Community and Change in the North Carolina Mountains

Community and Change in the North Carolina Mountains PDF

Author:

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2006-05-02

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0786425938

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Oral history and memoirs preserve much more than a single event. They record information about a time and a particular way of life. Buying a loaf of bread for a dime and a 25-pound bag of flour for a dollar, walking 9 1⁄2 miles in 5 hours, watching the Cove Creek gym (and several school buses) go up in flames--these are just a few of the tales related in this collection of oral and written histories. From boating to finding a first job, from riding a pony to school to joining the Navy, this book contains dozens of memories gathered from the residents of western Watauga County, North Carolina. Concentrating primarily on the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, these stories focus on the elements of everyday life in a mountain community. They deal with both traditional rural activities--such as berry picking, soap making, trading and bartering--and universal experiences such as school days and dating. The book includes a special section on the war experiences of Watauga County residents both at home and overseas. Contemporary photographs and an index are included.

Community and Change in the North Carolina Mountains

Community and Change in the North Carolina Mountains PDF

Author: Nannie Greene

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 9781476602172

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"This book contains personal memoirs gathered by interviews and submissions from the residents of western Watauga County, North Carolina. Concentrating primarily on the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, these stories focus on the elements of everyday life in a mountain community. The book includes a special section on the war experiences of Watauga County residents"--Provided by publisher.

Wild North Carolina

Wild North Carolina PDF

Author: David Blevins

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2011-04-04

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0807877794

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Celebrating the beauty, diversity, and significance of the state's natural landscapes, Wild North Carolina provides an engaging, beautifully illustrated introduction to North Carolina's interconnected webs of plant and animal life. From dunes and marshes to high mountain crags, through forests, swamps, savannas, ponds, pocosins, and flatrocks, David Blevins and Michael Schafale reveal in words and photographs natural patterns of the landscape that will help readers see familiar places in a new way and new places with a sense of familiarity. Wild North Carolina introduces the full range of the state's diverse natural communities, each brought to life with compelling accounts of their significance and meaning, arresting photographs featuring broad vistas and close-ups, and details on where to go to experience them first hand. Blevins and Schafale provide nature enthusiasts of all levels with the insights they need to value the state's natural diversity, highlighting the reasons plants and animals are found where they are, as well as the challenges of conserving these special places.

Blue Ridge Commons

Blue Ridge Commons PDF

Author: Kathryn Newfont

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0820341258

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"In the late twentieth century, residents of the Blue Ridge mountains in western North Carolina fiercely resisted certain environmental efforts, even while launching aggressive initiatives of their own. Kathryn Newfont provides context for those events by examining the environmental history of this region over the course of three hundred years, identifying what she calls commons environmentalism--a cultural strain of conservation in American history that has gone largely unexplored. Efforts in the 1970s to expand federal wilderness areas in the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests generated strong opposition. For many mountain residents the idea of unspoiled wilderness seemed economically unsound, historically dishonest, and elitist. Newfont shows that local people's sense of commons environmentalism required access to the forests that they viewed as semipublic places for hunting, fishing, and working. Policies that removed large tracts from use were perceived as 'enclosure' and resisted. Incorporating deep archival work and years of interviews and conversations with Appalachian residents, Blue Ridge Commons reveals a tradition of people building robust forest protection movements on their own terms."--p. [4] of cover.

The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains

The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains PDF

Author: Brent Martin

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2019-06-17

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1439667144

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Explore this section of the Appalachians in these essays examining its history, its wilderness, and what change means for its future. In the eighteenth century, naturalist and artist William Bartram traveled in the Blue Ridge Mountains and spent time documenting both plant life and the customs of the Middle Town Cherokees. Since that time, men and women like Bartram have journeyed through Western North Carolina’s wildest and most remote places and written about their experiences. The essays in this volume compare the present day to those historical journeys and explore the idea of wilderness and what change means for the future of the people and the species who live in the mountains. Join local writer and guide Brent Martin on a journey through this incredible landscape. “With unflinching candor, Brent Martin celebrates the heartbreaking beauty of Appalachia. He wrings out every sensory and emotional detail in these passionate, probing essays that explore the wild within. These aren’t lyrical paeans to nature; they are gritty, gutsy journeys into the rugged, remote landscapes of the human heart. Immersed in mountain tradition, culture, and community, he wanders deep and alone into the wild to find what remains. Martin’s powerful, masterful writing shines with real, hard-earned hope.” —Will Harlan, author of the New York Times bestseller Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America “If you love the Southern Appalachians and Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard and Gary Snyder, read this beautifully written and deeply thought-provoking book.” —Charles Frazier, author of the New York Times bestseller Cold Mountain “A thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of essays from one of Appalachia’s staunchest proponents of wilderness and one of its most devoted writers. Brent Martin is a preeminent naturalist and a scholar of the history of his place. This book is deeply personal, highly instructive, far-reaching.” —Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood “A loving a troubling portrait of the southern Appalachians—the rich history and complexity of ecosystems alongside the damage we’ve wrought on them.” —Catherine Reid, author of Falling into Place: An Intimate Geography of Home

School Segregation in Western North Carolina

School Segregation in Western North Carolina PDF

Author: Betty Jamerson Reed

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2011-10-14

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0786487089

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Although African Americans make up a small portion of the population of western North Carolina, they have contributed much to the area's physical and cultural landscape. This enlightening study surveys the region's segregated black schools from Reconstruction through integration and reveals the struggles, achievements, and ultimate victory of a unified community intent on achieving an adequate education for its children. The book documents the events that initially brought blacks into Appalachia, early efforts to educate black children, the movement to acquire and improve schools, and the long process of desegregation. Personnel issues, curriculum, extracurricular activities, sports, consolidation, and construction also receive attention. Featuring commentary from former students, teachers and parents, this work weighs the value and achievement of rural segregated black schools as well as their significance for educators today.

Seeing Like a Commons

Seeing Like a Commons PDF

Author: Joshua Lockyer

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1498592899

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In Seeing Like a Commons, Joshua Lockyer demonstrates how a growing group of people have, over the last eighty years, deliberately built Celo Community, a communal settlement on 1,200 acres of commonly owned land in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Joshua Lockyer highlights the potential for intentional communities like Celo to raise awareness of global interconnectivity and structural inequalities, enabling people and communities to become better stewards and citizens of both local landscapes and global commons.

Creating the Land of the Sky

Creating the Land of the Sky PDF

Author: Richard D. Starnes

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2010-03-12

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0817356045

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A sophisticated inquiry into tourism's social and economic power across the South. In the early 19th century, planter families from South Carolina, Georgia, and eastern North Carolina left their low-country estates during the summer to relocate their households to vacation homes in the mountains of western North Carolina. Those unable to afford the expense of a second home relaxed at the hotels that emerged to meet their needs. This early tourist activity set the stage for tourism to become the region's New South industry. After 1865, the development of railroads and the bugeoning consumer culture led to the expansion of tourism across the whole region. Richard Starnes argues that western North Carolina benefited from the romanticized image of Appalachia in the post-Civil War American consciousness. This image transformed the southern highlands into an exotic travel destination, a place where both climate and culture offered visitors a myriad of diversions. This depiction was futher bolstered by partnerships between state and federal agencies, local boosters, and outside developers to create the atrtactions necessary to lure tourists to the region. As tourism grew, so did the tension between leaders in the industry and local residents. The commodification of regional culture, low-wage tourism jobs, inflated land prices, and negative personal experiences bred no small degree of animosity among mountain residents toward visitors. Starnes's study provides a better understanding of the significant role that tourism played in shaping communities across the South.