Appalachia

Appalachia (the Appalachian mountain system) is a 200,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains in a northeast-south west direction from southern New York to northern Mississippi.  It includes all of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The northern portions are part of the Middle Atlantic Region. Appalachia is dominated by topography by the Blue Ridge in the east ; the Great Valley, of which the Shenandoah, the James, the New, and the Tennessee valley are parts; the Ridge and Valley (shale and sandstone ridges, limestone valleys); and to the west the
the rumpled lands of the Appalachian Plateau. Their peaks,
ridges, hills and valleys form a belt almost 2,000 miles
long and up to 360 miles wide.

About 22 million people live in the 406 counties of the
Appalachian Region; 42 percent of the Region's population
is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national
population.