Appalachia Today Launches Website Devoted to Appalachian Region
- Dec 29, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 9
Appalachia Today. It's more than just a name.
This article marks the launch of AppalachiaToday.com, a new website devoted to the Appalachian region that will feature a mashup of news, commentary, and articles devoted to events, places, and the history that makes the Appalachian region special.
There are many ways to define the Appalachian region. One is geographic, essentially pointing to the places where there are mountain ridges in the eastern portion of the United States, anywhere between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. A way of visualizing the region by this definition is to think of the Appalachian Trail and its famous byline moniker, "Maine to Georgia", which roughly denotes the watershed of the Eastern Continental Divide that runs along the most prominent ridgeline of the Appalachians.
Another definition is political. In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy established the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state partnership that sought to bring economic development to a region understood at the time to be impoverished in comparison to the rest of the United States. The Commission, or ARC for short, was to be comprised of counties in and around the traditional landscape understood to be the Appalachian mountains. Some counties lobbied for inclusion in the ARC due to the promise of government assistance and their relative poverty, despite their being far removed from that main Appalachian ridgeline running north from Georgia. Other places, like all of New England beginning at the Catskills, and mountainous western New Jersey where the Appalachian Trail crosses through the state, were left out of the ARC due to their being understood as culturally distinct from Appalachian poverty. As such, parts of northeastern Mississippi and northern Alabama came to be part of the ARC, whereas Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire were cut off from inclusion in this definition of the Appalachian region.
Fast forward 60 years and it can easily be argued that the region has seen extraordinary growth, with many if not most places in the region being plugged into the modern world in terms of access to electricity, clean water, and basic amenities. This is not to say that the region does not continue to face its share of challenges--it does. Still, however, a guiding principle of this website is that the Appalachia that we know today is more in touch with the modern world than the Appalachia of yesteryear.
To that end, it seems timely that a website publication might come along that would focus on the many positive attributes of the Appalachian region. This site seeks to be that place. The hope is that by offering up a glimpse into the many wonderful people, places, and events that make Appalachia the place that it is, the site can present a fair but positive view of the Appalachia of the 21st Century.
To that end, this article seeks to be the first of many in an exploration of the Appalachia of today. The hope is that by connecting the culture of the present with the history of the past, we can arrive at a vision of an Appalachia that reflects its cultural diversity, its natural beauty, and the many ways that these mountains provide a good home for the people who live here.
Finally, it is important to be transparent about the creative team behind the site. For now, there is no team. This site is the creative vision of Casey Nicholson of Greeneville, Tennessee, who is running the site as a one man show. Nicholson is an ordained minister and a counselor who happened to take up a course in Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University in recent years. In the interim, his love for the region and passion for both education and travel led him to believe that a site devoted to the region and Appalachian culture would be of great benefit to both Appalachian inhabitants as well as to those who admire the region from afar.
To that end, Dr. Nicholson has started this site as something akin to a personal blog, but one with broader ambitions than the word "blog" usually dictates. The vision is for this site to grow to become a fully fledged online publication devoted to Appalachia in all aspects: News and Opinion Commentary articles that tell the story of what is happening in Appalachia today, and every day; Travel and Events articles that focus on the many great destinations and cultural highlights that are ever present throughout the region; and a relaying of Appalachian history and culture that helps to both preserve the past while at the same time connecting the Appalachian story with the Appalachia that we all live and work in in the here and now.
As was said above, Appalachia Today is more than just a name for a website. It's the definition of what the site is, and sets a course for what the site can be well into the future. I hope you'll want to follow along.
