Please welcome guest author Donald Edward Davis. Davis is an independent scholar, author, and former Fulbright fellow. He is the author of Southern United States: An Environmental History and coauthor of Hiking Trails of the Smokies.
Environmental historians writing about Appalachia have not always received the critical acclaim they deserve, even among southern historians. Nevertheless, they have accomplished a great deal over the past twenty years.
The year 2000 was a big deal for Appalachianists. Several books about the region were recognized as national bestsellers. Among the titles were Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, which featured an American chestnut enthusiast working to return the tree to the Eastern deciduous forest. At the time, there was hope that non-Appalachians would discover the unique history and beauty of the mountain region and even join grassroots efforts aimed at preserving its most imperiled places.
The year 2000 also saw the publication of Where There Are Mountains, an event that changed my professional career. In it, I investigate more than four centuries of environmental and cultural change.
Where There Are Mountains was certainly not the first book addressing environmental and cultural change in the southern Appalachians. One could argue that books like Wilma Dykeman’s The French Broad (1955) and Harriet Simpson Arnow’s Seedtime on the Cumberland (1960) were, in many respects, proto-environmental histories. The same could be said for Roy B. Clarkson’s Tumult on the Mountains (1964), which documents industrial logging activities in one of West Virginia’s last remaining old-growth forests. Ronald L. Lewis’s Transforming the Appalachian Countryside (1998), also about timbering in West Virginia, certainly qualifies as environmental history, although the author never explicitly says so anywhere in the volume.
Addressing landscape change
By 2003, a growing number of publications were addressing landscape change in the southern mountains, including books authored by several self-proclaimed environmental historians. The first was Margaret Brown’s The Wild East (2001), which chronicles the destructive logging practices, and the later political maneuvering, that led to the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The second was Timothy Silver’s Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains (2003) which, the author claims, gives natural and human history equal billing in the narrative.
Another noteworthy volume released at that time was historian Suzanne Marshall’s ‘Lord We’re Just Trying to Save Your Water’ (2002), which documents the activities of several grassroots organizations in the region, including the Armuchee Alliance, which I founded and directed in the mid-1990s. As Marshall rightly notes, the non-profit closely monitored, and sometimes legally opposed, private timber sales in the Armuchee Ranger District of the Chattahoochee National Forest. The group also publicized the problematic nature of the timber harvests, which promoted clear-cuts, destructive logging roads, stream siltation, and prescribed burns over vast areas.
In defense of their actions, the U.S. Forest Service argued there were historical reasons for the timber removal, as certain tree species had been more prevalent a century earlier and the logging ensured their return. They believed the prescribed burns also mimicked historical conditions, claiming Native Americans frequently set fire to upland forests. In response, I cited witness-tree data documenting the 19th-century species makeup of the Armuchee Ranger District, which revealed that hardwoods, including the American chestnut, were once found in greater densities in the forest–not pine species, as claimed by the agency. Native Americans did frequently burn the woodlands, but the fires generally occurred near village settlements along river floodplains, not in the surrounding uplands.
Findings have real policy implications
As the Marshall book illustrates, the findings of environmental history have very real implications for 21st-century environmental policy. A similar point was made in Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South, a volume also published in 2002.
After assessing the role humans played in shaping the mountain landscape, the book’s various authors–among them archaeologists, folklorists, land use planners, and cultural geographers–were given free-rein to promote, defend, or critique various conservation strategies in the region.
In her study of Cades Cove, geographer Claire Jantz, for example, notes that Native Americans had encouraged the distribution of certain plant species in the area, well before the arrival of pioneer settlers. So when National Park authorities discussed returning the cove to its pre-European settlement condition, rivercane (Arundinaria gigantea) was chosen for reintroduction, whereas Chinese privet and Japanese honeysuckle, both invasive species, were designated for immediate removal.
Another book addressing landscape change, and the environmental policies linked to them, is Chad Montrie’s Saving the Land and People (2003). Initially billed as an environmental history of surface coal mining in Appalachia, it was, more accurately, a survey of 20th century grassroots movements opposing the practice (as well as the evolution of state and federal regulations governing surface mining).
Nevertheless, the volume received considerable attention among environmental historians, who, in 2000, were given a preview of its findings in the journal Environmental History. Among the findings was the role ordinary people played in the anti strip mine movement, especially rural residents, who possessed considerable knowledge about the native flora and fauna of the affected areas.
In 2004, the same journal published another article important to Appalachian environmental history: Ralph Lutt’s “Like Manna from God: The American Chestnut Trade in Southwestern Virginia.”
Widely applauded for demonstrating the importance of the American chestnut in the region, the article was also later reprinted in the anthology Environmental History and the American South: a Reader (2009).
My 2006 additions to the reading list
In 2006, I added several of my own titles to the region’s environmental history reading list, among them Homeplace Geography: Essays for Appalachia. The collection represented my twenty-year career as a writer, scholar, and environmental activist, and addressed topics such as the politics of wilderness preservation, mountaintop removal, coal mining, and the role of culture in environmental history discourse.
The other volume was Southern United States: An Environmental History, which included significant coverage of Appalachia. Because the book begins at the end of the last Ice Age, I was also able to discuss the impact of Archaic and Woodland Indians on the region’s fauna and flora, as well as document important shifts in vegetation patterns during prehistory.
The Encyclopedia of Appalachia was also published in 2006, and contains numerous entries relevant to the environmental history of the mountain region. Most are found in the forty-eight-page section entitled “Environment.” The section contains thirty-two separate entries, and features topics as diverse as urban sprawl, William Bartram, and medicinal plant use.
In 2007, Lynn Nelson’s Pharsalia was published, a book chronicling the environmental exploits of a 19th-century Appalachian plantation owner. Located in Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, the estate encompassed some 10,000 acres (15 square miles) of woodlands, pasture, and arable fields. Wheat, tobacco, potatoes, and apples were among its main agricultural crops, commodities sold outside the region and even exported abroad. The author reminds us that even though Appalachia was a stronghold for small-scale yeoman agriculture, it also possessed enormous plantations, which due to their size and intensive production methods, did disproportionate and lasting damage to mountain ecosystems.
Nelson, Lutts, Marshall, Brown, Montrie, Silver and others, I would argue, all made important and noteworthy contributions to southern environmental history.
Morris: make landscapes and ecosystems more prevalent
In 2009, when Christopher Morris summarized the state of southern environmental history for the 75th anniversary edition of the Journal of Southern History, only one of the texts cited above received specific mention. And only two contributions–my own Southern States: An Environmental History and Ralph Lutt’s “Like Manna from God”–were included in the article’s footnotes.
Curiously, Morris concluded that much of what had passed as southern environmental history was not sufficiently “ecological.” Good environmental history, said Marsh, should make the natural world–plants, birds, mammals, fish, etc.–a central focus of the narrative.
Thus, by extension, southern environmental historians should make southern landscapes, and the ecosystems that inhabit them, more prevalent in their work.
I would argue that Where There Are Mountains does just that. The mountain landscape is an important character in the book, as well as the plants, birds, and animals residing there. Among the living creatures receiving treatment are the American chestnut, freshwater mussels, American elk, American ginseng, White-tailed deer, rivercane, American eel, and the North American beaver.
In fact, it is the unique blending of natural and human history that inspired several filmmakers to produce documentaries based on the organization and content of Where There Are Mountains.
The first was Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People, a four-part series that aired nationally on PBS in 2008. According to producer Jamie Ross and director Ross Spears, the book was the original inspiration for the project, which was billed “the first environmental history series of any region ever on film.”
A second documentary, The Breaks: A Century of Struggle, used numerous quotes from the book, as well as featured a brief appearance by myself. The film was an environmental history of the Breaks Interstate Park, the area along the Kentucky and Virginia border known as the “Grand Canyon of the South.” The documentary was narrated by Mike Rowe (Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs) and aired on PBS in 2016.
First environmental lawsuits in the U.S.
During the 2010s, additional books were published about the landscape and people of Appalachia, including Duncan Maysilles’ Ducktown Smoke (2011), which examined one of the very first environmental lawsuits in the United States (Madison et al. v. Ducktown Sulphur, Copper & Iron Co. et al., 1904).
The lawsuit pitted North Georgia residents angry over the devaluation of their lands against a large copper smelting operation just across the state line in Tennessee. The suit argued that emissions coming from the smelters were killing woodlands and orchards as well as making local residents physically ill.
Although the Georgia landowners lost the initial lawsuit, the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1915, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a bittersweet ending to a decade-long battle. By that date, the toxic smoke had irreversibly scarred the landscape, forcing many of the remaining landholders to permanently leave the area.
Another important contribution to the environmental history of the region is Sara M. Gregg’s, Managing the Mountains (2012), a book documenting the creation of public lands in Appalachia. Both the southern and northern regions are represented in the volume, as the Blue Ridge Mountains of Central Virginia and the Green Mountains of Vermont receive the most attention in the narrative. By 1940, the federal government had acquired more than a million acres in the Appalachians, making it the single largest landowner in the eastern United States.
Gregg also makes good use of original sources, including government records from the Resettlement Administration. The work of rural sociologists and New Deal land use planners also received considerable treatment in the narrative, which—along with a considerable dose of ecological history—makes the book an informed interdisciplinary read.
Two opposing views of the forest commons
Also published in 2012 was Kathryn Newfont’s Blue Ridge Commons, an examination of local efforts to protect public lands in western North Carolina during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. In addition–and why the book is so relevant to environmental history–is the author’s discussion of the forest commons.
According to Newfont, for more than two centuries groups in the Appalachian region used its natural resources to their own advantage and did so without any real consequence. As she explains it, unimproved woodlands in the mountains were treated as semipublic, meaning the roots, nuts, trees, birds, and mammals were there for the taking as long as local custom allowed. This made the landscape, in essence, a de facto commons. However, with the acquisition of public lands, the de facto commons became a de jure commons, meaning government regulations now controlled forest use. This sea change in forest management, says Newfont, gave certain users legal rights to the forest and others no rights at all.
One could argue, however, that corporate landowners in the region promoted an even more restrictive commons regime. Timber barons and coal company operators, who historically owned vast acreages in the mountains, very often limited property access to community elites, stockholders, or favored employees. Other users were often considered poachers or trespassers, and if apprehended by wardens or local deputies, received fines or even jail time.
The rise of mountaintop removal coal mining
Moreover, state and federal laws in the region often allowed the same corporations to dramatically alter the mountain environment without real consequence, legal or otherwise.
A case in point is mountaintop removal coal mining. Relatively common by the early 1980s, the mining method requires the removal of entire mountaintops in order to access coal seams far below the surface. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, mountaintop removal mining had destroyed 2,200 square miles of forests, decapitated 500 mountaintops, and buried some 1,500 miles of headwater streams in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio.
Sadly, government agencies did little to stop the practice, despite the widespread ecological devastation. Fortunately, there are numerous good books on the subject, including Lost Mountain (2006), Plundering Appalachia (2009) and Bringing Down the Mountains (2007).
The latter, by historian Shirley Stewart Burns, traces the history of resource extraction in southern West Virginia and links the pervasiveness of mountaintop removal to the national demand for cheap coal. Burns also places partial blame on the United Mine Workers Union for failing to promote underground mining methods as a viable alternative to the practice.
Unbridled resource extraction not new to the mountains
Unbridled resource extraction has been, unfortunately, an all too common theme in Appalachian environmental history. Although often associated with modern industrialization, external forces have been altering the mountain landscape for centuries. Historian Drew Swanson makes this point in Beyond the Mountains (2018), the latest attempt at a region-wide environmental history of the Appalachians.
Swanson notes, for example, that deerskins were among the first natural resources to leave the region in large quantities. Most were destined for Europe, where they were fashioned into a variety of commercial commodities, including gloves, leather breeches, and book bindings.
Since that time, other commodities have been bought and sold in the global marketplace and each had their own unique and specific impact on mountain ecology.
Humans do add species that provide ecological benefits
Although tales of commodification and resource extraction are important for illuminating the environmental history of Appalachia, they alone do not tell us the full story. Mountain environments change in other ways, too. Humans add important and lasting elements to ecological systems, not just take from them. Perhaps the best example of this type of environmental change is the introduction of non-native plants and animals. While many exotic species decrease biodiversity, others provide important ecological benefits.
In Appalachia, such examples include brown trout, European honeybees, Himalayan blackberries, and the red fox, among others.
Other kinds of accessional ecological change include the proliferation of certain plant and animal species as a direct result of human settlement (nonnative grasses, chimney swift, Eastern bluebird, etc.) as well as the increased biodiversity resulting from the creation of Wilderness Areas or National Parks.
Since the turn of this century, several native plant and animal species have even been successfully reintroduced into the Appalachians. American elk were released into the Eastern Kentucky coalfields more than two decades ago, and today their numbers exceed over 13,000. Smaller numbers of elk were also reintroduced into Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and today can be observed both inside and outside park boundaries.
Rivercane restoration projects have been implemented in nearly every state in the region, as native canebrakes provide erosion control as well as critical habitat for the swamp rabbit and the endangered Bachman’s warbler.
Federal and state dollars have been spent on American eel restoration, including the construction of passageways allowing the migratory fish to pass safely over hydroelectric dams.
Endangered freshwater mussels have also benefited from 21st century restoration efforts, particularly those inhabiting the Clinch river of southwest Virginia.
The successful reintroduction of the American chestnut could also bring about vast and important changes to the region’s woodlands. Although this effort is still in its infancy, the future planting of blight-resistant trees on both private and public lands could eventually help reforest the entire mountain landscape.
Although the Appalachians of the future will likely be more urban, more populated with humans, and less biologically diverse, the above restoration projects offer some hope.
More articles on environmental history:
Acid rain devastates Tennessee’s Copper Basin(Opens in a new browser tab)
Book Review: ‘Listening to the Land'(Opens in a new browser tab)
Once fertile fields laid waste(Opens in a new browser tab)
The post An overview of Southern Appalachian environmental history since the turn of this century appeared first on Appalachian History.
