“Stories, culture, and memories from the heart of Appalachia.”
Long before the newspapers turned her into a romantic heroine, Anna Maria Jung had already built something rarer than legend: a life. Among the farmers, families, travelers, and the sick who climbed toward her cabin in the Oley Hills of Berks County, Pennsylvania, she became known simply as Mountain Mary, though the woman behind that [ ]
My granny could take scraps of fabric and turn them into beautiful quilts. Appalachian quilting was a skill many mountain families knew well.
Doc Watson brought Appalachian music to the world with his legendary guitar playing and unforgettable mountain sound.
I first heard about the Brown Mountain Lights through stories about the strange glow that appeared above the mountains of Western North Carolina. It was one of those mysteries people talked about when discussing the unusual events connected to the region. The Brown Mountain Lights became one of North Carolina’s most famous folklore stories. For [ ]
Across the ridges and river valleys of East Tennessee, a constant, low-frequency sound has replaced the historical quiet of the countryside. The sound comes from thousands of industrial cooling fans running around the clock inside windowless server buildings, the physical anchors of what technology companies market as the cloud. Built to power artificial intelligence and [ ]
On a cold November day in 1965, a sixty-one-year-old Appalachian widow walked onto a mountainside in Knott County, Kentucky, and faced a line of bulldozers sent to tear apart the land surrounding her home. Ollie Widow Combs had no corporation behind her, no political power, and no courtroom victory waiting in her favor. She had [ ]
Long before bluegrass became a recognized genre and decades before record collectors searched dusty attics for forgotten 78s, a coal miner from the mountains of southwest Virginia carried an old banjo into recording studios and captured a sound unlike anything America had heard. Moran Lee Dock Boggs never set out to become famous. He spent [ ]
In the autumn of 1910, thousands of visitors streamed through the Great Appalachian Exposition in Knoxville, past exhibits celebrating the region s coal, timber, and industry. Among the crowds, one attraction drew lines that stretched for hours: a replica log cabin, built plank by plank to honor a woman who had already outlived most of her [ ]
How Myles Horton changed history by refusing to stand at the front of the classroom In 1959, state officials descended upon a small school tucked into the hills of Tennessee. Police officers raided the property, lawmakers denounced its founder, and newspapers fueled accusations that the school threatened the American way of life. Before long, the [ ]
Every so often I come across a piece of Appalachian history that makes me stop and wonder how it slipped past me. I spend a great deal of time reading about this region. I know the stories that fill history books and documentaries. I know the names people repeat generation after generation. Then I discovered [ ]
