Chapter 1 Exercises: The Oldest Mountains in the World
Exercise 1: Reading a Topographic Map
Obtain a USGS topographic map (available free at nationalmap.gov) of one of the following areas:
- Harlan County, Kentucky
- McDowell County, West Virginia
- The New River Gorge area, West Virginia
- The Asheville basin, North Carolina
Study the map for at least fifteen minutes before answering these questions:
a) Describe the pattern of contour lines. Are they tightly spaced (indicating steep terrain) or widely spaced (indicating gentle terrain)? Does this pattern vary across the map?
b) Identify at least three hollows on the map. How can you recognize them from the contour lines? Estimate the width of the hollow at its widest point and the height of the ridges on either side.
c) Identify any gaps — places where a river or stream cuts through a ridge. How would these gaps have functioned as transportation routes? Are there modern roads or railroads running through them?
d) Based solely on the terrain shown on the map, where would you expect to find the largest settlements? The smallest? Where would you expect the most isolated communities to be?
Exercise 2: Primary Source Analysis — The First Geological Surveys
Read the following excerpt from William Barton Rogers's geological survey of Virginia (1836):
"The great Valley of Virginia, extending from the Potomac to the Tennessee line, presents one of the most remarkable geological features of the Appalachian chain. Underlain principally by limestone of the Silurian age, it has been carved by erosion into a broad and fertile plain, bounded on the southeast by the crystalline rocks of the Blue Ridge and on the northwest by the sandstone ridges of the Alleghany... The mineral resources of this region, though less conspicuous than the coal measures to the westward, are by no means inconsiderable."
a) Which physiographic provinces does Rogers describe in this passage? Use the terminology from Chapter 1 to identify them.
b) What does Rogers mean by "the coal measures to the westward"? Which physiographic province is he referring to?
c) Rogers was writing in 1836, decades before the major coal boom. Based on this passage, what geological resources was he aware of? What resources does he seem to consider less important, and why might that assessment have changed by the end of the century?
d) Rogers uses the phrase "carved by erosion." How does this language reflect the geological understanding of his era? How would a modern geologist describe the same process?
Exercise 3: Then and Now — The New River Gorge
Then: In the late nineteenth century, the New River Gorge was the site of intensive coal mining. Company towns lined the narrow valley bottom, miners worked the seams exposed in the gorge walls, and the river served as a transportation route for coal being shipped to market. The Gorge was an industrial landscape — noisy, dirty, and densely populated.
Now: In 2020, the New River Gorge was designated a National Park and Preserve — one of the newest units in the National Park system. The area is now marketed as a destination for whitewater rafting, rock climbing, and hiking. The ruins of the old coal towns are tourist attractions.
a) How did the geological features of the New River Gorge — the narrow canyon, the exposed rock faces, the whitewater rapids — first attract industrial exploitation and then attract recreational tourism? What is the relationship between these two uses of the same landscape?
b) Who benefits from the transformation of the Gorge from industrial site to national park? Who might not benefit? What happened to the communities that once depended on coal mining in the Gorge?
c) Is the designation of the New River Gorge as a national park a form of "extraction" — taking the scenic and recreational value of the land for outside consumption — or is it fundamentally different from coal extraction? Make an argument for each position.
Exercise 4: The Hollow as Social Structure
This exercise asks you to think about the relationship between physical geography and social organization.
a) Imagine you are a family in the early nineteenth century, choosing a site for a homestead in a hollow on the Appalachian Plateau. What factors would you consider? What are the advantages of settling at the head of the hollow (farthest from the main valley)? What are the disadvantages?
b) Now imagine you are a coal company in the early twentieth century, planning a company town in the same hollow. How would you use the hollow's geography to your advantage? Where would you place the mine entrance, the company store, the houses, the road?
c) Compare your answers to (a) and (b). How does the same physical geography serve very different purposes depending on who is using it and for what ends?
Exercise 5: Whose Story Is Missing?
The geological history presented in Chapter 1 draws primarily on the Western scientific tradition of geology. But the mountains, rivers, and caves of Appalachia have been understood and explained by other knowledge traditions for far longer.
a) Research a Cherokee, Shawnee, or other Indigenous account of the formation of the Appalachian landscape. (Suggested starting point: the Cherokee origin story associated with the Great Smoky Mountains, in which the earth is described as a great floating island suspended from the sky by cords at each of the four cardinal points.) How does this account differ from the geological explanation? What does it emphasize that the geological account does not?
b) Early European settlers in Appalachia also had their own ways of understanding the land — through folk knowledge, practical experience, and religious frameworks. Can you find any examples of folk explanations for geological phenomena in Appalachia (for example, why springs appear where they do, why certain soils are more fertile, why some mountains "ring" when struck)?
c) What is gained and what is lost when we explain the landscape exclusively through the framework of modern geology? Can multiple frameworks for understanding the same landscape coexist productively?
Exercise 6: Coal Formation and Deep Time
The coal that was mined in Appalachia formed approximately 300 million years ago. This exercise asks you to grapple with the concept of deep time.
a) Create a timeline that includes the following events, placed proportionally on a line representing Earth's 4.5-billion-year history: the formation of Earth, the Taconic orogeny (480 million years ago), the Carboniferous Period (359-299 million years ago), the Alleghenian orogeny (325-260 million years ago), the extinction of the dinosaurs (66 million years ago), the first humans in Appalachia (approximately 12,000 years ago), European contact (approximately 1540 CE), and the beginning of industrial coal mining (approximately 1880 CE). What does this timeline reveal about the proportion of geological time versus human time?
b) The coal in Appalachia formed from tropical swamp forests. Research the concept of continental drift and explain why tropical forests once grew in what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. Where was North America located during the Carboniferous Period relative to the equator?
c) It took roughly 300 million years for the coal to form and roughly 150 years for humans to extract most of it. Write a paragraph reflecting on what this disproportion means — ecologically, ethically, and economically.
Exercise 7: Mapping the Physiographic Provinces
Using the blank outline map of the Appalachian region provided by your instructor (or a downloaded map from the ARC — Appalachian Regional Commission — website at arc.gov):
a) Label the five physiographic provinces described in Chapter 1: Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Great Valley, Ridge and Valley, and Appalachian Plateau.
b) Mark the approximate locations of the four anchor examples: Harlan County (KY), the New River Valley (VA), McDowell County (WV), and Asheville (NC). In which province is each located?
c) Trace the courses of the following rivers: the New River, the Kanawha River, the French Broad River, and the Tennessee River. Which provinces does each river cross?
d) Shade the area of the Appalachian Plateau that contains major coal deposits. What do you notice about the relationship between the coal deposits and the physiographic province boundaries?
Exercise 8: The Resource Curse in Comparative Perspective
The "paradox of geological wealth and human poverty" described in Chapter 1 is not unique to Appalachia. Economists have observed a similar pattern — sometimes called the "resource curse" — in many resource-rich regions around the world.
a) Research one of the following cases and identify parallels with the Appalachian experience: the Niger Delta (oil), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (minerals), or the Navajo Nation (coal and uranium).
b) What features do these cases share with Appalachia? Consider: absentee ownership, single-resource dependency, environmental costs borne locally, profits flowing elsewhere, and political disempowerment.
c) Are there resource-rich regions that have avoided the resource curse? (Consider: Norway's management of oil wealth through its sovereign wealth fund.) What policy choices made the difference? Could similar choices have been made in Appalachia? Why or why not?
Exercise 9: Oral History Prompt — The Land and the Community
Interview an elder (a grandparent, a neighbor, a community member over age 65) about how the physical landscape shaped their community. Suggested questions:
- What was the terrain like where you grew up? Flat? Hilly? Mountainous?
- Were there places that were hard to get to? How did that affect daily life?
- Was there mining, logging, or other resource extraction in your area? How did it change the land?
- Did the landscape affect what people did for a living?
- Is the land different now than when you were young? How?
- Did people in your community have names for particular ridges, hollows, springs, or other landscape features? What were they?
Write a 500-word summary of the interview, connecting what you learned to the concepts in Chapter 1. If you are not in or from Appalachia, interview someone about their own region's landscape and draw comparisons to the Appalachian case.
Note: See Appendix F (Oral History Guide) for detailed guidance on conducting and recording oral history interviews, including informed consent protocols.
Exercise 10: Discussion Questions
Discuss the following in small groups or as a full class:
a) Chapter 1 argues that "the land is the first actor in this story." Do you find this argument persuasive? Is there a danger in overemphasizing the role of geography — for example, does it risk a kind of geographical determinism that removes human responsibility for choices about extraction and exploitation?
b) The hollow is described as both a source of community strength (intimacy, interdependence) and a vehicle for isolation and control. Can you think of other physical environments that function similarly — creating both community and vulnerability? (Consider: inner-city neighborhoods, island communities, military bases.)
c) The New River flows north because it is older than the mountains it passes through. How does this fact challenge our assumptions about what is "old" and what is "new" in the landscape? What other assumptions about Appalachia might we need to reconsider?
d) Harlan County and the New River Valley are both "Appalachian," but their geological settings produced very different historical trajectories. What does this suggest about the danger of treating "Appalachia" as a single, uniform region? What other regions can you think of that contain similarly sharp internal contrasts?
Exercise 11: Community History Portfolio — Geological Foundation
Complete Checkpoint 1 of your Community History Portfolio as described at the end of Chapter 1. Your submission should include:
- A topographic map of your selected county (printed or digital screenshot) with major features labeled
- Identification of the physiographic province(s) your county occupies
- A list of major waterways and their flow directions
- A summary of known geological resources (you may use ARC data, USGS resources, or state geological survey publications)
- A 500-word geological portrait with at least two predictions about how geology shaped the county's human history
Due date: as specified by your instructor. This checkpoint will be incorporated into your final portfolio at the end of the semester.