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But late in the 19th century, mining, logging and railroad companies moved into the area, often uprooting families and devastating the land.
"They took the people off the land and transferred ownership to owners outside the region who raped the land," says Curtis Wood, a professor of history at Western Carolina and co-author of "From Ulster to Carolina: The Migration of the Scotch-Irish to Southwestern North Carolina." "Rivers were damaged, land wouldn't hold water and forest fires were incredible -- epic forest fires. All this is well-documented."
When the commercial interests had extracted what they could from the area, says Wood, "they pulled out, and the people they left behind were jobless."
In 1911, Congress passed the Weeks Act authorizing the U.S. government to purchase land and create national forests. Millions of acres were acquired and eventually entrusted to the U.S. Forest and Park services and, Wood notes, putting the land out of the reach of local people.
In the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley Authority was created to control floods, improve navigation and provide electrical power in the Southeast. While credited with improving conditions in the area -- including the elimination of malaria -- Wood points out that the TVA also forced many people off their land and flooded entire towns.
"There are very few regions where white people have been forcibly removed from their lands as they have been in southern Appalachia," he says. "The attitudes of Southern mountain people toward the government have been shaped by their experiences.... They've seen their land taken out of their control and put into big programs, leaving them with diminished resources and not much in return."
Government initiatives aimed at dealing with the poverty in the region have often been at "at cross-purposes," he says, and were managed by Washington bureaucracies. "They were never guided by people in the region, and the attitudes of Southern mountain people have been shaped by this, seeing their land taken out of their control and given to big programs."
Another touchy subject, he says, is taxes. Although the federal government is by far the biggest landowner in many western North Carolina counties, it pays no county taxes. It does pay the counties a fee, but it is well below what the land would bring on the open market.
A culture of distrust for government
One of the region's best known industries was the fruit of Appalachian ingenuity and an expression of the contempt some felt for the government.
Today, the streets of downtown Andrews are quiet, and many storefronts lie vacant as merchants move to a stretch of strip malls near the main highway.
"Do you remember what they used to do in these mountains in the '20s and '30s?" area resident David Luther told USA Today. "Moonshine. Who do you think it was that used to lock up our grandfathers for making moonshine?"
The result, says Brown, is a culture thoroughly prepared to distrust the government. "One of the worst things you could hear around here," she says, "was a knock on the door and someone saying, 'I'm from Raleigh, and I'm here to help you.' "
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