Appalachian History

The Dust Bowl crisis of the early 1930s for the first time brought national attention to the acute dangers of soil erosion. Southern Appalachian farms, for their part, suffered from poor soil conditions and erosion as a result of practices that maximized the short-term potential of corn, tobacco and cotton cash crops at the expense of the soil’s long-term health.

In response to the depletion of the nation’s farmland, President Roosevelt created the Soil Erosion Service (SES) of the Department of the Interior, headed by North Carolina native Hugh H. Bennett, in 1933. It supervised significant numbers of CCC camps in the Southern Appalachian Highlands. Enrollees planted trees and shrubs to help hold the soil in place and built small dams to help lessen floods, mostly on private lands.

An example of the condition of much of the rural landscape in South Carolina before the establishment of the Soil Erosion Service.

With a five million dollar budget, the SES set up demonstration sites in strategic locations throughout the United States. One of the first demonstration sites in the United States covered the South Tyger River Watershed, located in South Carolina’s Greenville and Spartanburg counties. The project began on December 18, 1933 at the J.L. Berry farm, located near Poplar Springs, where a gully large enough to swallow a vehicle was repaired.

At the strong urging of a coalition of agricultural and forestry groups, Roosevelt transferred SES to the Department of Agriculture in March 1935 and had it renamed Soil Conservation Service.

Secretary Bennett knew that resource needs and conditions varied greatly from one part of the country to the next and even from one neighboring county to the next. To insure that these local needs were properly recognized and met, Bennett helped draft legislation that states could use to create Soil Conservation Districts.

A farmer plowing up and down the slope, which resulted in severe soil erosion.

In 1937, President Roosevelt wrote the governors of all the states recommending that local landowners form such districts. South Carolina’s Governor, Olin D. Johnston, signed the S.C. Conservation Districts Law on April 17, 1937.

On August 3, North Carolina Secretary of State Thad Eure made history when he established the Brown Creek Soil Conservation District as the first in the nation.

But Brown Creek was not the first soil conservation district to actually implement a working plan. Dr. Thomas S. Buie, South Carolina’s state conservationist, who several years before had been the Regional Director of the South Tyger River project mentioned earlier, was now director of the Southeastern Region for SES.

Buie was media savvy, and in 1934 had taken his argument directly to the public via a series of 15 talks on radio station WFBC in Spartanburg, and also on a weekly mid-day show out of WBT in Charlotte, NC.

“An enemy as real as any our troops ever have faced in battle,” he exhorted, “has conquered an area 35,000,000 acres in extent, laid waste to what once were fertile fields and almost unchallenged continues his relentless march of destruction across other fields wherever the slope of the land is sufficient for water to flow.”

Mrs. Ploma M. Adams of Seneca, SC.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that on February 4, 1938, the country’s first implemented farm soil conservation plan occurred at the farm of one Mrs. Ploma M. Adams, in Seneca, SC, adjacent to Buie’s high-profile South Tyger River project.
John Drayton Hopkins, a state director of the South Carolina Farm Bureau, took his cue from the Adams farm’s plan, and sought to educate farmers to use terracing and crop rotation to help maintain the fertility and stability of the soil. He encouraged farmers to supplement cotton and corn with oats and wheat, and to plant fallow fields in fescue, clover, and kudzu to stabilize the soil and to graze cattle.

By 1947, 20,000 farm conservation plans were in place statewide in South Carolina, says a May 19 article in Spartanburg’s “Herald Journal”:

“Little more than a decade ago, practically no annual lespedeza was grown in the state in rotations. Now this crop is grown from the mountains to the sea for soil improvement and as a hay crop. It is a common thing for it to be found on most every farm in a given community.

“The annual lespedezas furnish food for the quail. A good soil conservation farm plan also calls for field borders of perennial plants which prevent erosion and can be valuable as a turn-row in the use of equipment. Sericea furnishes a splendid cover for quail and provides the turn-row."


Sources: “The Land Today & Tomorrow,” Official Gazette of the Soil Erosion Service, Oct 1934, online at www.archive.org/stream/landtodayandtomo00unitrich/landtodayandtomo00unitrich_djvu.txt
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/greenville/S10817723062/S10817723062.pdf
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19470519&id=IlUsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FssEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7183,1878155
http://www.greenvillecounty.org/soil_and_water/history.asp

A country's natural scenery may have a good deal more than an aesthetic value. It may be worth money, and from a business standpoint its care and improvement is frequently of great importance. Fifty million dollars go into Switzerland every year to pay the board and traveling expenses of foreigners who journey there for pleasure and recreation. The money thus brought into the country constitutes a large part of the income of the people.

Nature gave fine scenery and pleasing summer climate to Switzerland, and the natives have built the best and most picturesque roads in Europe in make travel easy and exhilarating. Excellent hotels offer attractive accommodations. People go there to spend their money, and depart with the feeling that their money was well spent. Scenery and resorts pay in that country.

The people of Maine have found ways to make money out of their woods, lakes, rivers, and summer hotels. Fishermen and hunters who have plenty of money to spend go by the thousands to Maine to spend it. They are willing to pay well, and the thrifty Yankees see to it that their guests get their money’s worth. That brings the guests back year after year. Game is protected and is plentiful. Streams abound in fish because dynamiting and other destructive modes of killing are not permitted. The woods are in good condition because fires are not permitted to burn unopposed. The people of Maine find their scenery, resorts, hunting, and fishing an investment which pays big dividends.

Boating Group with their Canoe, Morgantown, W. Va., circa 1910.

West Virginia has not, up to the present time, done much with its scenery except to mar it, mutilate it, and burn it up. Except in the case of mineral springs, practically nothing has been done in this State to make scenery attractive or to bring it to the attention of the outside world. West Virginia may never rival Switzerland, but it can equal Maine. The summer climate is glorious among its high mountains and elevated valleys. A series of summer hotels from 3000 to 4400 feet above the sea might stretch across the State, following the Alleghany and parallel ranges of mountains.

Adequate highways connecting these resorts, and others for side trips to hunting and fishing grounds, with the surrounding forests cared for, and the innumerable mountain streams clear and clean, would attract to West Virginia many thousand wealthy tourists who now hardly know the state by name and who never think of visiting it, except to rush across it on the limited express trains of trunk railroads.

A good many things must be done before West Virginia will take its due rank as a resort for tourists, health seekers, and sightseers. It must first protect its woods and make them attractive. It must clean its streams and stock them with fish, and make and enforce civilized laws for protection of the fish. It must stop the senseless slaughter of birds and game. It must build roads that can be traveled with speed and safety by modern vehicles. In building these roads the value of scenery must be considered in regions where scenery is attractive.

The steps necessary to the carrying out of these recommendations are many, expensive, and difficult. No one should suppose that it is possible to do such things by simply resolving that they ought to be done. The immediate duty is to make a beginning and to make it in the right way and in the proper direction.

Then build upon that beginning as it becomes possible to do so. Check forest fires first; lessen the pollution of streams; put all new roads on the best grades, and when old ones are changed, put them on proper grades also; make it so dangerous for fish dynamiters and game destroyers to ply their trade that they will migrate. Follow these beginnings with constructive work; stock streams anew with fish; the forests with game and bird; build roads as circumstances will allow; and take pains to let the outside world know that West Virginia is in the scenery and resort business.


source: Report of the West Virginia Conservation Commission, 1908 (Charleston, 1909). lY-25, 38-39.
http://www.as.wvu.edu/WVHistory/html/doc_unit4.htm