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11 unusual facts about Appalachia


Appalachia, Virginia

Ollan Cassell - Winner of a gold medal in the 4x400 m relay at the 1964 Summer Olympics.

Berniece T. Hiser

Hiser compiled Quare Do's in Appalachia: East Kentucky Legends and Memorats (Pikeville, Kentucky: Pikeville College Press, 1978), a collection of folktales, ghost stories, and tales she collected, many of which involve members of her family.

Crewe, Virginia

It was founded in 1888 as a central location to house steam locomotive repair shops for the Norfolk and Western Railroad (now called Norfolk Southern) which has a rail yard there for east-west trains carrying Appalachian coal to Hampton Roads for export abroad, and the street pattern was laid out at that time.

Elmer Bendiner

Growing up Jewish in an Appalachian environment where the Ku Klux Klan was influential and "Jews, Catholics, and the very few blacks on the outskirts of town ... served as ritualistic enemies" helped shape him.

John Abramson

He has worked as a family doctor in Appalachia and in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and has served as chairman of the department of family practice at Lahey Clinic.

Living Waters for the World

In addition to community-sized water treatment systems, LWW has also developed single-family systems for use in areas such as Appalachia where coal mining may have contaminated ground water sources.

As of May 2012, Living Waters for the World clean water systems have been installed at 451 sites in 24 countries: Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Kenya, Laos, Madagasgar, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Thailand, Ukraine, United States (Appalachia) and Venezuela.

McDowell County, West Virginia

McDowell County is considered as one of the core counties in Appalachia on which the national War on Poverty focused, a national effort started during President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.

Michael A. Costello

While he was a student at Salem State College (now Salem State University), Costello spent three years organizing and leading a program that resulted in student's building desperately needed housing for some of the poorest Americans living in Appalachia.

Millard Fuller

Soon the idea took hold in Appalachia, and by 1981, just five years from its inception, Habitat for Humanity had affiliates in fourteen states and seven foreign countries.

Peggie Castle

Born Peggy Blair in Appalachia in Wise County in far southwestern Virginia, Castle was discovered by a talent scout while eating in a restaurant in Beverly Hills.


Appalachian Volunteers

William Greider, “Politics Ends Appalachia Experiment,” Washington Post, September 29, 1969, p.

A “Books for Appalachia” campaign, which collected over a million volumes, was begun in cooperation with the National Parent-Teacher Association.

Brianna Goldberg

Although the topic had been widely researched in the United States already, no in-depth reporting had previously been done into musicians like Jayme Stone: a Juno award winning banjo player whose bluegrass and West African fusion album, Africa to Appalachia, launched in June 2008.

Crystal Wilkinson

The only Black family in the area and like many farmers in Appalachia, Silas Wilkinson grew cash crops of tobacco and corn and produced sorghum molasses; and, given the few jobs available for African-American women in eastern Kentucky, Christine Wilkinson cleaned and cooked in the homes of the local schoolteachers of Casey County.

Edge of Appalachia Preserve

The Edge of Appalachia Preserve is also home to the rare green salamander and Allegheny woodrat.

Erik Reece

Reece's 2006 book Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006), with photos by John J. Cox and a foreword by Wendell Berry, chronicles the devastating effects of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia from October 2003 through November 2004.

Florida Tile

The recognition was for the company's humanitarian efforts in Appalachia and its response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Franjo Kuhač

Like Cecil Sharp, who did similar work in Britain and Appalachia, Kuhač published the folk songs with a piano accompaniment.

Hell for Certain, Kentucky

The Geological Society of America has borrowed "Hell for Certain" as a name for the tonstein located there, and throughout the Appalachian basin.

I Wonder as I Wander

While in the town of Murphy in Appalachian North Carolina, Niles attended a fundraising meeting held by evangelicals who had been ordered out of town by the police.

Johnny Moynihan

In 2006, Moynihan could also often be seen playing old-time Appalachian music with a trio based in east-Clare and calling themselves 'Frankie, Johnny and Sweetheart' (a pun on the song title Frankie and Johnny).

Kenneth W. Noe

Kenneth W. Noe is an American historian whose primary interests are the American Civil War, Appalachia and the American South.

Marilou Awiakta

United States Information Agency, Abiding Appalachia and Rising Fawn & The Fire Mystery chosen for Global Tour of American Writers, 1986

New Appalachia

New Appalachia is the concept that the quality of life in the San Joaquin Valley of California is comparable or worse than the traditionally impoverished Appalachia region of the Appalachian Mountains and therefore shares similar hardships.

Nichols Arboretum

Heathdale - ericaceous and Appalachian Plants, including Catawba and Rosebay rhododendrons (Rhododendron catawbiense and R. maximum), azaleas (Rhododendron spp.), dog-hobble (Leucothoe fontanesiana), mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), as well as hemlock (Tsuga canadensis, T. caroliniana, and T. sieboldii), dogwoods (Cornus spp.

Ohio State Route 646

The route heads through the hills of Appalachia passing through the villages of New Rumley, the birthplace of General George Armstrong Custer, and Germano.

Raven Mocker

Scott Nicholson used withered beings much like raven mockers in his novel They Hunger (2007), where they were encountered in a gorge similar to the Linville Gorge Wilderness area of Appalachia.

Manly Wade Wellman used raven mockers in his novel The Old Gods Waken (1979), where they were one of the many creatures of Appalachian folklore encountered by Silver John.

Richard McCulloch

In his 2005 book on the Melungeons, Walking Toward The Sunset: The Melungeons Of Appalachia, Wayne Winkler notes that McCullogh "espouses views that seem dated to many Americans today, but were widely held in the not-to-distant past ... since then, the idea of 'racial purity' has been largely - but not completely - discredited".

Ruth Ann Musick

She felt that the Appalachian region surrounding the college was ripe for fieldwork in folklore, and the college in need of courses on folk literature.

Tex McGuire

He also served as an instructor at the Mountain Heritage School in Union, West Virginia, which was a state and federal financed program designed to preserve Appalachian culture.

The Fool's Progress

After killing his noisy refrigerator with a .357 Magnum, Lightcap puts on Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at ear-splitting volume, drinks off a half-quart of Wild Turkey, and miserably dreams of past loves and his lost Appalachian home.

Thurmond, West Virginia

The town was the filming location for John Sayles' 1987 movie Matewan since it still possesses many of the characteristics of a 1920s Appalachian coal town.

Wallin Family

In the latter years of World War I, British folklorist Cecil Sharp and his assistant Maud Karpeles traveled extensively across Central and Southern Appalachia in hopes of finding British ballads that had been passed down to the inhabitants of the more remote parts of the region from their British and Scottish ancestors.