Moving to the Mountains: Amenity Migration in the Sierra and Southern Appalachian Mountains

Abstract

Two of the rural regions currently undergoing dramatic landscape change are the Sierra Nevadas, John Muir’s “Range of Light,” and the Blue Ridge Mountains, described by John Denver in his song “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” These are mythical landscapes, the Sierras of television’s “Bonanza” and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Mount Airy, North Carolina, television’s “Mayberry.” These are landscapes on opposite sites of the USA yet undergoing similar transformations. The Sierra Nevada is a 400-mile-long stretch of extraordinary beauty and landscape diversity. Approximately two thirds of the bird and mammal species and one half of all the reptile and amphibian species in California are found here. The world’s largest living plants, the Giant Sequoia, are found there, as is the tenth deepest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Tahoe. Almost two thirds of the range (12.6 million acres) is publicly owned and lies in three national parks – Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon – nine national forests, and the lands of the Bureau of Land Management. The remaining one third is privately owned. These are some of the most heavily used public lands in the country. Yosemite National Park alone attracts 4 million visitors a year (The Wilderness Society 2004, 1). Twenty-one counties comprise the Sierra Nevada region. It is estimated that 40 million people live within a half-day’s drive of the Sierra Nevada. Between 1970 and 1998, the resident population in the Sierra nearly tripled, rising from 237,000 to 664,000. It is estimated that by 2020, more than 1 million people will call the Sierra home. Some estimate that the portion of landscape set aside for human settlement by the year 2040 will quadruple from today’s measure (Steinicke and Hofmann 2004, 12). This counter-urbanization has been compared by Ernst Steinicke to a similar pattern in the eastern Alps centuries ago. In the East, the Sierras find a parallel in the southern Appalachian region. The Southern Appalachians stretch from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to just north of Atlanta, Georgia, a distance of almost 600 miles. Along the crest lie the Appalachian Trail, made famous in Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and the Blue Ridge Parkway, America’s first scenic highway. The southern Appalachians are also home to Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the most visited national park in the USA with 4 million visitors per year. It is estimated that 100 million people live within a half-day’s drive of the Southern Appalachian forests (Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition 2002, 10).