Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians

by Donald Edward Davis

A timely study of change in a complex environment, Where There Are Mountains explores the relationship between human inhabitants of the southern Appalachians and their environment. Incorporating a wide variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the study draws information from several viewpoints and spans more than four hundred years of geological, ecological, anthropological, and historical development in the Appalachian region. The book begins with a description of the indigenous Mississippian culture in 1500 and ends with the destructive effects of industrial logging and dam building during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Donald Edward Davis discusses the degradation of the southern Appalachians on a number of levels, from the general effects of settlement and industry to the extinction of the American chestnut due to blight and logging in the early 1900s. This portrait of environmental destruction is echoed by the human struggle to survive in one of our nation's poorest areas. The farming, livestock raising, dam building, and pearl and logging industries that have gradually destroyed this region have also been the livelihood of the Appalachian people. The author explores the sometimes conflicting needs of humans and nature in the mountains while presenting impressive and comprehensive research on the increasingly threatened environment of the southern Appalachians.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, School

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[ella]

might as well put textbooks toward my yearly reading goals as well

edit: read 5 chapters for class, but those 5 chapters were so long so i'm marking it as read ok

[Mark Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this extremely well researched work as source material for my next book. This is a richly detailed history of the ecological history of the Southern Appalachians over the last five hundred years, spanning the Mississippian culture, the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors and traders, the Cherokee, and finally, the mainly English-speaking settlers who began swarming into the region in the late 18th Century. The ecology has undergone constant shifts, and has never been in pristine condition over this time span. By the early 19th century, the once plentiful deer, beaver, and bison populations were greatly diminished due to over-hunting to supply the European fur trade. Ginseng was highly prized in China, and thus became a rich source of regional export earnings. Iron core, coal, copper, gold, lumber and phosphates were extracted with little thought to environmental degradation. Mountains were denuded of trees and in some instances, topped or blown away with hydraulic cannons to more readily access the riches that lay underneath the topsoil. Over time, the old-growth forests, rich with chestnut, hickory, oak and yellow poplar gave way to shade-resistant species of pine. Fresh water mussels and native fish have seen the destruction of their habitats, largely due to the harnessing of river power to build dams and reservoirs. And the people of Appalachia, starting with Native Americans and ending with the predominantly Scots-Irish descendants that still inhabit the region, have been exploited, driven from their lands by greedy speculators, big industry, and the government through the power of eminent domain.

[Dillon Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really great environmental history of Southern Appalachia. Spanning the 16th-20th centuries, the book highlights the complex interactions between culture, colonization, disease, and the environment. My biggest critique is that structuring around specific topics confuses the timeline a bit. Overall, the story is told chronologically; but there is a fair amount of bouncing around within centuries or blocks of a few decades. It’s fine but makes the narrative a little choppy at times. That said, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Mississippian, Cherokee, and/or frontier Appalachia.

[Ginger K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many feelings about this book. I could do without the theory, it has not aged well. but in terms of the historical facts the book is valuable. Learning about the big scale changes since ~1840 starting with logging for iron manufacturing and culminating in total deforestation by logging companies quickly followed by dam building and the chestnut blight was mind boggling.