Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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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. 71 Soil. Erosion. ward exposure and an altitude of 2,500 to nearly 6,000 feet. In addition to this uniform tract, this drainage system comprises the semicircular interrupted basin drained by Beaver, Tennessee Laurel, Green Cove, and White Top Laurel creeks, which join and cut through the mountains near Damascus. In this area are two distinct classes of land—mountain slopes and alluvial or sedimentary basins. The mountain slopes, steep and principally underlaid by quartzite, have light soil, with thorough drainage both on surface and underground, while the sedimentary valleys—as Holston River bottoms, Shady Valley, Laurel Bloomery, and others—have deep, loamy soils, remarkably fertile. On the Tennessee Laurel substantially all the arable Agriculture land is under cultivation, but along Shady Valley and White Top Laurel on'.y a small portion of the arable land is cleared. The Holston River bottom is cleared to the foothills of the mountain. This land is well adapted to diversified farming, but is now devoted prinsipally to corn and grazing. Erosion is less marked in this area than in most others, a fact which is probably due to the larger proportion of wooded area. The Tennessee Laurel is, however, subject to sudden rises, endangering the narrow bottom lands and even the lives of travelers who must cross the numerous fords in the gorge. There is also much erosion of soil locally on the older neglected fields of the tributaries of the Tennessee Laurel and on the poor portions of the foothills of Holston Mountain. Excepting a few mountain pastures, all the mountain ridges are wooded, and both east and west of Damascus are large areas of unbroken forest, covering both mountain and valley. The north slope of Holston Mountain also remains entirely wooded. The forest of this drainage varies, naturally, with the soil, altitude, and exposure, and has also been seriously modified by fires. The northward slopes of Holston and Iron mountains are lightly timbered with oaks, black pine, chestnut, gum, etc., with some hemlock and white pine in ravines, nearly all culled. The southward slopes of the same mountains, and especially the lower portions of these slopes, are better wooded, except as cleared or deadened for grazing, and have some heavy stands of hemlock and white pine, among which hard woods are freely distributed. The forest.
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).