Working the Woods: Economies and Cultures of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 1650-1950

FAIN: BI-50016-06

Mars Hill College (Mars Hill, NC 28754-9134)
Kathryn Newfont (Project Director: August 2005 to September 2008)

Two one-week workshops for 50 community college faculty to explore the relationships of the Cherokee, settlers, loggers, and scientific foresters to the natural resources and historic sites of this National Heritage Area, using archival materials and historic places.

The Blue Ridge National Heritage Area is a national designation for a place where different groups of Americans--among them the Cherokee, settlers, loggers, and scientific foresters--have worked over time with a common set of natural resources--the southern mountain forests. Mars Hill College will offer two week-long workshops in which community college teachers use four historic landmarks and rich archival materials to explore cultural and economic change as well as conflict over forest use in specific cases in the colonial, antebellum, and industrial eras. The landmarks are: Kituah (site of the first Cherokee town), the Vance Birthplace Pioneer Homestead, the Blue Ridge Paper Company's Canton Mill Musuem, and the Cradle of Forestry in America.