in lieu payments to counties in which it holds lands and where it is exempt from taxation. In his analysis of contemporary poverty in the central and southern Appalachians, Gaventa notes: "The wealth produced in Appalachia has not come back to develop Appalachia" (1987), as more and more companies are disinvesting in the region, moving textile factories to Mexico where operating costs are less, or expanding international energy speculation while closing mines and steel plants in Appalachia.

White offers several levels of solution for the problems he diagnoses, ranging from curbing to curing to preventing the return of disease. Above all, he proposes that social policy makers "must be made conscious of the realities of domination and power in the region" (1987) and that programmes of land and mineral tax reform and political realignments be implemented. The hosts themselves are called on to participate in adult education programmes and social action to see to it that the needed reforms are begun. He also calls for cooperative self-determination on the part of Appalachian residents by way of community development. Thus, there is a move away from large-scale, regional efforts to those that are specifically tailored to the needs of individual communities. However, White is not proposing that "trickle-down" social programmes based on private enterprise are all that is needed to heal Appalachia. The federal presence is still very necessary to the reform, including the enforcement of reclamation laws and commitment to rebuilding social and health programmes that were undermined in the early 1980s.

In a sense, White is calling on the people of the Appalachians to reclaim as strengths the cultural traditions that have been subverted into negative stereotypes by the culture at large. The question of community autonomy is central to the debate as is education. He is also calling on local and state governments to fulfil their missions as protectors by enforcing existing laws and reforming those that have contributed in large part to the poverty of the region (e.g. tax laws). He is calling on external corporate interests to admit their responsibility to the region and people that have supplied their wealth. This is a major healing process but one that must be undertaken by both agent and host if it is to succeed. n

Natural resources, land use, and mountain development in the Appalachians

Overview

The history and development of Europe through the 1700s and 1800s is deeply intertwined with resource and land use of the North American coastal plain, the Piedmont, and soon after, the Appalachian Mountains. By 1700 the natural resources of Europe had long since been tapped, and some were running low given the resource extraction technology of the day. Resource control was power in a competitive Europe. The early coastal settlers found resources in forest, water power, agricultural land and minerals that were untouched. Initial exploitation of the coastal resource base buffered the wholesale exploitation of much of the Appalachian resource base for nearly two centuries. Early Appalachian settlers were concerned mainly with clearing agricultural land in river bottoms, and some of the best timber in the mountains was probably lost to bonfires (Clarkson, 1964). Lacking the technology of processing and transport, the scale of resource extraction was small. Nearby and accessible mountains such as the Catskills and Taconics along the Hudson River, the Notre Dames along the St Lawrence River, and the Greens and Whites along the Connecticut River were tackled first. The great spruce forests of interior Maine and the core of the Adirondacks awaited a more developed level of technology, manpower and management, as did the coalfields and forests of the more southern ranges.

The ruggedness of much of the Appalachians held resource exploitation at bay until the mid- and late 1800s, barely over a century ago. By then the Industrial Revolution had developed mechanical and steam power, a facility at managing large tasks and groups of workers, a capital finance system to fund large projects, and an appetite for raw materials. The national political climate was expansionist and developmental, and an immigrant workforce was flooding in from an overcrowded Europe.

These all became focused on the Appalachian forest and mineral, mainly coal, resource base. In Maine and much of the Adirondacks dam building technology played a critical role, and the logs were floated to mills and on to the sea for transport. In the more southern mountains, heavy railroads across the mountains were the key to reaching the forests and coalfields. In both cases the steam winch and the newly developed band sawmill were important to mass extraction. Forests "unbroken to the eye growing faster than they could be cut" (Clarkson, 1964) disappeared between 1880 and 1920. The trauma of coal extraction continues even today with constantly improving technology. The Appalachians were changed utterly.

Land and resource use and ownership today, discussed at length in a later section, extend from the wholesale extraction period. Early settlers, where there were any, were few and unsophisticated in matters of politics and law. Land ownership was not necessarily a matter of record, boundaries were sometimes ill defined for there had been no need, and the resources themselves were of low value unless the capital and technology were available for extraction and transport (Tams, 1963). Much of New England, the Catskills and the far northern end of the Appalachian Plateau had been settled and developed early on.

Interior Maine, the Adirondacks and much of the great forest and coal land through the rest of the Appalachians was obtained by corporate interests through money, manoeuvre and intimidation in the mid and late 1800s. Much of the forest land, after cutting, fire and abandonment, became the large state holding we see today in the Adirondacks and the federal forest holdings southward on the ridges of the Ridge and Valley Province. The spruce lands of Maine and the coalfields of the Allegheny Plateau remained valuable to corporate interests and so have remained as large corporate holdings. Smallholders predominate in most cases only where resource extraction occurred extensively but on a small scale over time and early in the settlement period, or where exceptionally good agricultural land was developed early, or where the resource was depleted and the land abandoned.

Forest resources

The forests of the Appalachian Mountains, both hardwood and softwood, are one of the great renewable resources of the eastern United States. The history of forest use in the Appalachian Mountains until recently has generally been one of complete disregard for the future.

Throughout most of eastern North America forests were indiscrimately cut-over and/or burned during the last two to four centuries. Land was cleared for agricultural use, or to use the timber for ship-building, the production of charcoal (a particularly consuming practice), and the building of railroads. Charcoal production alone caused the early stripping of much of southern New England and western Virginia forests to feed the forges, mills and smelters nearby (Shelford, 1963). Subsequent demand for coal and more timber was part of the development pressure on the less accessible areas in the mountains. White pine was so useful to the early settlers of New England that almost all of the native stands of the tree had been cut by 1900 (Sutton and Sutton, 1988). Likewise, red spruce, which was a preferred lumber for ship masts and general construction, was so intensively logged that by 1930 almost one million acres of red spruce had been destroyed in New England (Irland, 1982) and adjacent Canada and a like amount in the Appalachian Extension (Shelford, 1963; Strausbaugh and Core, 1970).

It is estimated that only 5 per cent of the original forests of New England have not been logged (Irland, 1982; Sutton and Sutton, 1988). Similar patterns of clear-cutting, with no regard for the regeneration of forests or the preservation of soils, were common throughout the central and southern Appalachian areas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries after the railroads were built (Clarkson, 1964; Raitz and Ulack, 1984; Clark, 1984).

Timber clearance during the 19th and 20th centuries in the highlands of the Appalachians apparently resulted in accelerated soil erosion, unchecked runoff, increased flooding and the siltation of streams and rivers. In 1929 an estimated 40 million acres of land was "wasting away" as a result of land abandonment and erosion in the southeastern United States (Clark, 1984). In the Tennessee River watershed clear-cutting during the early part of this century caused flooding and extensive siltation in the Tennessee River, making navigation impossible and prompting the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to undertake extensive reforestation projects during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. At the present time thousands of acres of once-forested hillsides in the mountains of Tennessee are presently covered with only "rock cobbles", and "scrub brush is all that will grow" (Wallach, et al., 1970).

The general trend of deforestation and rampant clear-cutting throughout the Appalachians was reversed during the 1930s and 1940s. Extensive deforestation prior to this period, coupled with a reduced demand for wood products from the Appalachian Mountains now that the forests of the northwestern United States were supplying much of the timber consumed in the United States, and active reforestation projects carried out by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the US Forest Service, were responsible in part for this change. In New England the abandonment of farms and pastureland since the turn of the 20th century resulted in an increase of 8 million acres of forest land, over one quarter of the present forest land in the region.

By the mid-1950s 84.5 per cent of Maine and 83.9 per cent of New Hampshire were covered with forest (Watson, 1967). At the present time more than 75 per cent of New England is forested with most of northern Maine and the Green and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire covered with spruce and pine. Maine is now "the most heavily forested state in the nation" (Daniels et al., 1990), and New Hampshire and Vermont rank with Maine as among the four most extensively forested states in the United States (Mitchell, 1981). Presently 75 per cent to 80 per cent of the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia are forested as well (Raitz and Ulack, 1984).

Forest product use varies within the Appalachian Mountains. Approximately two-thirds of the wood harvest of the central and southern Appalachian mountains including the Piedmont Province is currently processed by local sawmills, while about one third is processed as pulpwood to be made into paper and fibre products (Raitz and Ulack, 1984). Southern forest product industries, comprised of lumber and pulp, are concentrated not in the Appalachians proper but in the Piedmont regions of Virginia through Alabama, with some in northern Pennsylvania (Raitz and Ulack, 1984). Central and southern Appalachian counties showing comparatively minor lumber and pulp production are
generally located in regions with the best agricultural land (e.g. in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia), in rugged mountain regions (e.g. the Blue Ridge Mountains of the southern Appalachians), and in counties where much of the forested land is owned by energy and coal companies (e.g. in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky). Energy and coal companies, though owning vast tracts of forest land in the coal-mining districts of the central Appalachians, are generally not interested in utilizing their forest land for the extraction of lumber and/or pulp (see section below on Land and Resource Ownership and Management in the Appalachians).

In New England the pulp and paper industries dominate the forest resource-based industries. The value of the paper and pulp industries here are almost four times that of the lumber industries (Irland, 1984). In fact the largest white-paper mill in the United States, owned by International Paper Company, is situated on the Androscoggin River in Maine. Interestingly, New England produces only 5 per cent of the nation’s pulpwood but is responsible for 14 per cent of the nation’s paper production (Irland, 1982). Much of the pulpwood used for paper production in New England is imported from the southeastern United States and from Canada.

With the exception of a few localized regions within the Appalachian Mountains, such as the pulpwood production centres in northern Maine, the contribution of the forest and lumber industries to the economy of the Appalachian Mountains is not great. In New England wood-based industries account for only 2 per cent of total regional employment and personal income (Irland, 1982). In New York state, lumbering employs only 0.12 per cent of the state labour force (Thompson, 1966). Wood-based manufacturing employment, as a percentage of overall manufacturing employment, is 3 per cent to 4 per cent in Pennsylvania, 5.5 per cent in Massachusetts, 6.7 per cent in Vermont, and 30 per cent in Maine (Irland, 1982; Raitz and Ulack, 1984; Meeks, 1986). The percentage of people employed in wood-related manufacturing, however, can vary considerably from region to region.

The present degree of forest utilization or "underutilization" in the Appalachian Mountains is in part the result of past and present land-ownership patterns. In the northern part of the central Appalachians, 89 per cent of the forested land belongs to non-forest industry private landowners including farmers, 4 per cent is owned by forest industries, and 7 per cent is publicly owned (eg. by National and State Forests) (Raitz and Ulack, 1984). In West Virginia the average forest land-holding is 10 acres or less, and 63 per cent of the forested land is owned by private land owners, 29 per cent by corporations, and 8 per cent is public land (DeVore and Kahn, 1986). Private individuals own 62 per cent of the New England forests, most of whom own 50 acres or less. The lumber industry owns 32 per cent of the New England forests, mostly in Maine, and 6 per cent of the New England forests are publicly owned (Mitchell, 1981; Irland, 1982). The small and fragmented parcels of land found throughout much of the Appalachians prevent effective forest and watershed management and the efficient utilization of forest products other than home-cut firewood in many regions (Daniels et. al., 1990).

Government policy and planning along with forest management has a major influence on the way forest lands are used in rural America (Daniels et. al., 1990). This is particularly true of forest and woodland taxes. In West Virginia for example, the lack of interest by small land-holders in maintaining woodlands for timber use is certainly encouraged by the state tax structure in which forest industry land is taxed 50 per cent higher than "farm woodland". The small farmer, on the other hand, is encouraged in his operation.

The future of the forest industry in the Appalachians is and will continue to be dependent on a large number of internal and external forces, including the national and international markets for forest products, the present patterns of land ownership including degrees of absentee, foreign, and corporate control, government policies, and internal ecological factors. External control should not be underestimated. The present Japanese dependence on US and Appalachian wood is in part the result of their own past forest policies and land use patterns. Internal ecological factors which may affect or alter the future of the Appalachian forests and forest-product industries include the presence of insects and diseases; the Dutch elm disease and the chestnut blight have radically altered the eastern hardwood forests since the turn of the 20th century, and the spruce-budworm presently threatens much of the northeastern softwood forests (Irland, 1982). Air pollution stress may eventually result in the loss of sensitive forest species, including red spruce, aspen, white and yellow birch, red and white pine, black willow, white ash, white oak, tulip poplar, honey locust and sycamore (Bormann, 1982). In addition today’s Appalachian forests are a "complex transitional mixture", and it is therefore not clear what the forests of the Appalachian Mountains will look like in 50 years (Irland, 1982).

In the opinion of Raitz and Ulack (1984), these problems:

This negative attitude towards the future role of forests and forest-products in the Appalachian Mountains, however, is not shared by all (see Mitchell, 1981; Irland, 1982; and Clark, 1984). In fact forest resources, being renewable, may be the most important of all the natural resources in the Appalachian Mountains to be developed in the future.

The low measure of formal contribution to the Appalachian economy, however, belies the strong contribution the forest makes to the people who live in the mountains in emotional and informal economic ways. The early settlers throughout the Appalachians tended to be, as noted earlier, poor and of independent mind. A subsistence existence that was initially enforced by physical and economic barriers became a lifestyle practised to this day by mountain dwellers even as these barriers are lowering. Hunting and fishing represent a combination of recreation and food for the larder. Firewood for heating is readily available, obviating the need to buy fuel oil, and is also a product for urban market. Fur trapping and herb gathering, principally ginseng in the south, supply seasonal income, as does itinerant logging on the smallholdings noted above. None of these activities alone can be shown to have great formal economic impact, but in the aggregate they provide the following:

1) part-time income on a seasonal basis;

2) a lowering, sometimes dramatic, of the overhead costs of living; and thus

3) an informal but effective safety net of sorts during bust cycles of the formal economy;

4) recreation on a regular basis; and

5) a place where a disempowered populace can find temporary empowerment, thus an emotional safety net.

The value of the forest resource throughout the Appalachians thus goes beyond even the informal economy to a nurturing relationship developed over generations. This relationship seems to endure even natural disaster. A consequence for people leaving the mountains is the loss of both the informal economic support and the nurturing systems of the forest resource for a life outside that has better formal economic measure but often lower actual quality. This same difference is seen in the coalfields and is discussed in the appropriate section.

The wise use of Appalachian forests also requires taking into account such diverse aspects as their scenic beauty, which is partially responsible for the "booming" tourist and outdoor recreation industry in the Appalachians, the potential for wood-based (biomass) energy, and the importance of forests in controlling runoff, erosion, flooding, water and air quality, and in maintaining biodiversity (Bormann, 1976; Mitchell, 1981; Irland, 1982; Clark, 1984).

The ecological importance of forests is difficult to assess using standard methods of economic analysis but must be considered in any local or regional forest and watershed management policy. In fact the interrelationships between fossil fuel use and the health of forest ecosystems suggests that forests should be considered in regional and national energy policy as well (Bormann, 1976; 1982). Bormann (1982, p. 91) points out that "...man-made substitutes [for the forest] require a considerable capital and energy expenditure to maintain functions formerly provided on a continuing basis by natural ecosystems using free solar power".

Mineral resources

The northern appalachian area

Mineral resources in the Catskills, Adirondacks and northeastward are extremely limited and
have played only a minor role in the economic development and settlement of the region. Organic fuels are absent in New England, and large deposits of metallic minerals are uncommon. Mining in the northern Appalachians is restricted to quarries of granite, (the largest granite quarry in the world is in Barre, Vermont), slate, limestone, clay, and sand and gravel; and to mines of iron ore (e.g. Old Forge in the Adirondacks), garnet (for sandpaper and emery board), talc and soapstone, wollastonite and zinc.

In pre-industrial times local granite quarries were common through New England, and the technology and investment needed were very small. Quarrying was a seasonal activity (usually winter, because frost was used to pry the granite) that could be fitted into the year’s work cycle to patch together a living. Prior to the 1970s asbestos was also mined. Now even in Vermont the importance of mining is both small and decreasing. In 1970 employment in the mining industry accounted for only 0.7 per cent of the jobs in Vermont (Meeks, 1986). Mining then cannot be expected to play much of a role in the future development of the northern part of the range.

The central and southern Appalachian areas

Mining in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains ("Appalachia") has been extremely important in the economic, industrial and social development of Appalachia, and the industrial eastern and Midwestern United States. Continued extraction of zinc and copper, and particularly of coal, oil and gas, will have large impacts on the future of the central and southern Appalachians and surrounding regions.

The mineral resources of the central and southern Appalachian Mountains include metallic and non-metallic minerals and organic fuels. The non-metallic mineral resources include limestone and sandstone, which are quarried for construction and mining; gypsum, quartz and slate. Eastern Pennsylvania is one of the largest slate-producing regions in the country.

Metallic minerals extracted in Appalachia in the past have included gold, iron, copper and zinc. Only copper and zinc are currently mined in sizeable quantities. Some of the largest zinc orebodies in the United States are found in eastern Tennessee, which in 1970 produced 29 per cent of the nation’s zinc. Mining and the refinement of copper sulphides, though relatively unimportant from an economic point of view in the Appalachian Mountains, have had enormous environmental impacts in the Ducktown and Copper Hill regions of eastern Tennessee.

The copper sulphide refinement process in these regions has spewed large quantities of sulphur dioxide into the air resulting in the destruction of virtually all the vegetation in "wide areas" surrounding the Ducktown refining plant (Raitz and Ulack, 1984) and in the denudation of "...hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of the landscape" in the Copper Hill area (Bormann, 1982, p.110). This loss of vegetation has further resulted in extensive sheet and gully erosion and the heavy silting of surrounding streams (Raitz and Ulack, 1984). The Copper Hill and Ducktown "Deserts" are perhaps the most obvious and distressing cases of acidic air pollution in the United States.

Of the mineral resources extracted from the Appalachian Mountains it is the extraction of organic fuel deposits, particularly coal, which has had the greatest social, economic and environmental impacts on the region, and organic fuels will continue to play a major role in the development of Appalachia. Coal is the most abundant and valuable resource in the central and southern Appalachians. In the 1960s coal accounted for 80 per cent of the mineral production in Appalachia. In 1977 the central and southern Appalachians accounted for 71 per cent of the coal production in the United States (Raitz and Ulack, 1984).

Mining of coal in Appalachia is concentrated in the Plateau Province, both Allegheny and Cumberland (Figure 8.13). Anthracite is mined in eastern Pennsylvania while bituminous coal is mined in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama (Figure 8.1, Divisions 11, 12 and 13). The "Appalachian coal mining communities" referred to in much of the literature are concentrated in eastern Kentucky, western Virginia and southern West Virginia (Figure 8.1, Division 12).

Coal production in the central and southern Appalachians increased by 27 per cent between 1960 and 1978, with the greatest increase occurring in Kentucky (165 per cent increase). Unfortunately, increased mining production in Appalachia and in the United States as a whole is not an indication of economic well-being in the coal mining communities. As a result of improved mining technology, the increased expense of mining equipment, and the large capital expenditures required to increase efficiency, most small coal-mining operations have closed in recent years, and the coal industry has become dominated by large corporations (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983; Raitz and Ulack, 1984; Gaventa et al., 1990; Yarrow, 1990).

Mining operations are becoming increasingly localized in regions where modern mining techniques and strip-mining are most effective (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983; Branscome, 1990). The net result of the increased mechanization and consolidation of the coal mining industry has been increased production and fewer coal-mining related jobs. Between 1954 and 1968 bituminous coal production in the United States increased by 40 per cent but coal-related employment decreased by 42 per cent (Raitz and Ulack, 1984). Between 1948 and 1969 mining employment in West Virginia dropped from 138000 to 47 000 (Raitz and Ulack, 1984), a decrease of 66 per cent!

Within the last decade employment in the coal-mining industry of the United States has decreased drastically, primarily as a result of increased international competition (Gaventa et al., 1990; Yarrow, 1990). Since the "mini-boom" in the coal industry in the late 1970s, which followed the OPEC oil embargo of the early 1970s, employment in the coal-mine labour force and in coal-dependent communities has dropped 40 per cent nationwide (Gaventa et al., 1990; Yarrow, 1990). In the metallurgical coalfields of southern West Virginia and western Virginia employment shrank by 83 per cent between 1980 and 1990 (Yarrow, 1990). The effects this drop in employment has had on the coal mining communities of Appalachia has been "devastating" (Yarrow, 1990).

The social and environmental problems associated with the coal-mining industry are multifaceted and in cases overwhelming. The boom-bust cycles of the coal industry, coupled with the removal of coal profits from the coal-mining communities, has resulted in recurring unemployment, poverty, and depression throughout much of Appalachia, and in particular in the coal communities of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky (see for instance, Caudil, 1962; Lewis et al., 1978; Gaventa, 1980; Gaventa et al., 1990; and Yarrow, 1990). There have been few if any attempts by the coal companies to reinvest coal profits within the mining communities, and the result has been extreme poverty amidst some of the richest natural resources in the country (Appalachian Land and Resource Ownership Task Force, 1983; Gaventa et al., 1990). (This subject is discussed further in the section on Land Ownership and Resource Management in the Appalachians.)

One of the cultural contrasts in the central and southern Appalachians is between the communities of the coal areas and those of the adjacent agricultural areas. Both were settled at roughly the same time by culturally similar migrations. Hill farms developed though there was very little good agricultural land in what became the coalfields. The great timbering of the mountains occurred to both areas, but the advent of mass coal extraction changed settlement patterns, land ownership, and the culture’s very relationship with the land in the coal areas.

In a real sense, the massive influx of labour to the mines supplanted and obliterated the then dominant culture of the area, and the formerly nurturing relationship of the culture and the land changed. When a miner left for his shift (women were not allowed in the mines), he might not come home. Rains washed the valley bottoms, the only building ground. The nurturing support felt by the hill farmer was lacking for the miner.

Revd. Michael Curry, growing up in the heart of the West Virginia coalfields, remembers that the land was considered a threat to life and property. This relationship with land is discussed further in the section on Agricultural Resources, but it should be noted here that the substantially higher income of the miner was not enough to compensate for the informal economic support systems available to the hill farmer.

Since the early 1960s there has been a sharp increase in the amount of coal obtained by strip mining. Between 1960 and 1978 the amount of strip-mined coal in West Virginia increased by almost 130 per cent (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983). Strip mines are only second to forest land in land surface cover in Wise County, West Virginia (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983). In eastern Kentucky 53 per cent of all the coal mined in 1975 was taken from strip mining, and in seven counties surveyed in eastern Kentucky by the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force (1983) 70 per cent of the total coal production in 1978 came from strip mining. Large-scale strip mines throughout the coal-mining districts of western Virginia, southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky are planned for the future.

Environmental problems associated with strip mining have become acute in the central Appalachians. These problems include the removal of forest and top-soil from strip-mined areas; increased frequency and intensity of floods; siltation of streams and reservoirs due to increased run off and erosion; increased probability of landslides; pollution of streams and rivers due to acid
run-off and the leaching of toxic metals (e.g.
nickel, aluminium, and manganese); groundwater
pollution (due to acid drainage); lowered water tables (resulting from decreased percolation of rainfall); the destruction of floodplain farmland through the deposition of clays and acid water during flooding; air pollution from dust and debris; and the loss of natural habitat and beauty (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983; Raitz and Ulack, 1984; Harvey, 1986). The intensity of the Tug Fork flood of 1977, in which 4 700 homes and 200 miles of highway and railroads were destroyed at an estimated cost of US$ 200 million, is believed to have been in part the result of strip mining in the Tug Fork watershed (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983; Raitz and Ulack, 1984).

In addition, the construction of sludge reservoir dams above mining communities presents a major threat to property and life. One such dam burst in 1972, flooding Buffalo Creek in Logan County, West Virginia, and killing 120 people. A slag dam in Harlan County, Kentucky, burst in 1981 and the "black ooze" which flowed down the valley killed one woman and destroyed many homes (Raitz and Ulack, 1984). Ironically, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which spent 30 years working towards the prevention of soil loss, river siltation, and flooding in the Tennessee Valley watershed, has been partly responsible, through its coal-purchasing policies, for the strip mining of large tracts of land in Kentucky (Clark, 1984; Branscome, 1990).

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), signed into law by President Carter, after being vetoed twice by President Ford in 1974 and 1975, was meant to reduce the environmental effects of strip mining. However, unreclaimed "orphan land" is widespread across the coal-mining districts of Appalachia. Approximately 7 per cent of the land surface of Mingo County, West Virginia, has been strip-mined, of which only half has been reclaimed, and 24 000 acres of strip-mined land in western Virginia were stripped prior to the passage of strip-mining laws (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983). According to Harvey (1986, p. 112): "A large portion of the Appalachian land surface mined prior to the 1970s remains unreclaimed. Nutrient deficiencies, physical factors and high concentrations of toxic ions make the reclamation of such orphan lands exceedingly difficult." In addition, there is a loophole in the SMCRA which allows mountainsides to be returned to their "original contours" through the use of "longwalls", and which allows the removal of entire mountain tops without restoration to original contours.

Overall the history of mineral-resource extraction in the Appalachian Mountains has been one in which little thought has been given to the impact of the mines and mining methods on both the people who work for the mining companies and the local environment. Raitz and Ulack (1984) suggest "one must seriously question whether coal will have a positive long-term effect on employment, gross income, or investments in most counties where it is mined, or whether the region can create and maintain a stable economy if its future employment is based exclusively on coal". History does not suggest that coal mining will have a positive effect on the economic, social and
environmental well-being of the central and
southern Appalachian Mountains in the future.

Oil and gas together are the second most valuable mineral resource in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, with the deposits concentrated in the "Eastern Overthrust Belt," which runs from Alabama to New York (Figures 8.14 and 8.15). The first well drilled specifically for oil was in 1859 in Pennsylvania, and the Appalachian Plateau Province was a major oil-producing region until the turn of the 19th century. At the present time there is active exploration for oil and gas within the Eastern Overthrust Belt, and in recent years there has been extensive leasing of oil and gas rights by major oil companies in the region.

However, since oil and gas exploration and production requires large capital expenditures, and since the industry is controlled by corporations whose financial and production centres are based outside of the Appalachian Mountains, there is little reason to believe that the presence of oil and gas in the Appalachian Mountains will radically alter the economic and social development of the region. Rather, it appears that the extraction of oil and gas will continue the present land ownership and tax structures already present in Appalachia which to date have left many energy-resource rich counties examples of extreme poverty (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983).

Water resources

As in most mountain ranges water is one of the important renewable resources of the Appalachian Mountains. Water is used for domestic and
industrial consumption, recreation, irrigation, transportation, waste disposal and power generation. Water rights, management and use, as well as pollution, are major issues and problems throughout the mountains and adjacent lowland regions.

Historically, transportation was the primary river use throughout the Appalachians. The Hudson and St Lawrence Rivers were the earliest access routes into the new American vastness, and the Mohawk (and its Erie Canal), a Hudson tributary, became the first major route to the opening Midwest. Later, the Susquehanna and Potomac systems became major settlement routes, and one of the first comprehensive surveys west from Virginia was conducted by (later President) George Washington, attempting to define a canal and river route based on the New River to the Ohio. In Maine and the Adirondacks, logging centred around log drives floated by dam-released water, and in the central and southern parts of the range, spring high-water log floats were the only mass means of timber transport before the railroads.

In later times, primary river use in the Appalachian Mountains has been electrical power generation. Large and small-scale hydroelectric power plants are scattered throughout the northern Appalachians (including the Adirondack Mountains), and dams have been built for electrical generation and flood control on "just about every river system in Appalachia" (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983, p. 133). Most of the large dams and hydroelectric plants in the Appalachians were built during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and assorted state agencies and utility companies.

It is along the Tennessee River where the hydroelectric potential of the Appalachian Mountains has been developed to its greatest extent. Under the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), established in 1933, 33 large dams and five hydroelectric plants were built along the Tennessee River and its tributaries. However, despite the large generating capacity of the TVA hydroelectric plants, 80 per cent of TVA power is presently generated at thermal plants (nuclear and coal-fired). The TVA is the largest consumer of coal in the United States (Guiness and Bradshaw, 1985; Branscome, 1990).

In the two coal-producing states of West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal is used to generate 98 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively, of these states’ electric power (Raitz and Ulack, 1984), the use of Appalachian rivers as an energy source has clearly never been seriously entertained. Bluestone Dam, near Beckley, West Virginia, built in the 1930s, is only now being considered for conversion to hydroelectric generation. Whether the industrial northeastern United States chooses to use hydroelectric power imported from Canada for its future energy needs, or whether it obtains its energy from coal-fired electric power plants in West Virginia, is a decision which will have a major impact on the economies of West Virginia and Kentucky and on air quality throughout Appalachia (Sayre and Calzonetti, 1989).

"Pumped storage facilities" are the newest and most controversial issue in the development of hydroelectric generation in the Appalachian Mountains. The use of pumped storage facilities involves pumping water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir during low energy consumption periods (e.g. at night), and during high energy consumption periods the water is run back downhill through turbines to generate electricity. The upper reservoir is thus used as a giant storage "battery" for electricity. Pumped storage facilities are used primarily in conjunction with nuclear- powered electric plants, a controversial issue on its own throughou