Customer Reviews

Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880-1920

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The subtitle to this book is "Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia 1880 - 1920." The principle reason for the deeply-embedded poverty in Central Appalachia is the fact that the region continues to be a colony of industrial powers. Beginning in the mid-19th century, iron, coal, railroad, and timber companies teamed with national, state, and local politicians to exploit the natural resources -- coal and timber -- and the people of Central Appalachia. The result was devastation of a culture, destruction of a people, and destruction of the environment. And, I am incorrect to use the past tense -- clear-cutting of forests continues and "mountain-top removal" mining continue to destroy the culture, communities, and landscape of Central Appalachia. Lewis' book is an excellent description of what happens when politicians and industrial leaders join in league to exploit a region.

Note that this book deals with events of 1880 - 1920 -- so why is it important today? Because what was done to Central Appalachia in that period is being done to the rest of us today under the guise of "economic globalization." For example, the people of McDowell County, WV, are powerless in the face of Norfolk Southern (railroad company) because NS owns 85 percent of the land in the county. Just exactly what do you think will happen when "global" corporations own the factories, the minerals, and the workers? The experience of Appalachia with industrial and political exploitation is the same experience that awaits all of us under "economic globalization."

I enjoy historical narratives about turn of the century logging in West Virginia. Many texts cover the economic aspects of logging in terms of the timber processed. Other books detail the milling process or the lifestyle of the lumberjack in the WV wilderness. However, this is the first book I have encountered that describes the social ramifications of the logging industry in defining the WV culture. Ronald Lewis has opened up new discussions of how early steam technology impacted the remote lifestyles of West Virginia. This book gives a fresh viewpoint that is needed in re-evaluating the romanticized description of Appalachian lumbering in the last century.

A must-read for those interested in the history of West Virginia in particular and of similar greed for wealth at the expense of a culture and of natural resources that is echoed in similar instances at differing times and places in the history of the growth of the United States as a nation; of robber-barons, of the capitalist mentality that ravaged a people and their state, and of the devastating history of the extraction industries that nearly destroyed the natural beauty of a state.

Such destruction is still taking place today and in even greater and more ecologically-destructive ways in Appalachia and in West Virginia, and will bring a great awareness to the reader of the dangers that affect cultures and the environment from allowing private industry to help itself practically unrestrained to the resources of a state or region.

The book both saddened and angered me and is one that I will read again and again to remind me of what West Virginia and beautiful Appalachia has lost and of what is still stands to lose unless "we the people" do something now.