Appalachia may be growing -- in one sense, with addition of counties to the ARC region

The Appalachian Regional Commission's service area, which defines "official Appalachia," includes many counties that most Americans would not think of as Appalachian -- such as those on the southern tier of New York and in northeast Mississippi, the two extremities of the commission's boundaries. Those regions were included mainly to boost political support in Congress for the ARC when it was created in 1965, and the loose socioeconomic criteria have allowed additions of several counties over the years.

Now the U.S. House has passed a bill, House Resolution 799, that would add 13 counties to the region, making a total of 423 eligible for funding and other favors from the commission. Generally from north to south, here are the counties that would be added in each state, with the county seat in parentheses:

Ohio: Ashtabula (Ashtabula), Mahoning (Youngstown), Trumbull (Warren), all bordering ARC counties in Pennsylvania, and Fayette (Washington Court House), which would be the first "official Appalachian" county with a segment of Interstate 71 -- a striking illustration of the region's expansion beyond the highlands.

Kentucky: Robertson (Mount Olivet), the state's smallest county, at only 2,200 people; adjoining Nicholas (Carlisle), the southern half of which is in the Inner Bluegrass Region, well removed from the mountains; and Metcalfe (Edmonton), long mostly surrounded by ARC counties. It became even more of a cartographic anomaly a few years ago, when the region gained Hart County, adjoining on the northwest, and Edmonson, west of Hart, creating a western ARC appendage that included Mammoth Cave National Park but included counties with low per-capita incomes, a key criterion for the commission's work.

Virginia: Henry (Martinsville), a Piedmont county but one that has seen big reversals in its major industries of tobacco, textiles and furniture, and is served by Appalachian Power Co.; and Patrick (Stuart), a hilly county that includes Bull Mountain and a segment of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Where the parkway crosses US 58 is a place with one of our favorite names, Meadows of Dan (source of the Dan River). Now, please, forgive us this little tangent: Just southwest of Meadows of Dan, the parkway intersects and parallels Mayberry Church Road. Perhaps that was the source of a fictional town name for Andy Griffith, who grew up in Mount Airy, N.C., the next town of any size if you keep heading southwest. That's in Surry County; it and Stokes County, to the east and away from the Blue Ridge, are already in the ARC region. For regional maps, click here.

Tennessee: Lewis (Hohenwald), Lawrence (Lawrenceburg), Giles (Pulaski) and Lincoln (Fayetteville). That string of counties runs more west-east than north-south, and adding them would reduce a mapping anomaly while creating others. It would add three of the seven Tennessee counties that border ARC counties in Alabama and Mississippi, but adding Lewis (named for explorer Meriwether Lewis, who died there under mysterious circumstances on the Natchez Trace) would be a northwesterly extension of the region. And the change would create a big notch by omitting Moore County, home of the Jack Daniel Distillery at Lynchburg.