Piedmont (United States)
The Piedmont is a plateau region located in the Eastern United States. It sits between the Atlantic coastal plain and the main Appalachian Mountains, stretching from New Jersey in the north to central Alabama in the south; the Piedmont Province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division which consists of the Gettysburg-Newark Lowlands, the Piedmont Upland and the Piedmont Lowlands sections. The Atlantic Seaboard fall line marks the Piedmont's eastern boundary with the Coastal Plain. To the west, it is bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, the easternmost range of the main Appalachians; the width of the Piedmont varies, being quite narrow above the Delaware River but nearly 300 miles wide in North Carolina. The Piedmont's area is 80,000 square miles; the name "Piedmont" comes from the French term for the same physical region meaning "foothill" from Latin "pedemontium", meaning "at the foot of the mountains", similar to the name of the Italian region of Piedmont, abutting the Alps.
The surface relief of the Piedmont is characterized by low, rolling hills with heights above sea level between 200 feet and 800 feet to 1,000 feet. Its geology is complex, with numerous rock formations of different materials and ages intermingled with one another; the Piedmont is the remnant of several ancient mountain chains that have since been eroded away. Geologists have identified at least five separate events which have led to sediment deposition, including the Grenville orogeny and the Appalachian orogeny during the formation of Pangaea; the last major event in the history of the Piedmont was the break-up of Pangaea, when North America and Africa began to separate. Large basins formed from the rifting and were subsequently filled by the sediments shed from the surrounding higher ground; the series of Mesozoic basins is entirely located inside the Piedmont region. Piedmont soils are clay-like and moderately fertile. In some areas they have suffered from erosion and over-cropping in the South where cotton was the chief crop.
In the central Piedmont region of North Carolina and Virginia, tobacco is the main crop, while in the north region there is more diversity, including orchards and general farming. The portion of the Piedmont region in the southern United States, is associated with the Piedmont blues, a style of blues music that originated there in the late 19th century. According to the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society, most Piedmont blues musicians came from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia. During the Great Migration, African Americans migrated to the Piedmont. With the Appalachian Mountains to the west, those who might otherwise have spread into rural areas stayed in cities and were thus exposed to a broader mixture of music than those in, for example, the rural Mississippi delta. Thus, Piedmont blues was influenced by many types of music such as ragtime and popular songs—styles that had comparatively less influence on blues music in other regions. Many major cities are located on the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the eastern boundary of the Piedmont.
The fall line, where the land rises abruptly from the coastal plain, marks the limit of navigability on many major rivers, so inland ports sprang up along it. Within the Piedmont region itself, there are several areas of urban concentration, the largest being the Philadelphia metropolitan area in Pennsylvania; the Piedmont cuts Maryland in half. In Virginia, the Greater Richmond metropolitan area is the largest urban concentration. In North Carolina, the Piedmont Crescent includes several metropolitan clusters such as Charlotte metropolitan area, the Piedmont Triad, the Research Triangle. Other notable areas include the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, SC Combined Statistical Area in South Carolina, in Georgia, the Atlanta metropolitan area. Cecil Piedmont Atlantic Piedmont region of Virginia Interstate 85 Godfrey, Michael A.. Field Guide to the Piedmont. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4671-6. Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History "Piedmont Plain". New International Encyclopedia.
1905
Winemaking
Winemaking or vinification is the production of wine, starting with the selection of the fruit, its fermentation into alcohol, the bottling of the finished liquid. The history of wine-making stretches over millennia; the science of wine and winemaking is known as oenology. A winemaker may be called a vintner; the growing of grapes is viticulture and there are many varieties of grapes. Winemaking can be divided into two general categories: still wine production and sparkling wine production. Red wine, white wine, rosé are the other main categories. Although most wine is made from grapes, it may be made from other plants, see fruit wine. Other similar light alcoholic drinks include mead, made by fermenting honey and water, kumis, made of fermented mare's milk. There are five basic stages to the wine making process which begins with picking. After the harvest, the grapes are prepared for primary ferment. At this stage red wine making diverges from white wine making. Red wine is made from the must of red or black grapes and fermentation occurs together with the grape skins, which give the wine its color.
White wine is made by fermenting juice, made by pressing crushed grapes to extract a juice. White wine is made from red grapes. Rosé wines are either made from red grapes where the juice is allowed to stay in contact with the dark skins long enough to pick up a pinkish color or by blending red wine with white wine. White and rosé wines extract little of the tannins contained in the skins. To start primary fermentation yeast may be added to the must for red wine or may occur as ambient yeast on the grapes or in the air. Yeast may be added to the juice for white wine. During this fermentation, which takes between one and two weeks, the yeast converts most of the sugars in the grape juice into ethanol and carbon dioxide; the carbon dioxide is lost to the atmosphere. After the primary fermentation of red grapes the free run wine is pumped off into tanks and the skins are pressed to extract the remaining juice and wine; the press wine is blended with the free run wine at the winemaker's discretion. The wine is kept warm and the remaining sugars are converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The next process in the making of red wine is malo-lactic conversion. This is a bacterial process which converts "crisp, green apple" malic acid to "soft, creamy" lactic acid softening the taste of the wine. Red wine is sometimes transferred to oak barrels to mature for a period of months; the wine must be settled or clarified and adjustments made prior to bottling. The time from harvest to drinking can vary from a few months for Beaujolais nouveau wines to over twenty years for wine of good structure with high levels of acid, tannin or sugar. However, only about 10% of all red and 5% of white wine will taste better after five years than it will after just one year. Depending on the quality of grape and the target wine style, some of these steps may be combined or omitted to achieve the particular goals of the winemaker. Many wines of comparable quality are produced using similar but distinctly different approaches to their production. Variations on the above procedure exist. With sparkling wines such as Champagne, an additional, "secondary" fermentation takes place inside the bottle, dissolving trapped carbon dioxide in the wine and creating the characteristic bubbles.
Sweet wines or off-dry wines are made by arresting fermentation before all sugar has been converted into ethanol and allowing some residual sugar to remain. This can be done by chilling the wine and adding sulphur and other allowable additives to inhibit yeast activity or sterile filtering the wine to remove all yeast and bacteria. In the case of sweet wines, initial sugar concentrations are increased by harvesting late, freezing the grapes to concentrate the sugar, allowing or encouraging botrytis cinerea fungus to dehydrate the grapes or allowing the grapes to raisin either on the vine or on racks or straw mats. In these high sugar wines, the fermentation stops as the high concentration of sugar and rising concentration of ethanol retard the yeast activity. In fortified wines, such as port wine, high proof neutral grape spirit is added to arrest the ferment and adjust the alcohol content when the desired sugar level has been reached. In other cases the winemaker may choose to hold back some of the sweet grape juice and add it to the wine after the fermentation is done, a technique known in Germany as süssreserve.
The process produces wastewater and lees that require collection and disposal or beneficial use. Synthetic wines, engineered wines or fake wines, are a product that do not use grapes at all and start with water and ethanol and adds acids, amino acids and organic compounds; the quality of the grapes determines the quality of the wine more than any other factor. Grape quality is affected by variety as well as weather during the growing season, soil minerals and acidity, time of harvest, pruning method; the combination of these effects is referred to as the grape's terroir. Grapes are harvested from the vineyard from early September until early November in the northern hemisphere, mid February until early March in the southern hemisphere. In some cool areas in the southe
Blowing Rock, North Carolina
Blowing Rock is a town in Watauga and Caldwell counties in the U. S. state of North Carolina. The population was 1,241 at the 2010 census; the Caldwell County portion of Blowing Rock is part of the Hickory–Lenoir–Morganton Metropolitan Statistical Area, while the Watauga County portion is part of the Boone Micropolitan Statistical Area. Before 1752, when Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg of the Moravian Church visited the Blowing Rock, the windy cliffs of the area were home to the Cherokee and the Catawba Native American tribes. After the mid-18th century, when hardy Scots-Irish pioneers began to settle in the region, the mountain passes from southern Virginia into Kentucky attracted many colonists, farmers and trappers who continued south to the mountains of North Carolina; the first family to settle in Blowing Rock were the Greenes, who were established by the mid-19th century on a site that would become the Green Park Hotel property. Other early settlers in Blowing Rock included the Hayes, Bolick and Storie families.
During the American Civil War the mountains of North Carolina witnessed fierce guerrilla warfare between groups of pro-Confederate and pro-Union fighters. To keep their families safe, men leaving for service in the Confederate Army sent them to Blowing Rock, which became a local refuge from the fighting. After the Civil War many of these veterans would join their families and remain in the Blowing Rock area. At the same time, summer residents began to come up from the nearby city of Lenoir to enjoy the cool fresh air and magnificent mountain views. Seeing the potential of their village to become a haven for well-to-do tourists, the residents of Blowing Rock had their village incorporated into a town on March 11, 1889; the town's first mayor was "Uncle" Joe Clarke, the town had a population of about 300. As word traveled to other parts of the South about the merits of Blowing Rock, more visitors began to arrive, first camping out, taking rooms at boarding houses such as the Hayes and Martin houses on Main Street.
There were more visitors than the existing boarding houses could handle, so many homes were turned into hotels. The first hotel in Blowing Rock was the Watauga Hotel, built in 1884; the Green Park Hotel opened in 1891, followed eight years by the Blowing Rock Hotel. Walter Alexander, a prominent local resident, touted the clean air and healthy environment of Blowing Rock; as the tourist economy became Blowing Rock's main industry in the late 19th century, the town was forced to adapt to meeting the needs of tourists. The need for cleaner and better streets led to the paving of the town's highways. Another issue involved the need to build fences to keep farm animals from wandering into town and disturbing visitors - at the time most farms in the area were not fenced. In 1896 the town passed an ordinance; the introduction of the automobile and improved roads early in the 20th century further eased the journey to Blowing Rock, visitors began to arrive from as far away as Florida. Today Blowing Rock remains a tourist destination for visitors from all over the United States.
Due to the town's well-to-do, out-of-state summertime residents, Blowing Rock has restaurants, golf courses, other dubious attractions. A recent priority for Blowing Rock's residents has been to preserve and protect the town's historic structures and maintaining the small-town charm and scenery that has attracted so many people for the last 150 years. In addition to the Green Park Inn, the Bollinger-Hartley House, East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad Locomotive No. 12, Gragg House, Green Park Historic District, Randall Memorial Building, Vardell Family Cottages Historic District and Moses Cone's Flat Top Manor are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Saint Elizabeth of the Hill Country Catholic Church, in Boone operates the Church of the Epiphany as a seasonal, mission church in Blowing Rock. Blowing Rock is located in southern Watauga County at 36°7′47″N 81°40′21″W, in the Blue Ridge Mountains; the southernmost portion of the town, including the actual Blowing Rock cliff, is located in Caldwell County.
The town is located on the crest of the Blue Ridge. Most of the town lies just north of the crest, with waters draining north to the Middle Fork of the New River and thence to the Ohio River valley, while to the south of the ridgecrest, waters flow via the Johns River to the Catawba River valley and to the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 3.1 square miles. 3.0 square miles of the area is land, 0.04 square miles, or 1.49% of the total area, is water. The town's elevation of 3,500 to 3,600 feet above sea level results in cooler summer temperatures than lowland areas to the east and south. Daytime temperatures in the summer rise above 80 °F. Temperatures in the winter are harsher than would be expected in a southern state. Daytime highs can fall into the 20s or lower. Snow and freezing rain are all common in the winter months. Springtime in Blowing Rock is cool and pleasant. Rainfall is moderate; as of the census of 2000, there were 1,418 people, 663 households, 387 families residing in the town.
The population density was 477.9 people per square mile. There were 1,524 housing units at an average density of 513.6 per square mile. The racial makeup of the town was 97.95
Biltmore Estate
Biltmore Estate is a historic house museum and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main residence, is a Châteauesque-style mansion built for George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet of floor space. Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it remains one of the most prominent examples of Gilded Age mansions. In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt II began to make regular visits with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt, to the Asheville area, he loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to build his own summer house in the area, which he called his "little mountain escape". His older brothers and sisters had built luxurious summer houses in places such as Newport, Rhode Island, Hyde Park, New York. Vanderbilt named his estate Biltmore, derived from "De Bilt", Vanderbilt's ancestors' place of origin in the Netherlands, "More", Anglo-Saxon for open, rolling land.
Vanderbilt bought 700 parcels of land, including over 50 farms and at least five cemeteries. A spokesperson for the estate said in 2017 that archives show much of the land "was in poor condition, many of the farmers and other landowners were glad to sell." Construction of the house began in 1889. In order to facilitate such a large project, a woodworking factory and brick kiln, which produced 32,000 bricks a day, were built onsite, a three-mile railroad spur was constructed to bring materials to the building site. Construction on the main house required the labor of 60 stonemasons. Vanderbilt went on extensive trips overseas to purchase decor as construction on the house was in progress, he returned to North Carolina with thousands of furnishings for his newly built home including tapestries, hundreds of carpets, prints and decorative objects, all dating between the 15th century and the late 19th century. Among the few American-made items were the more practical oak drop-front desk, rocking chairs, a walnut grand piano, bronze candlesticks and a wicker wastebasket.
George Vanderbilt opened his opulent estate on Christmas Eve of 1895 to invited family and friends from across the country, who were encouraged to enjoy leisure and country pursuits. Notable guests to the estate over the years included author Edith Wharton, novelist Henry James, ambassadors Joseph Hodges Choate and Larz Anderson, U. S. Presidents. George married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser in 1898 in France. Driven by the impact of the newly imposed income taxes, the fact that the estate was getting harder to manage economically, Vanderbilt initiated the sale of 87,000 acres to the federal government. After Vanderbilt's unexpected death in 1914 of complications from an emergency appendectomy, his widow completed the sale to carry out her husband's wish that the land remain unaltered, that property became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest. Overwhelmed with running such a large estate, Edith began consolidating her interests and sold Biltmore Estate Industries in 1917 and Biltmore Village in 1921.
Edith intermittently occupied the house, living in an apartment carved out of the former Bachelors' Wing, until the marriage of her daughter to John Francis Amherst Cecil in April 1924. The Cecils went on to have two sons. In an attempt to bolster the estate's financial situation during the Great Depression and her husband opened Biltmore to the public in March 1930 at the request of the City of Asheville, which hoped the attraction would revitalize the area with tourism. Biltmore closed during World War II and in 1942, 62 paintings and 17 sculptures were moved to the estate by train from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. to protect them in the event of an attack on the United States. The Music Room on the first floor was never finished, so it was used for storage until 1944, when the possibility of an attack became more remote. Among the works stored were the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and works by Rembrandt and Anthony van Dyck. David Finley, the gallery director, had stayed at the estate.
After the divorce of the Cecils in 1934, Cornelia left the estate never to return. Their eldest son, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil, occupied rooms in the wing until 1956. At that point Biltmore House ceased to be a family residence and continued to be operated as a historic house museum, their younger son William A. V. Cecil, Sr. returned to the estate in the late 1950s and joined his brother to manage the estate when it was in financial trouble and make it a profitable and self-sustaining enterprise like his grandfather envisioned. He inherited the estate upon the death of his mother, Cornelia, in 1976, while his brother, inherited the more profitable dairy farm, split off into Biltmore Farms. In 1995, while celebrating the 100th anniversary of the estate, Cecil turned over control of the company to his son, William A. V. Cecil, Jr; the Biltmore Company is held. Of the 4,306.86 acres that make up Biltmore Estate, only 1.36 acres are in the city limits of Asheville, the Biltmore House is not part of any municipality.
The estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963, remains a major tourist attraction in Western North Carolina, with 1.4 million visitors each year. After the death of Willia
Blue Ridge Mountains
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. The mountain range is located in the eastern United States, extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsylvania through Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia; this province consists of northern and southern physiographic regions, which divide near the Roanoke River gap. To the west of the Blue Ridge, between it and the bulk of the Appalachians, lies the Great Appalachian Valley, bordered on the west by the Ridge and Valley province of the Appalachian range; the Blue Ridge Mountains are noted for having a bluish color. Trees put the "blue" in Blue Ridge, from the isoprene released into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to the characteristic haze on the mountains and their distinctive color. Within the Blue Ridge province are two major national parks – the Shenandoah National Park in the northern section, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the southern section – and eight national forests including George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, Cherokee National Forest, Pisgah National Forest, Nantahala National Forest and Chattahoochee National Forest.
The Blue Ridge contains the Blue Ridge Parkway, a 469-mile long scenic highway that connects the two parks and is located along the ridge crest-lines with the Appalachian Trail. Although the term "Blue Ridge" is sometimes applied to the eastern edge or front range of the Appalachian Mountains, the geological definition of the Blue Ridge province extends westward to the Ridge and Valley area, encompassing the Great Smoky Mountains, the Great Balsams, the Roans, the Blacks, the Brushy Mountains and other mountain ranges; the Blue Ridge extends as far north into Pennsylvania as South Mountain. While South Mountain dwindles to mere hills between Gettysburg and Harrisburg, the band of ancient rocks that form the core of the Blue Ridge continues northeast through the New Jersey and Hudson River highlands reaching The Berkshires of Massachusetts and the Green Mountains of Vermont; the Blue Ridge contains the highest mountains in eastern North America south of Baffin Island. About 125 peaks exceed 5,000 feet in elevation.
The highest peak in the Blue Ridge is Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet. There are 39 peaks in North Tennessee higher than 6,000 feet. Southern Sixers is a term used by peak baggers for this group of mountains; the Blue Ridge Parkway runs 469 miles along crests of the Southern Appalachians and links two national parks: Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains. In many places along the parkway, there are metamorphic rocks with folded bands of light-and dark-colored minerals, which sometimes look like the folds and swirls in a marble cake. Most of the rocks that form the Blue Ridge Mountains are ancient granitic charnockites, metamorphosed volcanic formations, sedimentary limestone. Recent studies completed by Richard Tollo, a professor and geologist at George Washington University, provide greater insight into the petrologic and geochronologic history of the Blue Ridge basement suites. Modern studies have found that the basement geology of the Blue Ridge is made of compositionally unique gneisses and granitoids, including orthopyroxene-bearing charockites.
Analysis of zircon minerals in the granite completed by John Aleinikoff at the U. S. Geological Survey has provided more detailed emplacement ages. Many of the features found in the Blue Ridge and documented by Tollo and others have confirmed that the rocks exhibit many similar features in other North American Grenville-age terranes; the lack of a calc-alkaline affinity and zircon ages less than 1,200 Ma suggest that the Blue Ridge is distinct from the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, the New York-New Jersey Highlands. The petrologic and geochronologic data suggest that the Blue Ridge basement is a composite orogenic crust, emplaced during several episodes from a crustal magma source. Field relationships further illustrate that rocks emplaced prior to 1,078–1,064 Ma preserve deformational features; those emplaced post-1,064 Ma have a massive texture and missed the main episode of Mesoproterozoic compression. The Blue Ridge Mountains began forming during the Silurian Period over 400 million years ago.
320 Mya, North America, Europe collided, pushing up the Blue Ridge. At the time of their emergence, the Blue Ridge were among the highest mountains in the world and reached heights comparable to the much younger Alps. Today, due to weathering and erosion over hundreds of millions of years, the highest peak in the range, Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, is only 6,684 feet high – still the highest peak east of the Rockies; the English who settled colonial Virginia in the early 17th century recorded that the native Powhatan name for the Blue Ridge was Quirank. At the foot of the Blue Ridge, various tribes including the Siouan Manahoacs, the Iroquois, the Shawnee hunted and fished. A German physician-explorer, John Lederer, first reached the crest of the Blue Ridge in 1669 and again the following year. At the Treaty of Albany negotiated by Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood, of Virginia with the Iroquois between 1718 and 1722, the Iroquois ceded lands they had conquered south of the Potomac River and east of the Blue Ridge to the Virginia Colony.
This treaty made the Blue Ridge the new demarcation point between the areas and tribes subject to the Six Nati
Tennessee
Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the west, Missouri to the northwest; the Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, with a 2017 population of 667,560. Tennessee's second largest city is Memphis, which had a population of 652,236 in 2017; the state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was part of North Carolina, part of the Southwest Territory. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.
Occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war. Tennessee furnished more soldiers for the Confederate Army than any other state besides Virginia, more soldiers for the Union Army than the rest of the Confederacy combined. Beginning during Reconstruction, it had competitive party politics, but a Democratic takeover in the late 1880s resulted in passage of disenfranchisement laws that excluded most blacks and many poor whites from voting; this reduced competition in politics in the state until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-20th century. In the 20th century, Tennessee transitioned from an agrarian economy to a more diversified economy, aided by massive federal investment in the Tennessee Valley Authority and, in the early 1940s, the city of Oak Ridge; this city was established to house the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment facilities, helping to build the world's first atomic bombs, two of which were dropped on Imperial Japan near the end of World War II.
Tennessee's major industries include agriculture and tourism. Poultry and cattle are the state's primary agricultural products, major manufacturing exports include chemicals, transportation equipment, electrical equipment; the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited national park, is headquartered in the eastern part of the state, a section of the Appalachian Trail follows the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Other major tourist attractions include the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga; the earliest variant of the name that became Tennessee was recorded by Captain Juan Pardo, the Spanish explorer, when he and his men passed through an American Indian village named "Tanasqui" in 1567 while traveling inland from South Carolina. In the early 18th century, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee; the town was located on a river of the same name, appears on maps as early as 1725. It is not known whether this was the same town as the one encountered by Juan Pardo, although recent research suggests that Pardo's "Tanasqui" was located at the confluence of the Pigeon River and the French Broad River, near modern Newport.
The meaning and origin of the word are uncertain. Some accounts suggest, it has been said to mean "meeting place", "winding river", or "river of the great bend". According to ethnographer James Mooney, the name "can not be analyzed" and its meaning is lost; the modern spelling, Tennessee, is attributed to James Glen, the governor of South Carolina, who used this spelling in his official correspondence during the 1750s. The spelling was popularized by the publication of Henry Timberlake's "Draught of the Cherokee Country" in 1765. In 1788, North Carolina created "Tennessee County", the third county to be established in what is now Middle Tennessee; when a constitutional convention met in 1796 to organize a new state out of the Southwest Territory, it adopted "Tennessee" as the name of the state. Tennessee is known as The Volunteer State, a nickname some claimed was earned during the War of 1812 because of the prominent role played by volunteer soldiers from Tennessee during the Battle of New Orleans.
Other sources differ on the origin of the state nickname. This explanation is more because President Polk's call for 2,600 nationwide volunteers at the beginning of the Mexican–American War resulted in 30,000 volunteers from Tennessee alone in response to the death of Davy Crockett and appeals by former Tennessee Governor and Texas politician, Sam Houston. Tennessee borders eight other states: Virginia to the north. Tennessee is tied with Missouri as the state bordering the most other states; the state is trisected by the Tennessee River. The highest point in the state is Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet (
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North Carolina Mountains travel guide from Wikivoyage
