Appalachian Mountains

a mountain range in E North America, extending from S Quebec province to N Alabama. Highest peak, Mt. Mitchell, 6684 ft. (2037 m). Also called Appalachians.

* * *

Mountain system, eastern North America.

The Appalachians, among the oldest mountains on earth, extend almost 2,000 mi (3,200 km) from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador in the northeast southwestward to Alabama in the U.S. They include the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont, the Catskill Mountains in New York, the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania, the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and North Carolina, the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, and the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Their highest peak is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina. See also Appalachian Geosyncline; Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

* * *

▪ mountains, North America

Introduction

also called  Appalachians  

 great highland system of North America, the eastern counterpart of the Rocky Mountains. Extending for almost 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometres) from the Canadian (Canada) province of Newfoundland and Labrador to central Alabama in the United States, they form a natural barrier between the eastern Coastal Plain and the vast Interior Lowlands of North America. As a result, they have played a vital role in the settlement and development of the entire continent. They combine a heritage of natural beauty and a distinctive regional culture with contemporary problems of economic deprivation and environmental deterioration.

Physical features

Physiography

    The system may be divided into three large physiographic regions: northern, central, and southern Appalachia. These include such mountains as, in the northern area, the Shickshocks (French: Chic-Chocs) and the Notre Dame (Notre Dame Mountains) ranges in Quebec; (Quebec) the Long Range (Long Range Mountains) on the island of Newfoundland; (Newfoundland and Labrador) the great monadnock (isolated hill of bedrock) of Mount Katahdin (Katahdin, Mount) in Maine; (Maine) the White Mountains of New Hampshire; (New Hampshire) and Vermont's (Vermont) Green Mountains, which become the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and eastern New York. New York's Catskill Mountains are in central Appalachia, as are the beginnings of the Blue Ridge range in southern Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains, which rise in southwestern New York and cover parts of western Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and eastern Ohio before merging into the third, or southern, region. This area includes the Alleghenies of West Virginia and Virginia; the Blue Ridge range, extending across Virginia and western North Carolina, the northwestern tip of South Carolina, and the northeastern corner of Georgia; (Georgia) the Unaka Mountains in southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina (of which the Great Smoky Mountains are a part); and the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Kentucky, southwestern West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and northern Alabama.

 The highest elevations in the Appalachians are in the northern division, with Maine's Mount Katahdin (5,268 feet [1,606 metres]), New Hampshire's Mount Washington (Washington, Mount) (6,288 feet), and other pinnacles in the White Mountains rising above 5,000 feet, and in the southern region, where peaks of the North Carolina Black Mountains and the Tennessee–North Carolina Great Smoky Mountains rise above 6,000 feet, and the entire system reaches its highest summit on Mount Mitchell (Mitchell, Mount) (6,684 feet [2,037 metres]).

 A distinctive feature of the system is the Great Appalachian Valley. It includes the St. Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Kittatinny, Cumberland, Shenandoah, and Tennessee valleys in the United States; the latter is the site of the world-famous Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a government agency for natural resource conservation, power production, and regional development.

 In the area known geologically as “New” Appalachia, especially where there are softer limestone rocks that yield to the constant solution (erosion) by water and weak acids, numerous caves (cave) are a distinctive feature of the physiography. The chief caverns lie within or border the Great Valley region of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. Caverns of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia provide well-known and dramatic examples of underground passages, rooms, watercourses, formations, and other cave features that honeycomb much of the land below central and southern Appalachia.

Geology

      The Appalachians are among the oldest mountains on Earth, born of powerful upheavals within the terrestrial crust and sculpted by the ceaseless action of water upon the surface. The two types of rock that characterize the present Appalachian ranges tell much of the story of the mountains' long existence.

  First there are the most ancient crystalline rocks (crystalline rock). Between about 1.1 billion and 540 million years ago, during the Precambrian era (Precambrian time), long periods of sedimentation (sedimentary rock) and violent eruptions alternated to create rocks and then subject them to such extreme heat and pressure that they were changed into sequences of metamorphic rocks. Among the oldest of these are the gneisses. Limestone changed into marble, shales became slate and schist, sandstones were transformed into quartzite, and intrusions of magma formed bodies of granite. These ancient rocks antedated most plant or animal life; in addition, the intense pressure and heat destroyed any traces of primitive life—so that the Precambrian crystallines contain no trace of fossils. They make up what is known as “Old” Appalachia in Canada, New England, and a belt east of the Great Valley with the Blue Ridge at its heart. To the west the Great Valley, the Valley Ridges, and the Appalachian Plateau (including the Alleghenies) are characterized by the second type of rocks, the Paleozoic (Paleozoic Era) sediments. These make up “New” Appalachia—the shales, sandstones, limestones, and coals (coal) that were formed as sediments were deposited, stratified, and solidified over geologic time. During the Carboniferous Period (360 to 286 million years ago), this long process (diastrophism) included the formation of some of the richest coal beds in the world. During the Permian Period, near the end of the Paleozoic Era (i.e., about 250 million years ago), a great mountain folding occurred. This was the Appalachian Revolution (Alleghenian orogeny), a vast interior crumpling resulting from the stress placed on huge masses of subterranean rock. As parts of the Earth buckled into folds, cracked, and faulted, other parts were uplifted—sometimes in the parallel ridges distinctive of the Appalachians—and thrust faults served to move one rock mass atop another. Thus, the ancient crystallines were lifted in places above the more recent sedimentary rock deposits.

 In addition to the massive folding of the Appalachian Revolution, however, two other agents—ice and water—have carved the steep ridges and pinnacles and gouged out the deep ravines and valleys of the Appalachians. This building, eroding, uplifting, and shaping of the Appalachians has been a continuous process throughout the ages. Many of the major rivers are older than the mountains. This accounts for the fact that northeast of the New River in Virginia the major Appalachian rivers flow into the Atlantic Ocean, often through dramatic passages called water gaps, while southwest of the New the rivers, with few exceptions, flow to the Ohio River. When the mountains were thrust up, blocking their westward course to the ancient sea that once covered the American Midwest, these old rivers cut out their own routes, creating those spectacular canyons, gorges, and “narrows” that are part of Appalachian scenery.

 The northern Appalachians were also affected by glacial forces. During the Pleistocene Epoch (1.6 million to 10,000 years ago), continental ice sheets flowed down over North America, covering New England but reaching no nearer the southern Appalachians than the Ohio River valley. These moving tongues of ice stripped topsoil, ground and polished certain peaks, and elsewhere scattered rock debris and random boulders, all the while driving plants and animals farther south where they could survive. Thus, the southern Appalachians became the refuge for northern life forms, a giant bed for reseeding when the glaciers retreated and the plants moved slowly north again, leaving behind a rich botanical variety thriving in northern and southern latitudes. Even today, many “northern” plant species are found in the higher elevations of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the cooler temperatures and relative isolation provide them refuge.

Drainage

 The New River, rising on the Blue Ridge in North Carolina, runs northward and then turns westward across the Appalachian Valley and the Alleghenies (where it becomes the Kanawha River) and empties into the Mississippi River basin. The larger mountain streams to the south, dominated by the Tennessee River, follow this example. Exceptions are the rivers rising southeastward on the Blue Ridge, which flow into the Atlantic, and the Chattahoochee (Chattahoochee River), rising in the northeastern corner of Georgia, which runs southwestward into the Gulf of Mexico.

 The entire Appalachian system is laced with an intricate network of springs, streams, waterfalls, and rivers. Water is most abundant in the southern Appalachians. Certain areas of the Blue Ridge receive an annual rainfall of 69 inches (1,750 millimetres) during an average year. Elsewhere precipitation is even higher—the western slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains, for example, often receive as much as 90 inches per year—being exceeded in the United States only along the northwest Pacific coast. Much of this rainfall comes in extremely heavy downpours during short periods. Since this region does not have the natural storehouses of numerous lakes and glacial deposits of sand and gravel spread over hills and valleys, such as are found in the northern Appalachian region, sudden rainfalls bring rapid rises in the southern Appalachian stream flows. Under certain conditions (such as when the forest cover, which serves as a biotic buffer, has been destroyed) destructive floods and debris flows characterize much of the hydrologic history of this part of the Appalachians. Geologic evidence of past floods, landslides, and mudflows abounds, especially in the middle and southern Appalachians. There, lobes of rock, soil, and debris choke the lower reaches of many small stream valleys. Recent studies suggest that many of these ancient debris flows were initiated by hurricanes and their heavy rainfall. To contain these floods and harness the might of an entire river system for purposes of navigation, power production, land reclamation, and watershed development, the Tennessee Valley Authority was established in 1933, and it quickly became one of the chief factors influencing the ecology of the Southern Appalachian region. Its system of dams turned a river that rampaged and often destroyed into a river that flows gently and productively. The TVA created a series of spacious reservoirs (the majority of which are in or adjoining the Appalachian region) called “the Great Lakes of the South.” These lakes, in turn, have altered the natural and human resources of the region, using Appalachian water power to produce electrical power that has expanded industrial and agricultural and recreational opportunities.

 Waterfalls (waterfall) are common throughout much of the Appalachian system. Most of those in the northern Appalachians, especially from New York to Maine, were created when glacial moraine or debris, scraped from surrounding peaks by the melting ice cap, solidified into shelves along creeks or river valleys over which the water must plunge as over a terrace. Southern Appalachian waterfalls generally were formed by the action of water on alternating layers of soft and hard rock.

Climate

      Generally temperate and humid, the climate of the Appalachians presents sharp contrasts. In the Canadian ranges and the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, Arctic and subarctic conditions prevail. Altitudes below 2,000 feet usually have milder weather in the hills of northwestern Georgia and northeastern and north-central Alabama. Snowfall is heaviest in the Shickshocks, Newfoundland's Long Range, and the White Mountains, but Mount Mitchell in North Carolina has recorded more than 100 inches in a single year. Unique in climatic severity is barren, boulder-strewn Mount Washington, which is lashed by some of the world's strongest winds (a gust of 231 miles per hour was recorded there in 1934); temperatures recorded on its summit have never risen above 71° F (22° C). Heavy clouds and haze are common throughout the Appalachians, often frustrating recreational activities and sightseeing but nourishing the abundant plant life and the river system.

Plant and animal life

   From Maine to Georgia, the Appalachian Mountain system was once almost totally covered with forest. Today some of the best and most extensive broad-leaved deciduous forests in the world still flourish in the Appalachians and bordering areas, notably in southern Appalachia. To the north are the conifers (red spruce and balsam fir, which grow at the highest elevations and distinguish the Canadian and Maine woods) and the northern hardwoods (sugar maple, buckeye, beech, ash, birch, and red and white oak). Farther south are hickory, poplar, walnut, sycamore, and at one time the important and—before they were destroyed by blight—plentiful chestnuts. All of these, plus other of the 140 species of trees of Appalachia, are found in the southern mountain region. Lofty elevations nurture representatives of the Canadian forest, while the western slopes of the Great Smokies, with their abundant rainfall, produce trees that have reached record maximum height and diameter. Among these are the tulip tree (yellow poplar), buckeye, eastern (Canadian) hemlock, and chestnut oak.

 The interdependent system of southern plant growth known as the “Appalachian forest” is highly complex. It forms one of the great floral provinces of the Earth. There are the trees that bear luxuriant bloom, such as serviceberry, redbud, hawthorn, tulip tree, dogwood, locust, sourwood, and many others. Among the numerous shrubs with particularly showy flowers are the rhododendron, azalea, and mountain laurel. Certain summits of the southern Appalachians are called heath balds—open meadows or grasslands interspersed with thick growths of heath. Roan Mountain in the North Carolina–Tennessee Unakas is one of the most extensive of these, with some 1,200 acres of natural gardens sprawling vivid rose and pink and purple rhododendron across its high pinnacle and down its slopes. It is estimated that, of some 2,000 species of Appalachian flora, perhaps 200 are native and wholly confined to the southern Appalachians. Ferns, mosses, and mushrooms of many species also are part of the complex Appalachian plant life.

 Bison, elk, and wolves, once common to the Appalachians, disappeared long ago, although elk subsequently have returned to the northern mountains; caribou and moose are still found in the northernmost corners of the region. Scattered through other areas are the black bear, white-tailed deer, wild boar, fox, raccoon, beaver, and numerous other small animals. All areas of Appalachia, from the Gaspé Peninsula to Georgia, support an abundant birdlife. In the Great Smoky Mountains alone some 200 varieties of game birds and songbirds have been recorded.

The people and economy

Settlement and expansion

 Various Eastern Woodland Indian groups, including the Pennacook, Mohican (Mahican), and Susquehanna, inhabited the northern half of the Appalachians for centuries before European settlement. In the southern mountains, the Cherokee were predominant. Warfare and eviction had driven most of the Indian populations from the mountains by the mid-19th century. The so-called Trail of Tears, the forced march of the Cherokee to Oklahoma in the fall and winter of 1838–39, is perhaps the best-known episode of Indian removal.

      The long blue wall of the Appalachians thrust up a mighty barrier to colonial expansion. Exploration and settlement was further discouraged by the size and complexity of the lateral mountain ranges, the rugged courses of many of the streams and rivers, and the ubiquitous dense forest. The central Appalachians, with their more spacious water gaps affording easy passage, attracted the largest number of early settlers. Many of these were Germans and Scotch-Irish who went into the interior of Pennsylvania and subsequently migrated down the Great Appalachian Valley in Virginia and Tennessee. In the New England Appalachians the narrow notches, often blocked by glacial debris, and the steepness of the mountains discouraged early settlement—as did the massive ruggedness of the successive ranges in the southern Appalachians—so that each of these regions remained a wilderness long after the American frontiersman Daniel Boone had forged his pioneer route through the Cumberland Gap. During the French and Indian War (1754–63), trails to the Ohio country and Great Lakes led through central Appalachia, and these, with their scattered lonely forts of the interior, became brutal battlegrounds of border warfare. Indian allies of the British waged bloody skirmishes against Appalachian settlements during the American Revolution (1775–83), but the Appalachian Mountains confined most of that struggle for independence to the Eastern Seaboard.

Economic growth

 The diversity that characterizes Appalachian plant and animal life also exists in the system's mineral resources. As the immense stands of timber throughout the Appalachians brought into existence important lumber and wood-pulp industries, so rich coal beds, veins of iron ore, salt springs and licks, and deposits of granite and marble created major American industries in the region. Each of these has been attended by its own peculiar problems, especially in the field of conservation. There is, for instance, pollution of Appalachian waterways by the pulp and chemical industries and the devastation of land and human resources brought on by certain coal-mining operations. Air pollution, especially in the form of acid rain and fog, has taken a toll on Appalachian forests from North Carolina to Canada. The pinnacle of the Appalachians, Mount Mitchell, once called Black Dome because of its blanket of virgin evergreens, is now a ghost forest of dead trees.

 Despite the early arrival of the lumber industry and the opening of the coal mines, some areas of Appalachia remained isolated until early in the 20th century, notably those mountain areas of the southern region where rough terrain hindered road building. As a consequence, Southern Appalachian highlanders developed a distinctive culture characterized by handicrafts, ballads, folklore, and mores that reflect both the massive problems and the rich potential of the region.

Recreation and tourism

  The Appalachian region has developed into one of the premier recreational areas of North America. One unique feature of a large portion of the system is the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail (Appalachian National Scenic Trail). This footpath, stretching from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, provides a hiker's grandstand on the varied ranges of the Appalachians. Overnight shelters are scattered along the way. A noncommercial motor route, the Blue Ridge Parkway, stretches 469 miles from the Shenandoah National Park in northern Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and is the most popular area administered by the U.S. National Park Service.

 The springtime profusion of flowering wild azalea, rhododendron, and laurel is a major tourist attraction in the Appalachians, beginning in the south in April and spreading northward. In autumn the pattern is reversed, as the brilliant coloration of the foliage moves from north to south. Motoring, hiking, camping, fishing, skiing, whitewater rafting, and spelunking are encouraged throughout the Appalachians, as are visits to numerous craft centres and historic sites. Famous spas are reminders of more leisurely days in both the northern and southern mountains, while conference facilities and theme parks reflect a growing emphasis on tourism, with its attendant benefits and its problems of environmental stress.

Study and exploration

      The ruggedness of the Appalachians, the transverse ranges by which they are crossed, their maze of streams and rivers, and their lack of natural passes created a formidable barrier to early explorers and settlers. The Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto (Soto, Hernando de) was probably the first European to enter southern Appalachia, in 1539–40. In 1716 Governor Alexander Spotswood (Spotswood, Alexander) of Virginia led the first organized body of English colonists across the Blue Ridge Mountains. During the 1760s and '70s Daniel Boone (Boone, Daniel) became America's frontier folk hero through his exploits in exploring and settling the Blue Ridge and Cumberland Mountain country. Historical figures associated with the opening of northern Appalachia include the French explorer Samuel de Champlain (Champlain, Samuel de), who sighted the mountains in 1605 as he sailed along the Maine coast; the American Darby Field, who made the first climb up Mount Washington (Washington, Mount) (1642); Timothy Nash, discoverer of the Crawford Notch (1771), which made possible communication between the coast and the Connecticut River valley; and Sir William Logan (Logan, Sir William Edmond), first director of Canada's geologic survey, who made a cross section of the geologic formation of the Gaspé Peninsula in 1844 and became the first European to cross the Shickshock Mountains. During the mid-19th century the first extensive scientific studies of Appalachia began when in 1849 the Swiss geographer Arnold Guyot (Guyot, Arnold Henry) commenced mapping the eastern mountains. Starting with the White Mountains, he spent five years in northern Appalachia, then moved south to the Great Smoky Mountains area. He mapped, measured elevation, and made the first methodical effort to name mountains. The highest peak (Mitchell, Mount) in the eastern United States was named for another pioneer explorer-scientist, Professor Elisha Mitchell, who fell to his death in 1857 while establishing the fact of this mountain's preeminence. It remained for Horace Kephart, a St. Louis, Mo., librarian turned naturalist who came to the southern mountains in 1904, to bring the isolated and scenic region to national attention. From his writings grew the interest and impetus that led to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Wilma Dykeman

Additional Reading

Maurice Brooks, The Appalachians (1965, reissued 1975), is an accurate and comprehensive geography. Nevin M. Fenneman, Physiography of Eastern United States (1938), includes a survey of Appalachia's natural resources. Clyde H. Smith, Wilma Dykeman, and Dykeman Stokely, Appalachian Mountains (1980), is a volume of photographs capturing the natural beauty and variety of the extended mountain chain, with the accompanying text developing historical and cultural themes. Thomas L. Connelly, Discovering the Appalachians (1968), describes the natural setting, with simple maps. Stephen Kulik et al., The Audubon Society Field Guide to the Natural Places of the Northeast, vol. 2, Inland (1984), includes excellent descriptions of and detailed guides to the Appalachian areas of the Northeast. Michael Frome, Strangers in High Places: The Story of the Great Smoky Mountains, rev. ed. (1980), offers a detailed survey of natural and human history. John Anthony Caruso, The Appalachian Frontier: America's First Surge Westward (1959), is a scholarly study of the barrier presented by the mountain chain. Allan W. Eckert, The Frontiersmen (1967), presents a documented exploration of the frontier and pioneer life in the area. Ann Sutton and Myron Sutton, The Appalachian Trail: Wilderness on the Doorstep (1967), discusses the history and natural surroundings of major portions of the trail; while Steve Sherman and Julia Older, Appalachian Odyssey (1977), chronicles the authors' hike along its entire length. Harley E. Jolley, Blue Ridge Parkway (1969), describes the history of the establishment of the parkway.Wilma Dykeman

* * *