Appalachian History Series Why the cove mattered In the spring of 1864 Ulysses S. Grant pushed on all fronts in Virginia. One prong sent Brigadier General George Crook to wreck the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad at Dublin Depot and to burn the big railroad bridge over the New River at Central Depot, today’s Radford.

Appalachian History Series Why Marion mattered In the last winter of the war, southwestern Virginia still fed the Confederacy’s armies with salt from Saltville and lead from the mines along the upper New River. Those resources moved over the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad through Wytheville and Marion. Any serious Federal raid into the mountains would try to break that industrial chain.

Appalachian History What happened At daybreak on April 30, 1863, Union Col. Abel D. Streight’s provisional brigade was pushing east along Sand Mountain when Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s pursuing cavalry struck the column’s rear at Day’s Gap in present-day Cullman County. The Federals stood, repulsed the first assaults, and kept moving.

Appalachian History Setting the stage in Western North Carolina By the spring of 1865, war in North Carolina had fractured into scattered columns, couriers, and rumors. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had agreed to surrender terms to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman on April 26 at Bennett Place, yet in the mountains the situation remained fluid. Confederate forces in the Western District under Brig. Gen.

Appalachian History Series Evarts High School stood at the heart of Clover Fork for most of the twentieth century, first as the community’s own secondary school, then as one of three high schools in the Harlan County district. The Wildcats carried blue and gold in halls filled with class banners, pep club signs, and KHSAA schedules.

Appalachian History A store that anchored a town When Pocahontas Fuel Company built out its Boissevain operation in Tazewell County, it gave the camp a brick centerpiece that was part supermarket, part office, and part civic hall. Period photographs from the Norfolk & Western Railroad collections confirm a substantial commissary complex standing at Boissevain in 1931 and again in December 1935, the very years that defined the camp’s heyday.

Appalachian History Series A company town takes shape In 1916 Pocahontas Fuel established a new camp on the Guyandotte and named it for company president Isaac T. Mann. Within a short time Itmann gained pre cut houses, two early frame stores, a theater, and segregated schools. The store site was graded in 1917 in anticipation of a larger, permanent building that would anchor the town.

How two brothers from Leslie County helped turn bluegrass into college-concert fare, took a state song nationwide, and brought it all back home to Hyden. Origins in Leslie County Bobby Osborne and his younger brother Sonny were born in Hyden, the county seat of Leslie County, Kentucky. The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum lists both brothers’ birthplace as Hyden, with Bobby born December 7, 1931 and Sonny born October 29, 1937.

Appalachian History Why Sycamore Shoals mattered In late September 1780, Patriot militia from the Holston and Watauga valleys answered a frontier alarm and converged on the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, near present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. There they set a firm rendezvous to carry the war over the mountains, find Major Patrick Ferguson, and break his Loyalist column.

Appalachian History On a cold Saturday morning in Anderson County, Tennessee, the Knoxville Iron Company’s Cross Mountain Mine No. 1 blew apart and turned the little coal town of Briceville into a scene of grief and rescue work that lasted ten long days. Eighty-four miners were dead, yet five men emerged alive after fifty-eight hours behind a hastily built barricade.

Breaking the Barrier of Women Coal Miners In the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, where coal seams carved both livelihood and hardship, Diana Baldwin carved history. At just 25 years old, in December 1973, she became one of the first two women, often credited as the first in a union mine, to work underground in a U.S. coal mine.