Appalachian Mountains

“ Slopes of the Appalachian Mountains, central and southern Pennsylvania, to northern Georgia; in southern Illinois; now widely naturalized in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, and perhaps indigenous as a low shrub in northeastern and western Arkansas and in Oklahoma; nowhere common; in the Appalachian forest growing singly or in small groups up to altitudes of 3500°; most abundant and of its largest size on the western slopes of the Alleghanies of West Virginia; often spreading by underground stems into broad thickets of small and often stunted trees. ”

“ In spite of the existence of the Great Appalachian Valley, the master streams are transverse to the axis of the system. The main watershed follows a tortuous course which crosses the mountainous belt just north of New river in Virginia; south of this the rivers head in the Blue Ridge, cross the higher Unakas, receive important tributaries from the Great Valley, and traversing the Cumberland Plateau in spreading gorges, escape by way of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Ohio and Mississippi, and thus to the Gulf of Mexico ”

“ These medicinal waters, together with the purity and energizing character of the air, has long given the mountains, especially in North Carolina and Virginia, a high repute as a health resort.
Vegetation and Fauna. The Appalachian region is covered with a dense forest growth where it has not been removed by man, forest trees covering the mountain slopes practically to their summits, except where the barren rocks furnish no soil. ”

“ The Appalachian mountains in their long majestic course from northeast to southwest rise to their greatest height in the New England states, culminating in Mount Washington, sixty-two hundred and ninety feet elevation, surrounded on all sides by lesser peaks, mostly from two thousand to five thousand feet high. ”

“ Although it is sometimes assumed that the crest-line coincides with the water-parting, or the divide, between the head 414 branches of streams flowing in opposite directions from a mountain-like uplift, it is well known that a mountain range, even when bold and sharply defined, may not be a divide for the principal streams of the region where it is situated. An illustration in point is furnished by the Appalachian Mountains, through which the Susquehanna, Delaware, and other important rivers rising in the plateau to the west flow transversely in deep valleys and empty into the Atlantic. ”

“ Applying the same method to the Lake District, it has been calculated that the amount of denudation which that beautiful country has suffered may be represented by twenty-six thousand feet. Turning to the other side of the Atlantic, we find the American geologists estimate that a thickness of five miles has been removed from a large part of the Appalachian chain of mountains (near their east coast) , and that at least one mile has been eroded from the entire region 240 between the Rocky and Wahsatch Mountains (see chapter ix.) ”

“ We can not, for example, look at a geological map of America without perceiving that the Appalachian ridges, which intervene between the Atlantic and the St.Lawrence Valley, have been driven bodily back by a force acting from the east, and that they have resisted this pressure only where, as in the Gulf of St.Lawrence and the Catskill region of New York, they have been protected by outlying masses of very old rocks, as, for example, by that of the Island of Newfoundland, and that of the Adirondack Mountains. ”

“ The artist, too, is found in Blowing Rock. He comes and finds both rest and profit. He walks out upon the great rock—the Blowing Rock itself—which projects horizontally out into space at the very apex of the Blue Ridge, and looks out into the very countenance of the great Appalachian system of mountains. He sees just in front of him Mt. Mitchell itself, in all of its midsummer glory. ”

“ Extensive and deep-seated crumpling was necessarily accompanied by vertical uplift throughout the zone affected, but once at least since their birth the mountains have been worn down to a lowland, and the mountains of to-day are the combined product of subsequent uplift of a different sort, and dissection by erosion. ”

“ It might naturally be asked how such sections are made, considering that we cannot cut 307 308 through mountains in order to find out their structure; but Nature cuts them up for us, gashing their sides with ravines and valleys carved out by streams and rivers, and in steep cliffs and precipices we find great natural sections that serve our purpose almost equally well. Sometimes, however, we get considerable help from quarries and railway-cuttings.
Take, for example, one of the synclinal folds in the Appalachian chain. ”

“ Today the more rugged parts of the Appalachian system are chiefly important as a hindrance to communication. On the Atlantic slope of the old crystalline band there are great areas of gentle relief where an abundant population can dwell. Westward on the edges of the plateau and the plains beyond a still greater population can find a living, but in the intervening space there is opportunity for only a few. The great problem is to cross the mountains as easily as possible. ”

“ In the complicated region of the Appalachian chain the strata are estimated to have a total thickness of eight miles; while in Indiana, where the same strata are nearly horizontal, they are less than one mile thick. Hence it is not impossible that in the mere accumulation, through long periods of time, of vast masses of strata many thousands of feet thick, we may find a potent cause of earth-movements. ”

“ During the last Ice Age the Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forests and their animals must have been a richer version of the plant-animal community that exists in this zone today, for at the peak of the ice advance northern plants and animals probably could migrate along a continuous avenue of this boreal forest in the Appalachians. ”

“ In a large way the Appalachian plateau is an individual; the Adirondacks, the terminal moraine of the second glacial epoch are others. In a small way, a drumlin, a fan delta, a mesa, are individuals. The linear plateaus of middle Pennsylvania are hybrids between the well-developed linear ridges of the mountains farther east and the irregular plateau masses farther west.
A rough classification of geographic individuals would group them under such headings as plains, plateaus, and rough broken countries of horizontal structure ”

“ Those at Hot Springs are famous for their medicinal qualities, and have led to the foundation there of a renowned health resort. The Ouachita Mountains have been shown to be the westerly extension of the south end of the Appalachian mountain system, and to have been formed at the same time and by the same causes that upheaved the Appalachians. ”

“ The great Appalachian plateau with its lofty mountain ranges and peaks rising from the shores of the Atlantic probably presented during the Mesozoic era different climatic zones, from tropical lowlands with their vast swamps, to temperate uplands, stretching perhaps up to Alpine summits. New Zealand at the present day has a subtropical belt of tree-ferns, while the mountains bear glaciers on their summits. The Jurassic was a time of great denudation, when the high ranges of the Appalachian plateau were worn down, and the newly upheaved, tilted, and vaulted beds of the Trias were deeply eroded. ”

“ The mountain system has no axis of dominating altitudes, but in every portion the summits rise to rather uniform heights, and, especially in the central section, the various ridges and intermontane valleys have the same trend as the system itself. None of the summits reaches the region of perpetual snow. Mountains of the Long Range in Newfoundland reach heights of nearly 2000 ft. In the Shickshocks the higher summits rise to about 4000 ft. ”

“ It is difficult now to appreciate the pressure once exerted on the Appalachian highlands by human settlement. Back when land meant livelihood to a nation of agrarian people, the gradual pressure from the eastern coast, across the Piedmont, reached the Appalachian chain. ”

“ It is probable that second place among the peaks of Appalachia may belong either to Clingman Dome or Guyot or LeConte, of the Smokies, or to Balsam Cone of the Black Mountains.
In any case, the Great Smoky mountains are the master chain of the Appalachian system, the greatest mass of highland east of the Rockies. This segment of the Unakas forms the boundary between North Carolina and [Pg 58] Tennessee from the Big Pigeon River to the McDaniel Bald.
Although some parts of the Smokies are very rugged, with sharp changes of elevation, yet the range as a whole has no one dominating peak. ”

“ Every part of the valley is thickly settled and has fine houses and homes, because its soil produces good crops and makes the people prosperous.
Southern Appalachian Region
Spotswood’s journey opened the way for families from the tide-water region to settle beyond the mountains, but they were not the only settlers. It was easy for the people of the Great Valley in Pennsylvania, where the land was earlier taken up, to push to the southwest along the same valley. They found smoother traveling and better farms than if they had gone up into the mountains on the west. ”

“ Great Smoky Mountains National Park straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee border and encompasses the climax of the Appalachian Mountain System. Major attractions are the mountains themselves, the preserved structures and lore of mountain folklife, stupendous displays of flowering plants and shrubs, fall colors, wild animals, superb hiking opportunities, and gorgeous rivers, streams, and waterfalls. This handbook is published in support of the National Park Service’s management policies and interpretive programs at the park. ”

“ The fact that the National Park Service maintains 1,450 kilometers (900 miles) of trails says something about the Smokies and hiking: it’s an East Coast hiker’s paradise. Trails come in all lengths and levels of difficulty, for the handicapped, children, super-athletes, old folks, day hikers, and long-distance backpackers. The latter of course means the Appalachian Trail, which threads the Smokies crest on its way from Maine to Georgia. More on the AT below.
The intimacy of the Smokies wilderness surprises many who are attracted by the stunning mountain scenery. ”

“ Nowhere do they invade the region of perpetual snow, and glaciers are absent. These statements are true also for all of the mountains on the eastern side of the continent to the south of Hudson Strait.
The Appalachians abound in beautiful scenery, but, except about a few of the very highest domes and ridges, have 82 little of the stern ruggedness which is typical of truly great mountains. Their countless valleys are now mostly cleared of their primitive forests and under cultivation. To a large extent also even the steep hillsides are tilled. ”

“ Great faults and overthrusts are common, and add to the difficulty of unraveling the structure of the district. In the Appalachian Valley the geological structure is also quite complex, though the strata are not so intensely metamorphosed. The rocks are limestones, shales, and sandstones, and they lie in closed folds that become more open toward the western side of the valley. These folds are peculiar in that their eastward slopes are always steeper than the westward. ”

“ Deep, vast canyons, all trending westwards, lie in purple gloom. Pine-clad ranges, rising into the blasted top of Storm Peak, all run westwards too, and all the beauty and glory are but the frame out of which rises—heaven-piercing, pure in its pearly luster, as glorious a mountain as the sun tinges red in either hemisphere—the splintered, pinnacled, lonely, ghastly, imposing, double-peaked summit of Long's Peak, the Mont Blanc of Northern Colorado. ”

“ Then the frosts and rains, and later the glaciers, attacked the granite, and carved it into the jagged forms of to-day. The glaciers moulded the gorges which the streams had cut. The glaciers have passed, but still the work goes on. Slowly the mountains rise, and slowly, but not so slowly, the frosts chisel and the rains carry away. If conditions remain as now, history will again repeat itself, and the gorgeous peaks of to-day will decline, a million years or more from now, into the low rounded summits of our eastern Appalachians, and later into the flat, soil-hidden granites of Canada. ”

“ Old, worn-down mountains, like the Appalachians and the Ural, broad as they are, have been less effective obstacles than the towering crests of the Alps and Caucasus. The form of the elevation also counts. Easy slopes and flat or rounded summits make readier transit regions than high, thin ridges with escarpment-like flanks. Mountains of plateau form, though reaching a great altitude, may be relatively hospitable to the historical movement and even have a regular nomadic population in summer. ”