The Diversity Of Appalachia And The Appalachia Region

In the northwest corner of New Mexico, in the high desert rangeland and foothills of the Rocky Mountains is the small town I grew up in, Aztec, New Mexico. Not too much stands out in this town; ranches and homesteads mostly failed and died in the mid 1900’s due to the rise of the oil and gas industry that surrounds it. Today that market is very fragile today fluctuating back-and-forth from good to poor staggering the employment rate as the market changes. This, I believe, lends to a terrible the lack of cultural diversity; most of the population in that area can be divided into three groups Caucasian, Hispanic, and Native American.

Being known as the region synonymous with destitution and home to some of the pauperized counties in the country, Appalachia has always been hidden from or sort of isolated from the rest of the world because of their geographic location. The people of Appalachia are often seen as unintelligent and less civilized than other Americans as they were less developed and not exposed to the commercial world. Because of

The collection consists of 15,000 pages of original historical material documenting the land, peoples, exploration, and transformation of the trans-Appalachian West from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. The collection is drawn from the holdings of the University of Chicago Library and the Filson Historical Society of Louisville, Kentucky.

The multidimensional expression “hillbilly” carries different cultural significances throughout the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. First, Vance utilizes the term “hillbilly” to refer to the working class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree (3). Second, Vance uses the term hillbilly to refer to a group of people from a specific geographic area, namely the area of the Appalachian Mountains. According to Vance, the area stretches from Alabama to Georgia in the South to Ohio to parts of New York in the north (4). Third, hillbilly indicates the way of life, behavior, or identity of the people of Greater Appalachia.

Although Arkansas is 53,179 square miles, it is only made up of six major natural regions. These regions include: The Ozark Mountains, the Ouachita Mountains, the Arkansas River Valley, the Coastal plain, the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, and Crowley’s Ridge. These regions play a huge role in the history and culture of Arkansas.

estled between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Allegheny Mountains, Rockingham County is located within the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Originally founded in 1778, Rockingham County has become a historical community committed to implementing an economic strategy of attracting new business and industry that are compatible with the way of life in the Shenandoah Valley and assisting in the retention and expansion of existing companies (Rockingham County). Most commonly known for its beauty, Rockingham County is comprised of six metropolitan cities, of which Harrisonburg holds the county seat (Rockingham County).

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the state of Arkansas? Chances are, that as an Arkansan the thoughts are quite different than those of someone not born or raised here. Hillbilly, redneck, barefoot, and trailer are a just few of the common first words invoked in the minds of “foreigners” by the word Arkansas. In the non-fiction work, Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol' Boys Defined a State, author Brooks Blevins provides readers with his idea of how Arkansas's image began, and then perpetuated over time. He provides several examples of the

In Uneven Ground, the author Ronald D. Eller narrates the economic, political, and social change of Appalachia after World War II. He writes “persistent unemployment and poverty set Appalachia off as a social and economic problem area long before social critic Michael Harrington drew attention to the region as part of the “other America” in 1962.”(pp.2) Some of the structural problems stated by Eller include problems of land abuse, political corruption, economic shortsightedness, and the loss of community and culture; personally view the economic myopia as being the most daunting.

Without the influences to the Appalachian people from the slaves, even though the circumstances were not a moral, Appalachian music and other aspects that make Appalachia unique would not be as

aWhilst both are portraits of the streets of London during 1751, they are depicted in extremely different ways. Firstly, Source 3(a) is of the people of London drinking beer along the streets in which the artist is showing drinking beer to be a healthy and sociable activity. In addition, the artist has shown this through various scenarios on the street with painters working painting signs in the street, people socialising with each other, people being educated through books and the decaying pawn broker due to lack of use. The artist has used this image to show that beer contributes to people’s wellbeing in a positive way. Contrastingly, Source 3(b) is showing the effects of gin on society.

Daugneaux, Christine B. Appalachia: A Separate Place, A Unique People. Parsons: McLain Printing Company, 1981. Print.

The Appalachians span over a distance of 1,600 miles, ranging across 14 states, from Newfoundland in the North, to Alabama in the South. The Appalachians are the oldest chain of mountains on the North American continent. With forest, comes forest fires, some natural and some prescribed by humans. In order to reduce the calamitous damage caused by natural wildfires, the technique of prescribed fires is used. This is done by diminishing the amounts of trees, shrubs, and brush in the intended area. By doing this, new native plant growth is encouraged and it helps maintain some plant and animal species that depend on the periodic fires. With this man made force comes numerous effects on vegetation, wildlife, and the human impact.

Where there are various regions there are bound to be a variety of people with alternate cultures, beliefs, and ways of life. The cultures found with the Appalachia are unique in their own ways and represent a body of individuals who found their way to such an area. Land that is included within the Southern Appalachia can be best described by Horace Kephart as he does so in his book The Southern Highlander and His Homeland to include: “the four western counties of Maryland; the Blue Ridge Valley, and Allegheny Ridge counties of Virginia; all of West Virginia; eastern Tennessee; eastern Kentucky; western North Carolina; the four northwestern counties of South Carolina; northern Georgia; and northeastern Alabama.” (22-24) With so much

The American South is largely characterized as a backwards and antiquated place, fighting to keep a past way of life alive. While accurate at some level, the nuance of white Southern identity is sometimes lost in this portrayal. The culture is dynamic, shifting as new ideas compete with old ones. In his short story “Bears Discover Fire”, Terry Bisson not only examines how the South is caught between the past and the future, but also illustrates the ways in which progress (no matter how natural) can be unsettling if it appears to leave us behind.

Alessandro Portelli’s 2011 oral history work They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History is a thirty year longitudinal study of a much beleaguered area of Appalachia in Kentucky. Portelli, professor of American literature and founder of the center for Appalachian Studies in Rome, began his oral history project based on music he had heard about and from the area as well as an interest in a country that he had once presumed had no class conflict. He found the music and he found the conflict. The result is a collection of one hundred fifty interviews covering seemingly all areas of private and public life in Harlan County interspersed with his own introspective commentary.