Interstate 81 is a major highway stretching from Tennessee to the Canadian border. Each day, millions of trucks, cars and buses use the road— following this ancient route along the Appalachian Mountains. Before them there were migrating animals, indigenous people and early settlers from England and Europe.
“So, what you’ve got is this really strong corridor, people moving north and south,”
says Jessica Sewell, a professor of urban and environment planning at UVA.
“That’s the first frontier— a very diverse groups of people, different religious groups who are sharing space together in a way that’s distinct from the state-based identity when you get on the other side of the mountain," she explains.
Most of these pioneers came from Scotland, Ireland or Germany, Presbyterians and Lutherans, but there were also Moravians, Amish, Mennonites and Brethren, united in a common goal according to Andrew Johnston, a Professor of Architectural History at UVA.
“These folks are having to figure out how to strive for mutual prosperity together – how to make a success of their travels to this new world,” Johnston says.
This summer, he and Sewell— a husband and wife team— are driving their 10-year-old Toyota more than 2,600 miles, finding details in small towns like Saltville, where passionate people wait for visitors and the chance to tell their stories.
“The Saltville museum was really pretty fascinating. What an interesting little company town, hidden out in the mountains, because of its salt and alkali and then making hydrazine for the rocket programs – a fascinating little place.” Johnston says.
“And also a place where they have found mammoth bones and giant sloth,” Sewell adds. “Half their museum is about ancient creatures."
While there were large plantations east of the Appalachians and subsistence farms, most valley dwellers raised crops for the market.
“Lots of wheat was grown early, so milling becomes a really important piece of what’s happening, because it’s a lot easier to move as flour," Sewell says. "Settlers also thought, ‘How can we make money off the travelers as a tourist space or just to be provisioning people who are going further west?’”
She believes those who lived west of the mountains had more in common with each other than with people from their own states.
“There’s a real distinct culture where the people from North Carolina and northern Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia are more alike –in a lot of ways – than they are like the people on the seaboard in their state.”
Early settlers often interacted peacefully with native Americans.
“The people who are moving into these lands are learning the Cherokee language, are buying land from the Cherokee very often in order to farm.”
And women played a greater role in the history of the Shenandoah and adjacent valleys.
“It’s like when you’re out on the frontier further west," says Sewell. "The whole family is part of everything, and that means that women have much more power -- running businesses, running the farm.”
There, were on some farms, slaves – but their lives were different from those who lived in the Tidewater or Piedmont.
“It tends to be small numbers of enslaved people kind of working as farm hands rather than the large scale – it’s not cotton.”
Sewell and Johnston are working with a colleague at UVA Wise – Jinny Turman, a national expert on Appalachia. Together they hope to publish a book about how the Shenandoah Valley helped to define what it means to be an American.
