During the early 1900s, over eight million
people left the hills and hollers of Appalachia in search of opportunity and a better life,
bound for the booming factory towns and cities of the industrial midwest. Indeed, it was
one of the largest migrations in American history as eight million people left their
farms in search of paying jobs. Yet, their story is rarely told. Chances are, that many of you are watching
this from all across America right now. Although you live in places like Michigan, Illinois
or even California you have a connection to Appalachia, perhaps your grandfather once
lived there and you are reconnecting to your roots. Or maybe you’re still on the old
homestead in West Virginia or North Carolina, holding tightly to the roots your great grandfather
planted, yet you’re one of the last of your family that remains. So why did they leave? What caused millions
leave their beloved land for the unknown? Well my friend, im glad you asked and that’s
what this story is all about. There are few places more beautiful than the
Appalachian Mountains. And for nearly 250 years, some of the most hardy men and women
in America called them home. The log cabins, split rail fences, and gristmills built by
these Scots Irish, English, Germans during the 1700 and 1800s are now some of the most
iconic and revered structures in America. For centuries they lived in the coves, hollers
and fertile mountain valleys living off of natures rich bounty. Wild flowers filled their
yards, grapevines ran down the eves of their porch as smoke rose from their hand built
stone chimneys. It was a place of serene beauty inhabited by rugged men and women who were
tough as nails. They were bold and daring. Their ancestors had made the long journey
to America, having fled persecution and countless wars on the other side. They left behind the
heavy taxes imposed by kings on everything from their land to their liquor. They held
fast to their culture and their beliefs. They believed that the freedom to bear arms and
to sell whisky were part of every mans birthright. Appalachia was their home, a roadless wilderness
of crags and coves. The valleys were filled with farms, churches and schools. As their
sons and daughters grew into adulthood, they built their new homes further up the creeks
close to their family, for no good mountain man would let his family be scattered. Communities
of kin folks sprang up and as the years went by and a new generation succeed the previous,
little cabins climbed further and further up the creeks where the soil was shallow and
the bare bone of the mountain shown thru and there were only a precious few steep sloping
acres to farm that was walled in by a forest of chestnuts and oaks so tall the midday sun
could barely wipe away the shadows. So you see, each new generation found life
harder than the last, the few roads that existed were little more than animal trails used only
by the folks who lived there. Yet they gladly lived in splendid isolation within the rocky
hollers. It was a rich landland that gave them hillside family farms, cemeteries for
their kin and wood for their fiddles and dulcimers and a sense of freedom that was quickly disappearing
all throughout the flat land country beyond the mountains. Now, despite their isolation, the small communities
grew. Men worked the farms and blacksmith shops, while women worked nearly everything.
One woman said “menfolks just want a woman that never sits down. They want one that will
work in the cornfield without getting tired and be so rested when the day is done that
she’ll get all the meals and tend to the children and do the chores while he eats and
have a whole basket of young uns in her spare time. But these women loved their hard working
men, because no mountain woman wanted a hen husband. Yes sir, they were proud of their land. Up
here is the only place to live they said as they looked with scorn down at the bottom
land. “Down there the grass grows so thick that you can’t even bust it with a hoe!”
Besides, the mountains provided everything you needed. A young man and his woman could
start a life here with little more than a skillet and a hoe. They would make their home
where the trees was giant and the sound of birds washed away all other sounds. With little
more than a mountain stream, they would start their lives by planting some corn is soil
that was so loose you didn’t even have to plow it. Corn had so many uses, it could be ground
up for meal, used as a vegetable, or just as important bottled up as moonshine. They
grew oats, soybeans, and millet, they even grew grasses such as Timothy, Red Top, Orchard.
Cane was grew to make sorghum molasses. Vegetable gardens consisted of onions, Irish potatoes,
peppers, turnips, peas, tomatoes, cabbages, and strawberries. They planted apple, peach
and plum trees, while the forest provided a never ending bounty of black walnuts. hickory
nuts, blackberries, huckleberries, and wild strawberries. Deer, wild turkey, rabbits and
squirrels were abundant. Yet, the most important aspect of pioneer living in Appalachia was
the chestnut tree, with its straight rot resistant wood that was used in all their buildings,
and more importantly were the chestnuts that rained from the canopys every fall. Every
Appalachian, as well as every animal of the forest depended on this tree for its bounty. Equipped with everything they needed to be
self sufficient, Appalachia and its people thrived for generations, building an authentic
culture, set of core values, and work ethic, all while coexisting side by side with nature. The War Between the States brought change all
across America and Appalachia was no different. For the first time, northern industrialists
made their way into this remote region and when the war ended, the quickly began buying
up enormous tracts of land and exploiting it of all its timber and its coal. For the
first time, industry had invaded these mountains. Rich men north of Richmond began laying railroad
tracks along side mountain creeks, building towering bridges across ravines and dynamiting
tunnels thru mountains, creating a syringe that would allow industrialists to slowly
extract the lifeblood of coal and timber out of Appalachia to build the rest of America. Like it or not, the outside world had come
to this mountain utopia, for the first time news from the outside world freely circulated,
the railroad brought a a steady stream of foreigners who were willing to sell their
souls, digging in pitch black dungeons in the earth like moles for a chance to earn
a dollar. Suddenly, the sounds of the wind rustling thru the trees, along with the white
noise of a mountain stream were replaced with the sound of trees crashing to the ground,
and the lonesome sound of lumber camp whistles. The sounds the birds and the animals were
quieted by the nonstop sounds of a locomotive carrying out hundreds of tons of coal every
day. These new coal and lumber camps offered opportunity
for any Appalachian man who was willing to leave his farm and move his family into the
cookie cutter coal shacks and work for company script which he could use to buy all sorts
of shiny store-bought stuff that had never been seen before. He could buy his Wife her
first store bought dress and his children their first store-bought shoes. But at what
cost, you see, once a man went to work for these companies, he soon found himself in
debt to them for the items he purchased on credit, thereby creating a vicious cycle back
breaking labor and more debt. The companies on the other hand, made a fortune, and some
of the wealthiest families in this world today, can track their accumulated wealth back to
the exploitation of Appalachias riches. Indeed, many folks viewed it as a tragedy
each time a man from their community would leave his pioneer lifestyle behind, and trade
it in for selling what little time he had been blessed with on this earth to one of
these new jobs down in the camps. Yet Appalachia had always been a community that helped each
other. Each person had a role in these communities, whether he was a blacksmith, farmer, miller,
a hunter gather, or anything else. And each time a man left, the entire community suffered
until, nearly every man across the mountains went to work for these companies. The first decade of the 1900s brought with
it World War I. This brought about massive changes in Americas biggest cities who were
for the first time cut off from cheap labor of migrant European countries that was essential
to keeping their factories going. Looking to continue paying low wages, these companies
took a page out of the coal and timber industries playbook and actively began recruiting Appalachian
men to work in these northern factories. This was the first wave of men to leave Appalachia
yet it went unnoticed by most of America who instead focused on the northern migration
of blacks from Mississippi and Alabama. During the Great Depression, most folks in
Appalachia didn’t notice when it started or ended since for the most part they were
still isolated from the rest of America. Aside from the railroad and a few state highways,
there were few roads cut into the heart of the region. By now, the chestnut tree blight
that was accidentally imported from China to New York City was spreading across Appalachia
like wildfire as the fungus killed every Chestnut tree in appalachia. This was devastating to
the last families holding on to the pioneer lifestyle. Gone was the primary food source
of all the animals of the forest and 25% of all trees in Appalachia suddenly died, all
4 billion of them, never to return. On top of the unregulated logging industry, suddenly
the mountains were stripped bear. The result was that every man who had resisted Americans
capitalism system was suddenly forced to work. Another major event forced families out, as
the government seized over a half million acres of property in Tennessee and North Carolina
and creating the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Families had no choice but to leave,
and many of them had no where to go. Companies like Ford and General Motors quickly
capitalized on this and actively recruited these hillbillies to work in their factories
for even lower wages since ownership considered them too uneducated to strike or form unions.
A steady migration of families along US highway 23 from Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky
and West Virginia headed north bound for the factories in of the rust belt. Meanwhile men
from Kentucky went to work in factories in Cincinnati and Dayton Ohio. Yet, once again,
this massive migration from Appalachia wasn’t even noticed, due to the great droughts and
the massive migration of the Dust Bowl in the American Midwest of the 1930s. WWII saw men from appalachia board warships
where they returned across the same ocean their ancestors had traveled across generations
before. Back home, the demand for Appalachias Coal had never been higher, and men fought
long and hard for increased wages and safety regulations. Coal was the absolute king of
the economy and every male living here knew their sons would have assurance of working
as a miner when they were old enough. However, the conclusion of the war resulted
in a drastic reduction in the demand for coal. Furthermore, many of the men who fought in
the war never returned home to Appalachia. Additionally, machinery began to replace jobs
in the coal mines. The post war prosperity experienced all across America was noticeably
absent from Appalachia as unemployment and poverty began to rise. The 1950s brought Interstate 75 and 81 which
were the first super highways to cut right thru the heart of Appalachia. And for the
next 20 years, the flood gates of families leaving the mountains were unstoppable. This
new, cruel, who the hell cares economics had brutalized the Appalachian coal fields and
set off the second great migration out of the mountains heading north for factory jobs
in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. Every weekend, pickup trucks crammed with mattresses,
lamp shades and children could be seen winding out of the hollers and onto the wide asphalt
interstate as family upon family was slit apart in one of Americas oldest and misunderstood
cultures began to crumble. Thousands of houses have been torn down, and many that remain
sit abandoned amid weeds and black eyed susans. By the 1980s, Much of Appalachias coal had
been extracted and the industries just shut down and left entire communities to die. Suddenly,
all the mining machinery was gone, all the concrete buildings were broken and full of
holes. The corrugated aluminum peeling away, where crows now perched on the exposed steel
girder bones. The few companies that remained had adopted Modern machinery that resulted
in over 50% of miners losing their jobs.These New Long Wall mining machine could replace
6 men and produce twice as much coal. Suddenly unemployment was 25% in West Virginia and
Kentucky. Yet, many of the factory jobs in the north
disappearing in the north, bound for the cheaper labor workforce that was Mexico. And now folks
migrating south to the textile mills and furniture making factories. In West Virginia alone,
the entire state lost 10% of its entire population. All told, Appalachias once virgin forests
were decimated by coal and timber companies, and during the years 1910 to 1980 over 9 million
people who had called these mountains home, were forced to leave by the poverty that was
left behind when these companies pulled out. The heartbreak of leaving seems unbearable.
Almost nowhere else in America do people feel so interwoven with their culture and their
land, from family graveyards to rounded mountains casting shadows across forest thick with poplars,
sycamores and white oaks. One man said “I’ve roamed over every inch
of these hills. Every time I walk this place, I see my grandpa and grandma as they were
when they were children. I see my whole family, every where I walk, Im walking in their footsteps.
It’s gonna be hard to leave here, because appalachia is heaven, but there aren’t any
jobs.
