Appalachian History If you stand in Vardy Valley on a foggy morning, the mountains almost fold in on you. Newman’s Ridge rises to the south, Powell Mountain to the north, and the narrow strip of bottomland along Blackwater Creek feels like its own small world. For more than two centuries, outsiders have looked into that world and tried to give a name to the people who lived there.
Appalachian Figures On a Nashville night in 1948 a young woman from Perry County, Kentucky tagged along to the wrestling matches at the old Hippodrome Arena. She was not a fan. Her sister sewed jackets for the wrestlers and had talked her into going. During the women’s bout one of the wrestlers, Dot Dotson, took a spill out of the ring and landed squarely in the visitor’s lap.
Appalachian History On a map, the Cumberland Gap Tunnel looks simple enough, just a short segment of divided highway where U S 25E disappears under Cumberland Mountain and reappears on the other side. On the ground, it is something stranger.
Repurposed Appalachia High above Pineville, on the spine of Pine Mountain, a long rust colored chain hangs between two blocks of sandstone. From town the links look like a line of stitches trying to hold the cliff together. At the overlook itself the effect is stranger. The rock feels solid underfoot. The drop to the Cumberland River and U.S. 25E feels anything but.
Repurposed Appalachia On a summer evening in Jenkins, headlights snake up Amphitheater Road as families ease their cars onto the gravel lot beneath Pine Mountain. Crickets tune up in the tree line.
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Appalachian Figures On Berger Street in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, a dark brick church rises from ground once worked by German Catholic farmers. Sacred Heart of Jesus Church began in the 1870s as a mission for immigrants who arrived through the Cincinnati Homestead Society.
Appalachian Figures On a November night in 1961, a six foot guard in a Saints jersey kept firing jumpers against the Kansas City Steers in the short lived American Basketball League. By the time the buzzer sounded, Whitey Bell had poured in 30 points for San Francisco, one of the highest individual totals in the league that winter.
Appalachian Figures In the spring of 1919 a baby boy arrived in a railroad town that straddled the foothills of the Cumberland Plateau. He would grow up to play end for Auburn, serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War, and catch passes in the early years of the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.
Appalachian Figures On a rise above the Tug Fork at Buskirk Cemetery in Pike County, Kentucky, a tall stone bears the face of William Sidney “Sid” Hatfield. The inscription remembers him as a defender of working people who was gunned down on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch and links his death to the miners’ rebellion at Blair Mountain.
Appalachian History On the north side of East Bernstadt, a single CSX main line slips into the side of the hill and vanishes. The bore is not long by modern standards, only a short black throat cut into sandstone and clay, but it carries a heavy railroad.