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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. 17 THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. This general Appalachian system is usually separated into its northern and southern divisions in southern Virginia by a line drawn nearly eastward from the most easterly point of Kentucky, and where the New or Kanawha River breaks across the Appalachian Valley and the Alleghenies. New River rises on the Blue Ridge in North Carolina, flows northward and then westward through the Ohio into the Mississippi drainage. It thus violates the rule established by the James, the Potomac, the Susque- t^en tne°nort£ hanna, and the Delaware rivers, to the north, of risingX^JSachtara?™ about the Alleghenies and breaking eastward across the Blue Ridge into the Atlantic drainage; and it here establishes a new rule that controls the drainage of the larger mountain streams to the south, which, following its example, rise on the western slopes of the Blue Ridge and flow aci'oss the mountain region to the northwestward and into the Mississippi drainage through the Tennessee. To the southwest of this line which separates the two systems of drainage lie the Southern Appalachians. Referring again to the maps (Pis. IV and XII), it will be seen that bordering these mountains on the east and south in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama, is a region which is termed by the geographers the Piedmont Plateau. From the base of the mountains, where it has an elevation of from 1,000 to 1,200 feet, the hilly, PiItheauPiedmont undulating surface of the plateau (see PI. Ill b) slopes gently seaward for a distance of from 100 to 150 miles, to where these hills give place to the sandy plains of the coast region. This Piedmont Plateau represents the finest agricultural and manufacturing portions of these States. Across its surface wind the rivers, fed by mountain streams, whose waters furnish power for large and rapidly growing manufacturing interests, and whose bordering lands are among the most productive in the region. The future of these water powers and of these bordering lands depends upon the regularity of the mountain streams, and these in turn depend upon the preservation of the mountain forests. To the west of these mountains lies the Valley of East -JJSiiSLf* East Tennessee, which constitutes the southern portion of the great Appalachian Valley. It has an elevation of 1,700 feet in southwestern Virginia and 1.000 feet at Knox- • Tennessee. *S. Doc. 84-
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