Word: landed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Southerners, always close to their land, have already seen much of its scenic beauty and natural resources destroyed by increasing industrialization and, in some cases, simple carelessness. But now North Carolinians have won a battle to keep yet another piece of their environment from being despoiled. For more than a decade the people of the state's Ashe and Alleghany counties have been contesting the efforts of the giant American Electric Power Co. to build a pair of dams that would turn the New River's spectacular upper reaches into a great, muddy lake. Their fight ended...
...river was not all that would have been destroyed by the dams. Creation of the huge lake would have inundated some 50,000 acres, most of which was prime agricultural land, and left another 50,000 acres all but useless. The lake's waters would have submerged more than 900 homes, trailers and cabins, drowned 600 farms, five post offices, 15 churches and twelve cemeteries. It would also have driven nearly 3,000 mountain people, most of them independent farmers, from lands settled by their ancestors before the Revolution...
...mountaineers figured that it was futile to oppose the power company and sold their lands, often receiving a fraction of what they were worth. But the rest decided to fight. "This is my home," said Sidney Sturgill, 51, a muscular World War II veteran who is the seventh in his family line to farm the rolling acreage just outside the tiny community of Piney Creek, N.C. "My ancestors got title to this land for fighting in the Battle of Kings Mountain. My people have been in this valley for more than 200 years, and my go-back-four-times greatgrandfather...
...land of cotton, Spanish moss and magnolias has other distinctive and less felicific flora-and fauna-that can all but grab the unwary. Some examples that would catch a Yankee...
Agriculture, on the other hand, has declined in importance. In 1960 it accounted for 6.2% of the area's output of goods and services; now it is down to 2.8%. Unable to compete with large farms, many small growers have been driven off the land. Between 1940 and 1970, the number of farms in the region was halved, to 1.1 million. Abandoned farmhouses-porches fallen in, chimneys hidden by vines, bushes protruding from windows-are a not uncommon sight...