GEOG 201 Test 3

"Pittsburgh Plus"

Pittsburgh's United States Steel Company imposed on all users of Alabama steel what came to be called the Birmingham differential, or a pricing policy of "Pittsburgh plus." Under this company policy, consumers of Alabama steel paid the price of steel at Pittsburgh plus $3.00 per ton ($2.72 per metric ton) plus regular freight costs from Birmingham. Thus, Atlanta firms found it cheaper to order steel from Pittsburgh than from Birmingham, even though a Pittsburgh‐Atlanta shipment traveled more than four times the distance than a shipment from Alabama. The Pittsburgh‐plus pricing practice was eventually ruled illegal and stopped, but not before the policy crippled the competitive cost advantage of Alabama steel at a time when the country's economy was expanding rapidly. While in place, the practice contributed to Southern industry's slow growth, and it helped reinforce the region's sense of isolation.

Lake Placid

Was home to the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics is the best known ski area in the Adirondack region and plays a key role in the regions economy because it is heavily dependent on tourism. Lake Placid is only one of many ski areas in the Adirondack region.

Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC)

...

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

...

White Mountains, New Hampshire

1,900 meters (6,500 feet), highest summits not glaciated

Nova Scotia

Major producer of blueberries, heavily forested, leads all provinces in total fish caught per year, is the home to inshore fisherman who live in small villages scattered across its coastline. Nova Scotia has significant coal reserves, but deposits are not easily mined and a once thriving sector of the Province's economy has been hard‐hit. The largest city in the Bypassed East, Halifax, is located in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia has a high poverty rate because the economy depends on primary products and transportation isolation is pronounced.

Gulf Stream

A warm ocean current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico northward through the Atlantic Ocean.

Cherokee

Many American Indians were forcibly removed from the South by the 1830s. Governmentally sanctioned purge campaigns led by Andrew Jackson and massive relocations like the tragic Trail of Tears, where Cherokee Indians were rounded‐up and walked from their Smoky Mountains homes to Oklahoma, had devastating consequences for the South's indigenous peoples. Nonetheless, many families escaped and several tribal groups clung near ancestral lands. The largest historic tribes now in the South are the Eastern Band of the Cherokee along the Blue Ridge in southwestern North Carolina and the Choctaw in central Mississippi.

Mountains of the Atlantic Provinces

< 700 meters(<2,200 feet), rounded

Green Mountains, Vermont

<1,500 meters (4,600 feet), glaciated

Tourism

A cornerstone of northern New England's economy; the tourist industry boomed in northern New England after the end of WWII, manufacturing has been replaced in some areas by tourism. The region has several tourist seasons, meaning the economic benefits are spread throughout the year. Four-season attractions, second-home owners, and retirees.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blacks had less difficulty registering to vote and exercising that right.

Pleistocene

A period in geologic history (basically the last 1 million years) when ice sheets covered large sections of the earth's land surface not now covered by glaciers.

Primary Product

A product that is important as a raw material in developed economies; a product consumed in its primary (unprocessed) state.

What is the significance of the term "transportation shadow" as it applies to the Bypassed East?

A transportation shadow is an area of limited development located near an area of much greater accessibility. The Bypassed East lies in a transportation shadow that has slowed regional economic growth because accessibility is key to a place's growth prospects. The Bypassed East remains in a transportation shadow near some of the world's busiest rhouteways, but bypassed in favor of alternative paths providing more effective penetration to North America's interior. As settlement pushed westward, the region also saw an increase in isolation.

White Pine

A tree that used to dominate New England's forests and stock in excess of 60 meters (190 feet). Its wood was clear, light, strong, and easily cut. Maine became a center for ship construction because of its vast forest resources; the best of the white pines were reserved for the Royal Navy's ship masts, but there seemed to be more than enough to satisfy other needs for lumber as well.

Deep-Sea Fishing

A type of ocean fishing on the offshore banks where bottom feeders (e.g., flounder and halibut) are caught that requires larger boats and greater capital investment than inshore fishing.

Inshore Fishing

A type of ocean fishing where small boats and a relatively small capital investment are required, with lobsters and cod being the most valuable catch. Some substantial challenges faced by the inshore fishing industry are a combination of pollution effects, economies of scale, and overfishing. Inshore pollution is a growing problem that forces fishermen to move to offshore locations, which they are not capable of competing with due to their smaller boats and small investments. Overfishing is a serious challenge faced by Atlantic Province fisherman due to declines in valuable fish populations and moratoriums put in place that put many fishermen out of work.

CHAPTER 8

APPALACHIA AND THE OZARKS

Allegheny Plateau

Almost all of the Allegheny Plateau is underlain with a vast series of bituminous coal beds, which collectively comprise the world's largest coal district. Coal seams as thick as 3 meters (10 feet) are interbedded with the plateau's flat‐lying sedimentary rocks. Over time, the coal seams were exposed by the same streams that created the plateau's rugged topography. The horizontal character of the coal beds is clearly evident on topographic maps where symbols for mines are marked for miles along the same elevation contour line.

Bypassed East

An area comprised of the Atlantic provinces of Canada, as well as Northern New England and the Adirondacks of New York. The Bypassed East is relatively cold, receives substantial precipitation, and is generally mountainous. Farming in the region, never easy because of rocky soils and hilly terrain, declined in the second half of the twentieth century, but recently shows signs of new growth. Fishing remains important to the region, but pollution, overfishing, and overseas competition raise serious concerns about future prospects. The demographic and economic patterns of the Bypassed East are undergoing slow transformation but the future remains uncertain.

Old-Time Music

An example of local expressions of Southern culture that have spread across the larger region and beyond. Old-Time music is a style of Southern country music that is associated with the southern Appalachians.

Great Valley

Between the Blue Ridge and the Ridge and Valley sections is the Great Valley. Typically hilly rather than flat and extending virtually the entire length of the Appalachians, the Great Valley is an historically important routeway. In Pennsylvania, it is called the Lebanon or Cumberland Valley; in Virginia, it is the Shenandoah Valley; and in Tennessee, it is the Tennessee Valley. Whatever its name, the Great Valley has tied Appalachia's people together.

Shenandoah Valley

Between the Blue Ridge and the Ridge and Valley sections is the Great Valley. Typically hilly rather than flat and extending virtually the entire length of the Appalachians, the Great Valley is an historically important routeway. In Pennsylvania, it is called the Lebanon or Cumberland Valley; in Virginia, it is the Shenandoah Valley; and in Tennessee, it is the Tennessee Valley. Whatever its name, the Great Valley has tied Appalachia's people together.

Indigo

By 1695, plantation owners raised rice and indigo in and around coastal swamps in the Carolinas and Georgia.

Moonshine

Corn, another traditionally important cash crop, was illegally distilled into the region's famous moonshine and rushed to lowland markets by legendary drivers who anticipated today's sport of stock car racing. High production costs, alternative job opportunities, improved detection, and expanded sale of legal alcoholic beverages combined to cut moonshine production drastically in recent years. Marijuana may have replaced moonshine as the region's primary contraband export. Corn, normally used on farms for animal fodder, remains the region's leading row crop.

Bituminous Coal

Coke processed form bituminous coal was in high demand following the invention of coke-burning iron and steel furnaces. A vast series of bituminous coal beads (which collectively comprise the world's largest coal district) are located within the Allegheny Plateau. Coal seams as thick as 3 meters (10 feet) are interbedded with the plateau's flat‐lying sedimentary rocks and were exposed by streams.

Trail of Tears

Many American Indians were forcibly removed from the South by the 1830s. Governmentally sanctioned purge campaigns led by Andrew Jackson and massive relocations like the tragic Trail of Tears, where Cherokee Indians were rounded‐up and walked from their Smoky Mountains homes to Oklahoma, had devastating consequences for the South's indigenous peoples. Nonetheless, many families escaped and several tribal groups clung near ancestral lands. The largest historic tribes now in the South are the Eastern Band of the Cherokee along the Blue Ridge in southwestern North Carolina and the Choctaw in central Mississippi.

Sharecropping

Defined as a form of agricultural tenancy where the tenant pays for use of the land with a predetermined share of his crop rather than with a cash rent. Following emancipation, sharecropping became the means to survival and the way of life for most blacks, just as it was for many poor whites who had lost their land. Sharecroppers were frequently in debt to the landowner (just as the landowner was in debt to bankers and merchants), and they were not permitted to leave the sharecropping arrangement until debts were paid. By the time World War I started, black poverty and the near‐subsistence economy of sharecropping had merged with Jim Crow laws and violence to push blacks (and poor whites) out of the South.

Has government intervention served to stimulate the South's economy? Explain the initiatives and their impacts.

Government intervention has served to stimulate the South's economy. The Agricultural Adjustment Acts (1935) provided the main stimulus to the market growth that transformed the South's economy by adjusting wages and prices in agriculture to mirror industrial levels and improved the market for manufactured goods.

Blue Ridge

The Blue Ridge is the Appalachians' eastern‐most topographic belt. Composed of ancient Precambrian rocks, the Blue Ridge has been severely eroded since tectonic plate collisions in the Atlantic crumpled North America's eastern coast beginning 460 million years ago. Erosive activity has been greatest along the Blue Ridge's eastern edge. The Blue Ridge's elevation and width increase from north to south. South of Roanoke, Virginia, the Blue Ridge is the most mountainous part of the Appalachians. In Pennsylvania and Virginia, the Blue Ridge is a thin ridge between the Piedmont and the Great Valley to the west. Along the North Carolina‐Tennessee border, the Blue Ridge broadens to a width of nearly 150 kilometers (95 miles).

Transportation Shadow

The Bypassed East lies in a transportation shadow that has slowed regional economic growth because accessibility is key to a place's growth prospects. The Bypassed East remains in a transportation shadow near some of the world's busiest routeways, but bypassed in favor of alternative paths providing more effective penetration to North America's interior.

Cotton

Cotton production, initially concentrated on the Sea Islands between Charleston and Spanish‐held Florida, slowly gained importance until about 1800. Then, its production spread inland with enough speed and dominance to become "King Cotton." Cotton production continued to dominate the South's economy.

Overburden

Defined as material covering a mineral seam or bed that must be removed before the mineral can be removed in strip mining. Area mining is used in locations with flatter terrain, such as in southeastern Ohio. Area stripping is still done on the surface, but the scale of the operation and contiguous area is much greater where the land is flat. Given a gently rolling parcel of land, the stripping proceeds via making a series of parallel cuts across a wide area. With each cut made to access the coal seam, the overburden is cast behind to fill in the previous cut. Massive scoop shovels or tremendous draglines, each as large as multistoried buildings, removed the overburden and dug out the coal seam. The coal in Ohio mined by this method was high in sulfur and is no longer extracted. Mountain‐top removal is used extensively in spite of strong opposition from those who see the destructive consequences on the landscape. Best suited for extremely hilly areas in West Virginia and parts of eastern Kentucky, mountain‐top removal is similar to contour mining, but at a much exaggerated scale. In this case, virtually all of the overburden is cast downslope and the hill is significantly flattened.

De jure Segregation

Defined as the spatial and social separation of populations that occurs as a consequence of legal measures. Although a nineteenth‐century Supreme Court ruling concluded racial separation was legal if equality was ensured, de cure segregation did not lead to separate but equal facilities and equal opportunities for whites and blacks. Whites presumed themselves superior to blacks and used the force of law to institutionalize this belief.

Mowhawk Corridor

East‐west routes between the northeastern seaboard and the Great Lakes followed the Mohawk Corridor and the flat lake shore of Lake Ontario, thereby avoiding the northern Appalachian Uplands.

The Cumberland Gap

Famous pathways through the region, such as the Cumberland Gap at the western tip of Virginia and the Wilderness Road from there to the Bluegrass Basin of Kentucky, were winding and difficult. As a consequence, travel was avoided whenever possible.

The Wilderness Road

Famous pathways through the region, such as the Cumberland Gap at the western tip of Virginia and the Wilderness Road from there to the Bluegrass Basin of Kentucky, were winding and difficult. As a consequence, travel was avoided whenever possible.

The Maritimes

Former name for Canada's eastern provinces, it was changed to the Atlantic provinces to reflect Newfoundland's incorporation into the country.

Cash Crop Farming

In timeless fashion, economic goals motivated European exploration, not human curiosity and a search for knowledge. The greatest long‐term return was generated by establishing heavily organized cash crop farming. Among the region's traditional cash crops, cotton is still the most important. Other significant, traditionally grown crops include tobacco, sugarcane, peanuts, and rice. But all of these crops, except rice, were under strict federal acreage controls after the 1930s and 1940s, with rice under controls after about 1951. As a result, growers reserved their best land for cash crop production and, total output remained high. Within the South, soybeans have replaced cotton as the most valuable cash crop produced.

Avalon Peninsula

Is located in Newfoundland.

Annapolis Valley

It is nestled in southwestern Nova Scotia, it is protected from cold northwest winds by a low mountain ridge, and it may be the oldest of the region's attractive agricultural areas. The valley, about 130 kilometers by 15 kilometers (80 miles by 9 miles), has long been one of Canada's major apple‐producing areas. But in the past three decades, apple production declined while blueberry output rose. Today, Nova Scotia as a whole produces over 40 million pounds of the tiny fruit. Farmers have also diversified in recent years, shifting from apples to produce and dairy farming to meet demand in nearby Halifax, the Atlantic Provinces' largest urban center. A growing interest in wine and wine tourism has also led to an increase in grape production in the region.

Anthracite

Was the earliest Appalachian coal mined from the Ridge and Valley province's northern tip in Pennsylvania. It is much harder and lower in moisture content than bituminous coal. The anthracite seams (as part of the Ridge and Valley) are fractured and folded. It was widely used to heat homes because it is smokeless when burned. It used to be used to smelt iron ore. Its production grew slowly until the 1920s because it was an economic disadvantage.

Plantation Agriculture

Large‐scale plantation agriculture required a sizable annual investment, and much of that investment was labor. Low population densities and cheap land in the South led to the heavy use of slave labor. Poor internal drainage, frequent flooding by the Mississippi, and the presence of Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians kept European settlement tentative in the Delta for many years. However, the lure of fertile soil, proximity to river trade, and the profits to be made from cotton gradually drew plantation agriculture into this hazardous region after the 1830s.

What are the major factors that have limited manufacturing in New England?

Limited substantial mineral deposits, relative isolation, and a small local market. Manufacturing has been replaced in some areas by tourism.

Halifax

Located in Nova Scotia, it is the largest city in the Bypassed East, with a metropolitan population of 414,400 residents in 2014. Halifax, at the Canadian National Railroad's eastern terminus, is Canada's second leading Atlantic Ocean port, following Montreal. During the winter, Halifax's ice‐free harbor is busiest when Montreal's harbor is restricted by the cold. Halifax developed a diversified economic base as a governmental, financial, and commercial center and is the Atlantic Provinces' most prosperous city. It used to be called the Gray City because of its drab climate and architecture, but new construction and renovation since 1960 has greatly changed the city's atmosphere and appearance, which means the former nickname no longer applies.

St. John

Located on Newfoundland's eastern Avalon Peninsula. Has an excellent harbor, but is too far east to serve as a major Canadian port of entry, but it serves as Canada's principal deep-sea fishing port. Usually ice free, the harbor serves as an important winter facility for fishing fleets from many countries as they fish the offshore banks. St John is Canada's oldest incorporated city, and boomed after 1890 when the Canadian Pacific Railway extension across Maine was completed. St. John is most active in the winter.

Ozark Tristate District

Located where Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri meet. It has long been a major lead mining area.

Grand Banks

Location of Hibernia, where major petroleum and natural gas reserves were discovered. In 1997, the worlds largest oil drilling platform, the Hibernia, began production and has produced over 900 million barrels of oil and has an estimated 1.6 billion barrels to still be extracted.

Cumberland Plateau

Name for the Great Plateau in Tennessee.

Milksheds

Nodal regions from which a city's population is supplied the fresh milk it consumes. Fresh milk is a relatively high-bulk, low-cost product that spoils easily and cannot be stored for extended periods, which means urban areas must unusually reply on nearby sources of fresh milk.

Marble

Northern New England's igneous and metamorphic rocks make the area an important producer of building stone. Numerous granite quarries are located in central Vermont and along Maine's central coast. Vermont is also the United States' leading marble‐producing state. The economic value of these rocks is small compared to minerals industries in other parts of North America, but they constitute an important part of the two states' economies, especially Vermont's.

Lake Champlain Milkshed

The Lake Champlain Lowland is a major supplier of fresh milk to Megalopolis due ton its close proximity. It is part of both New York City's and Boston's milksheds due to its proximity to Megalopolis. The Lowland has a substantial market advantage for milk sales over more distant sources. The Lowland has mild and moist summers, which is a climatic condition that encourages fodder crop growth and suits dairy cows well.

Adirondack Mountains, New York

Part of Canadian Shield - Severely eroded by continental glaciation.

Blue Ridge Lowlands

Physiographically, most of the Bypassed East is part of the Appalachian Highlands' northeastern extension. However, the northern Appalachians' structure bears little surface resemblance to the southern Appalachians' clearly delineated Blue Ridge‐Ridge and Valley‐Appalachian Plateau sequence.

Birmingham Differential

Pittsburgh's United States Steel Company imposed on all users of Alabama steel what came to be called the Birmingham differential, or a pricing policy of "Pittsburgh plus." Under this company policy, consumers of Alabama steel paid the price of steel at Pittsburgh plus $3.00 per ton ($2.72 per metric ton) plus regular freight costs from Birmingham. Thus, Atlanta firms found it cheaper to order steel from Pittsburgh than from Birmingham, even though a Pittsburgh‐Atlanta shipment traveled more than four times the distance than a shipment from Alabama.

Price Edward Island

Prince Edward Island's economy is overwhelmingly agricultural. More than 42 percent of the province's 5660 square kilometer (2038 square mile) land area was in farms in 2011, with over 69 percent of the farmland in crops. PEI's rolling, sloping land of small, green farms is among the most beautiful agricultural landscapes in the United States and Canada. Most PEI crops cannot bear the high cost of shipping to mainland markets and are consumed locally by the island's 146,447 inhabitants (2015). Tourists visiting PEI are often surprised by and enjoy the picturesque, faintly worn appearance of the farmsteads. Declining demand for PEI's principal seed potato crop due to increased competition from mainland sources, and too many farms too small to be profitable in a modern farm economy, lie behind PEI's landscape appearance. Its comfortable, lived‐in aura reflects a stagnant agricultural economy that no longer generates sales sufficient for investments beyond simple maintenance.

Alabama's 'Black Belt'

Quite likely, blacks lived in almost every county outside the southern Appalachian highlands, but they comprised a large proportion of the local population only in original plantation areas like south‐central and tidewater Virginia, northeastern North Carolina, and tidewater Georgia and South Carolina. Their numbers were high, too, in the new lands most suited to large‐scale cotton production, such as Piedmont South Carolina, the inner Coastal Plain of Georgia, Alabama's Black Belt, the Mississippi valley, the loess plains south of Memphis, and the black‐soil prairies of eastern Texas.

Labrador Current

This cold current flows south along the Bypassed East's oceanic margin. Contributes to dense fog and overcast skies along the Bypassed East's southern coastline as it is passed over by the Gulf Stream's warmer waters as they cool. This creates agricultural problems for the region because dense fog and heavy cloud cover cool the temperatures further in the summer. Southward flowing along coast, chills waters, moderates costal temperatures vs. inland locations, and causes frequent clouds and fog.

What were the original objectives of the Appalachian Regional Commission? Discuss the major goals of the ARC.

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was formed under the Appalachian Redevelopment Act (1965) as an extension of the Area Redevelopment Act (1961). The original objective of the ARC was to improve Appalachia's highways. The major goals of the ARC was to improve the regions economy, decrease local isolation, and encourage the location of new industries.

Black Codes

Reinforced sharecropping's bonds for the black population.

Jim Crow Laws

Restrictive, segregation laws that required racial separation in Southern life. Institutionalized alternative to slavery that established virtually total legal separation. By the time World War I started, black poverty and the near‐subsistence economy of sharecropping had merged with Jim Crow laws and violence to push blacks (and poor whites) out of the South.

Altamaha River

Rivers navigable to small boats meander across the South's Atlantic coastal plain, that low, level swath of land between the sea and the higher, hillier Piedmont. Because the navigable rivers permit crops to be carried to market ports easily, settlement expanded freely, particularly between the James River in Virginia and the Altamaha River in Georgia.

James River

Rivers navigable to small boats meander across the South's Atlantic coastal plain, that low, level swath of land between the sea and the higher, hillier Piedmont. Because the navigable rivers permit crops to be carried to market ports easily, settlement expanded freely, particularly between the James River in Virginia and the Altamaha River in Georgia.

Arkansas River Navigation System

The Arkansas River Navigation System is the third governmental intervention program to address Appalachia's problems. Constructed during the 1960s and 1970s and dedicated in 1971, the Arkansas River Navigation System established a 3‐meter (9‐foot) navigation canal up the Arkansas River from its confluence with the Mississippi River to Catoosa, Oklahoma, just downstream from Tulsa. Barge traffic increased as a result, and hydroelectric power is produced at dams constructed to stabilize the river's flow.

Economies of Scale

Savings achieved in the cost of production by larger enterprises because the cost of initial investment can be defrayed across a greater number of producing units.

Evangelical Protestant Religions

Small, white clapboard churches lit by ordinary glass windows and decorated with straight‐back chairs flanking a plain altar still dot the countryside. Sometimes led by preachers whose sole authority lies in being "called," they consistently draw congregations every Sunday from the scattered rural and small‐town populations.These religions included Protestant congregations (pentecostals), Methodist congregations, Episcopal congregations, and Baptists.

Labrador

The Atlantic Provinces' largest mining operation is based on development of iron‐ore deposits in Labrador near the Quebec border. Although these deposits are in Newfoundland, they are not in the Bypassed East and have little impact on the region. Ore is shipped south by rail to a railhead at Sept Isles, Quebec. There it is loaded on lake vessels and carried up the St. Lawrence River. This mining's only benefit to Newfoundland is from the tax collected.

Tobacco

Southern cash crop and major contributor to Southern industry. As early as 1612, tobacco was grown along Virginia's James River and in northeastern North Carolina. Cigarette manufacturing sprang up in the tobacco‐growing regions of North Carolina and Virginia.

How did the early plantation economy impact on the spatial organization of the South?

Spatial organization was based on the early plantation economy. Plantations were high-volume business enterprises whose laborers sketched the outline for the South's distinct agrarian culture and sculpted its spatial organization.

Stock-Car Racing

Stock‐car racing, a highly popular "good‐old‐boy" tradition, had a Southern concentration until late in the 1990s. Indeed, this sport is still more intensely associated with the South than with any other region in the country, though its popularity has spread across the United States. This expression of Southern culture originated almost entirely in North and South Carolina, ostensibly born from moonshine runners who once raced their cargoes along back roads at night from Appalachia's foothills to urban centers on the Piedmont.

Stonewall Jackson

Stonewall Jackson repeatedly surprised Union forces during the Civil War with his ability to charge across the Blue Ridge quickly with unexpectedly large numbers of men.

Surface Mining

Surface mining is more prevalent in Appalachia's central region, primarily eastern Kentucky, western Virginia, and southern West Virginia. Three principal surface mining techniques are used in the region: contour mining, area mining, and mountaintop removal. Surface (or strip) mining is far less expensive than underground mining as long as the coal seams are relatively shallow. With this method, large machines remove rocks above a horizontal coal seam and then lift out the uncovered coal. In the case of contour stripping, the waste rock, called overburden, is simply dumped down the slope. Over time, strip mine extraction along seams on a hillside creates a peculiar, stepped appearance that looks from a distance as though a series of boxes were piled on top of one another, each smaller than the one below.

Strip Mining

Surface mining.

Crop-Lien System

System that allowed farmers to get more credit. They used harvested crops to pay back their loans.

CHAPTER 7

THE BYPASSED EAST

Adirondacks

The Adirondack Mountains are located in norther New York and are rounded mountains rather than angular due to severe erosion caused by continental glaciation during the Pleistocene. As a result of erosion, elevations throughout New England seldom top 1500 meters (4600 feet). The Adirondacks have substantial iron ore reserves remaining after being mined for more than 100 years.

Green Mountains

The Green Mountains are a major mountain area for New England and are located in Vermont. They have a lover elevation, less than 1500 meters (4600 feet0, and were completely covered by ice, meaning their peaks are well-rounded.

New South

The New South is unfolding from the old South. Its present spatial and regional characteristics are built on patterns that evolved over decades and, in some ways, over centuries. The key to recent changes lies in the South's gradually fading regional isolation. Prior to World War II, most of the South's people and certainly their leaders appeared to believe the region had successfully seceded from the United States decades earlier. After the later 1930s, however, and especially since the end of World War II, trends and pressures external to the South infiltrated the region and broke down its isolation. Some changes were caused by events affecting the entire nation's economy and are not particular to the South. Other changes followed from purposeful federal intervention in the South's affairs. And some aspects of the New South have come about as the South's distinctive culture began to mature.

Scots-Irish

The North American descendants of Protestants from Scotland who migrated to northern Ireland in the 1600s. By the late eighteenth century, Europeans began settling in surrounding highland valleys and coves. For reasons that are still in historical dispute, the Scots‐Irish played a major role in this movement. Some assign cultural motivations, arguing that these people were particularly footloose and independent, constantly searching for freedom on the frontier. Others maintain that the group represented the main immigrant segment at the time the coves were settled; hence, they were most likely to contribute to frontier settlement. Whatever the case, the Scots-Irish, joined by many English and Germans, dominated early European settlement in the highlands.

Solid South

The Solid South was a label used for decades to indicate that the entire region voted as a bloc, often in direct contradiction to national trends. Southern voters associated the Civil War and Reconstruction with the North and the Republican Party, so Southern whites became stubborn opposition Democrats. Long after blacks were disenfranchised and the Northern tenor of both parties changed, the South continued to vote Democratic, at least at the local level.

White Mountains

The White Mountains are a major mountain area for New England and located in New Hampshire. The White Mountains rise to 1900 meters (6200 feet), with slopes that are rugged and steep because they rose above the areas affected by glaciation.

Yazoo-Mississippi Delta

The Yazoo‐Mississippi Delta is a microcosm of the Old South even though its history is modified by its physical geography. The Delta occupies an easter portion of the central Mississippi River's alluvial floodplain. It is an almost flat landscape, with small local variations in relief. Filled in since the last Ice Age by glacial outwash and flood‐deposited alluvium, the Delta drops only about one‐third of a meter (1 foot) of elevation for every 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) of the 320 kilometers (200 miles) between Memphis and Vicksburg. The Yazoo‐Mississippi Delta is very rich agriculturally, increasingly diverse economically and possesses significant residual poverty (especially among its majority black population) in spite of the presence of both old and new wealth.

Pulpwood

The abundant pine forests of the South produce about two‐thirds of U.S. pulpwood. Pulp mills transform wood waste to pulp through a process that requires wastewater aeration.

What is the ethnic heritage of Appalachia and the Ozarks?

The ethnic heritage of Appalachia and the Ozarks is primarily Northwestern European; English German, Scots-Irish.

Agricultural Adjustments Acts

The federal Agricultural Adjustment Acts (1935 and later) provided the main stimulus to the market growth that transformed the South's economy. Southern per capita incomes in the early 1930s were about one‐third the national average, and the region's economic structure had changed very little since Reconstruction, a full 60 years earlier. The Acts were aimed at farmers throughout the country, but their consequences for the largely rural South were especially strong. Before the Agricultural Adjustment Acts took effect, farm product prices were set by supply and demand in the international marketplace. For the South, this meant that prices for Southern cotton, for example, fluctuated according to production successes or failures in the world's cotton‐growing areas. More importantly, farm labor in the cotton South (basically tenant and sharecrop farmers) was in competition with hard‐pressed cotton producers along the Nile or Indus rivers, or elsewhere in what was still a colonialized world economy. Agricultural wages and prices in the United States were adjusted upward under the Agricultural Adjustment Acts to reflect more accurately national industrial wage differentials. The result was a sharply improved market in the South for manufactured goods, and this initiated the upward development spiral still affecting the region.

Port Royal/France

The first European settlement in Canada was opened in 1605 by the French at Port Royal.

Atlanta-Birmingham-Chattanooga Triangle

The greatest manufacturing employment growth in the South occurred in the Piedmont sections of Virginia and the Carolinas and in the Atlanta‐Birmingham‐Chattanooga triangle. Although a small and scattered iron industry had existed for decades, iron‐making technology improved enough by the 1870s to excite the rise of regionally important iron production centers around Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama. Local capital and entrepreneurial initiative help explain Chattanooga's rise, but Birmingham also benefited from a large, nearby deposit of high‐quality coking coal. These two cities, together with Atlanta, formed a vital and linked industrial triangle in the South by 1900. The Atlanta‐Birmingham‐Chattanooga triangle was centrally located in the South and could have been a more important industrial focus than it was for the region, broadly improving the South's labor skills, income levels, and general economic welfare. But the triangle's potential was dampened by corporate manipulation of the steel market.

Allegheny Front

The higher Boston Mountains immediately north of the Arkansas River valley function as an equivalent to the Allegheny Front with the broad Ozark Plateau echoing the jumbled topography of the Appalachian Plateau. The Appalachian Plateau is the region's western‐most province - known as the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee and the Allegheny Plateau from Kentucky northward, the Appalachian Plateau is bounded on the east by a steep scarp called the Allegheny Front. This scarp was the United States' most significant barrier to early westward settlement expansion.

What were the initial goals of the Tennessee Valley Authority? Discuss the major contributions of the TVA.

The initial goals of the Tennessee Valley Authority were to develop the Tennessee River for navigation. This would help improve economic conditions throughout the entire Tennessee valley by harnessing the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The TVA improved navigation on the river by building a barge channel and constructing/purchasing dams to guarantee stream flow. Some of the major contributions of the TVA include: improved navigation, flood control, cheap water transport, power production, erosion control, maintaining public land/shoreline, important regional employer, and it contributed to the areas significant manufacturing growth.

What are the key agricultural products of the region?

The key agricultural products of the region include livestock, fodder crops, tobacco, marijuana, apples, tomatoes, cabbage, corn, hay, and dairy production.

What are the major areas and agricultural products of the Bypassed East?

The major areas and agricultural products of the Bypassed East are St. John-Aroostock Valley (potatoes), Lake Champlain Lowland (milk shed), Prince Edward Island (seed potatoes), and Annapolis River Valley (apples).

What and where are the major areas of mineral production in the Bypassed East?

The major areas of mineral production in the Bypassed East are petroleum and natural gas in Hibernia, iron ore in the Adirondacks and Labrador, coal in Nova Scotia, Granite (building stone) in Vermont and Maine, and marble (building stone) in Vermont.

What are the major changes that have occurred in the South's economic structure since the mid-1930s?

The major changes that have occurred in the South's economic structure since the mid-1930s are: Agriculture declined as a percentage of the economy, Agriculture diversified with traditional crops and new crops, Mechanization of agriculture, End of sharecropping, Increase in farm size, Urbanization, Changes in manufacturing, New consumer goods manufacturers, Banking centers, Need for more skilled labor and education, Changes in employment structure, Federal government intervention (Agricultural Adjustment Acts 1935 and Brown v. Board of Education 1954), Cultural integration (changes in regional distribution of black population and new immigrant groups).

What are the major components of "Southern culture?"

The major components of Southern culture include Agrarian, Strong Rural Provincialism, Lack of Influence from Non-British Sources, Persistent Adherence to Various Protestant Religions, Amalgamation of Southern White and African Cultures, and Antiblack/Pro-Slavery Attitude.

What are the mining activities in the region?

The mining activities in the region include bituminous coal mining, anthracite mining, lead mining, oil drilling, zinc production, copper mining.

Cajunes

The name Cajun derives from Acadian, for these Catholic, French‐speaking people descend from French exiles who left Acadia (now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) when the non‐Catholic British took the region from the French in 1763. The Cajuns stayed in Louisiana after France sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803. Today known for their French dialect, spicy food, and music, Cajuns are a distinctive, if localized, part of the South's culture.

Precambrian Rock

The oldest rock, generally more than 600 million years old.

Discuss the push and pull factors that led to the tremendous out-migration of Black people from the South.

The push factors that led to the tremendous out-migration of Black people from the South include Jim Crow Laws, violence, subsistence economic conditions, severe boll weevil infestation, and the war in Europe that cut off the market for cotton. The pull factors that led to the tremendous out-migration of Black people from the South include jobs in industry (decline in immigration from Europe), opportunity for a better life, and positive information/feedback from previous migrants.

Appalachian Plateau

The region's western most province. Known as the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee and the Allegheny Plateau from Kentucky northward, the Appalachian Plateau is bounded on the east by a steep scarp called the Allegheny Front. This scarp was the United States' most significant barrier to early westward settlement expansion. Its topography was formed as streams eroded the interior lowland's uplifted horizontal beds. Erosion created a rugged, jumbled topography, with steep, sharp ridges bordering narrow, curving stream valleys. A more gentle and rounded landscape appearance resulted in the north where the Plateau's northern portion in New York and Pennsylvania—the Allegheny Plateau—was smoothed by Pleistocene glaciation. Except for limited areas, such as portions of the Cumberland Plateau, level land is scarce on the Appalachian Plateau. Most communities are squeezed into small spaces in the stream valleys.

What are the three major physiographic provinces in Appalachia? What are the criteria for this regional scheme?

The three major physiographic provinces in Appalachia include the Blue Ridge province, the Ridge and Valley province, and the Appalachian Plateau province. The criteria for this regional scheme include relatively low mountains that impede transportation and promote isolation, erosive activity, and human geography.

General Farming

The typical agriculture in the region is called general farming, and Appalachia is the United States' major general‐farming region. This means that no crop, farm product, or combination of products dominates the local farm economy. Extensive animal husbandry is the most common and probably best agricultural use of the region's steep slopes. Specialty crops, such as tobacco, apples, tomatoes, and cabbage, are locally important in some valley areas, with small burley tobacco plots being most common in parts of the southern Appalachians. Corn, normally used on farms for animal fodder, remains the regions leading row crop.

Aroostrook Valley

This area in northeastern Maine and western New Brunswick is the Bypassed East's newest major agricultural area. Commercial farming became important here only late in the nineteenth century, but this was soon one of the leading potato‐producing areas in both the United States and Canada. The valley's silty loam soils are ideal for potato growth, and the short growing season encourages a superior crop used widely elsewhere as seed potatoes. Large‐scale, mechanized farming predominates. The demand for seasonal labor leads to heavy but only periodic employment of French Canadian farm workers.

Ridge and Valley

West of the Blue Ridge lies the Appalachians' Ridge and Valley section. The Ridge and Valley is the easternmost portion of a great expanse of sedimentary rock beds lying between the Blue Ridge and the Rocky Mountains. The eastern sediments were severely folded and faulted to form the Ridge and Valley's characteristically linear topography. The Ridge and Valley is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide on the average. Ridges composed of relatively resistant shale and sandstone follow the Appalachians' northeast‐southwest trend and rise 100 to 200 meters (300 to 600 feet) above intervening valleys. Through the ridges, rivers cut a few gaps across the area's grain. Intervening valleys several miles wide lie between the ridges. The valleys, many floored with a limestone sedimentary layer, contain some of Appalachia's best farmland. When limestone is broken down by erosion, minerals—like lime—needed for productive farming in the eastern United States become available in the soil.