Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

Industrialization has had a huge impact on the American landscape; perhaps nowhere experienced such resounding change as Appalachia. Prior to industrialization, Appalachia subsisted mainly on family farming. From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, the amount of land being farmed in the region fell dramatically. Land speculators and businessmen entered the area and began buying parcels of land for various enterprises. Many people outside of Appalachia thought that the region and its people needed this to modernize, or 'catch up' to the rest of the country. Some relied on the reports of travelers and writers that described a "hillbilly" culture to justify this view. Scholars today argue that the industrialization in Appalachia was marked by an exploitation of the region's natural and human resources based on these stereotypes.

In his book Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, Appalachian historian Ron Eller describes the early stages of industrialization:

"Beginning in the 1870s, northern speculators and outside businessmen carved out huge domains in the rich timberlands and mineral regions of Appalachia. By 1910, outlanders controlled not only the best stands of hardwood timber and the thickest seams of coal but a large percentage of the surface land in the region as well" (1982: xxi).

Appalachia was known for its pristine forests. Timber was the first natural resource sought out by those hoping to become rich from industrialization. Yet industrialization required the modernization of transportation, such as railroads and highways, to enable the extraction of timber, coal, and other resources.

While coal was mined in places like West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, North Carolina's greatest natural resource was its forests. Western North Carolina experienced massive deforestation due to the timber industry beginning in the late 1800s. By the 1910s, substantial forestlands in the Black Mountains were purchased and logged by several northern timber companies. Even state treasures like Mt. Mitchell —the highest point in the eastern United States—were not safe from the lumberman's saw. Yet once citizens and politicians saw the ugliness that deforestation brought upon the landscape, conservation became a serious priority. In 1915, conservation efforts succeeded and Mount Mitchell State Park in Mitchell County became the first protected landscape within the North Carolina State Parks system.

Despite decades of clearcutting, locals were sometimes successful in opposing timber companies' logging operations. This was particularly evident in the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests in western North Carolina. In the 1970s and '80s, locals became concerned when massive clearcutting campaigns threatened these forests. Local people saw these forests as special places because their families had used the woods for centuries, subsisting on the timber, plants, and animals that lived there. They saw the forests as commons and this long legacy of commons use grounded local people in Appalachian forests, which meant they had a stake in the future of the forests.