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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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  • 78 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. The farmers need to be taught that to recuperate their lands, instead of letting them stand bare and idle "to rest," they should grow clover and cowpeas on them, and always keep them covered as much as possible. BIG PIGEON RIVER BASIN. [345,440 acres; 79 per cent wooded.] Topography. gjg Pigeon River rises among the Balsam and Pizgah mountains, cuts its way through the Unaka Mountains, and joins the French Broad on the Tennessee Plain. It drains an interior agricultural basin which is oval in outline, the longer axis northwest, parallel to the general course of the stream, and almost entirely within the Appalachian Mountain region. It is circumscribed by lofty mountains, with many peaks more than 6,000 feet in altitude. Many minor ranges, springing from the surrounding mountains, converge toward the middle of the basin, dividing it into deep, narrow valleys, except near its upper end between the towns of Canton and Waynesville, where there is a broad, open valley of alluvial plains and rolling hills, dotted with low mountains, soil. The soils are loams and sandy loams, mostly fine grained in texture, derived from gneiss and schists, though in the mountains they are more siliceous and coarser—there the product of decomposed sandstones, quartzite, and conglomerates. Agriculture. This basin is eminently adapted to grass, except where very sandy, and grass is the chief product of the region. Corn ranks next in importance; while the cultivation of wheat is largely confined to the broad valley of the Pigeon, between Canton and Ferguson, and to the Richland and Fines Creek valleys. Apples are extensively raised and have a wide reputation for their quality, and truck farm- . ing is yearly assuming greater importance. Erosion. The alluvial valley lands have been little injured by freshets, and the soils of the uplands, with few exceptions, have not suffered severely from erosion, though a few badly gullied slopes, due to the continuous cultivation of corn, are to be seen in the older settlements. The forest. The scarlet, black, and white oaks, associated with black pine, formed at one time an extensive forest on the hills between Canton and Waynesville, but this land, where not under cultivation, is now in second-growth forest. The forests of the mountains are of typical mixed Appalachian
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