Landscape Regions The Eastern Flank Sweeping down the eastern seaboard, crudely paralleling the coast, are

two broad bands of distinctly different terrain. Next to the ocean is the Coastal Lowland that, although absent in the northeast, follows the shoreline from the Big Apple to Cancun. The second tier of territory is an elongated zone of hills and mountains that stretch from Newfoundland to Alabama, and then reappear to the west of the Mississippi as an isolated outlier in adjoining parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The Coastal Lowland is in some respects a continuation of the interior lowland: it has the same horizontal character with relatively little relief and much of it consists of sedimentary bedrock buried beneath deep layers of overlying soil. Via the Mississippi River valley and the southward extension of the Great Plains, the two regions even are connected. Were it not for the intervening zone of hills and mountains, they might very well be treated as one. There is, however, a compelling human reason for viewing the Coastal Lowland as distinct from the Interior Lowland: its relatively long growing season and ample precipitation suited it to plantation agriculture. Early in the history of European penetration, the Coastal Lowland emerged as a zone in which such subtropical crops as indigo, rice, sugar cane, and cotton were produced for export. This stimulated the enormous demand for slave labor that ultimately shaped the demography of the region. In Texas and Mexico the pattern did not become establishedfor Texas because European settlement occurred only after the trade in slaves had been abolished and in Mexico because Spain, the colonial power in charge, had a value system that discouraged cash farming for export (although beyond the Yucatan where this same lowland zone runs through the former British Guiana, the pattern reemerged). The flat lands of the Coastal Lowland descend below sea level at such a gradual rate that swamps and marshes often occupy the areas closest to the sea, thereby guiding settlement farther to the interior where appropriately drained land is easier to farm. This thinly occupied coastal strip has remained in an unusually natural state resulting in a surprising abundance and diversity of fauna.

The dynamics of waves and currents operating in the extremely shallow waters that extend away from the coast have formed an imposing string of offshore, sandy islands running more or less continuously along most of this coastline. Furthermore, rises in sea level associated with the end of the last glacial period have effectively drowned the mouths of the many rivers that empty into the lagoons situated behind the barrier islands. This remarkable configuration has created many good sites for protected port facilities, relatively few of which have developed. It also has encouraged coastal navigation in protected waters, and in this instance the United States has capitalized on the natural advantage by constructing an Intracoastal Waterway and a Gulf Coastal Waterway that together make it possible to navigate the entirety of the eastern seaboard in protected waters. The Intracoastal Waterway, which fronts the Atlantic, is a pleasure boaters domain; the Gulf Coastal Waterway caters largely to commercial shipping. As for the interior regions of the Coastal Lowland, that portion of it lying along the Atlantic seaboard has a strip adjacent to the Appalachians that is referred to as the Piedmont. It is a thoroughly diminished hill country that is only gently undulating rather than flat. The Piedmont does not experience significantly different land use from that on the flatter plain to its east, but the boundary zone between them is significant. Upstream navigation from the ocean was possible only to this point where small waterfalls or rapids often could be found, presenting convenient sites for converting water flow to water power. As a result, a string of cities sprang up along this boundary lineMacon, Augusta, Columbia, Raleigh, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. The Appalachians lie immediately inland from the Coastal Lowland, but the farther north one goes the thinner the Coastal Lowland becomes until in the general vicinity of New York it disappears altogether. From New York to Newfoundland, the Appalachians confront the sea directly. These are residual mountains, formed in ancient geological time and subjected to eons of weathering and erosion that have made them modest in size and muted in form. Nonetheless, their elevations are not inconsiderable, reaching heights above 6000 in both North Carolina and New Hampshire. More typically, though, their summits are lower than this and the range has had to make up in breadth for what it lacks in height. From Pennsylvania south, the higher peaks, composed of ancient crystalline and metamorphic rocks, run down the eastern flank of the range. Off to their west, an abundance of sedimentary rocks have been heavily eroded to form a repetitive sequence of ridges and valleys, and finally at a greater distance an extensive hill country (which is all that remains of preexisting plateaus). Coal seams are abundant in this region, and strip mining has been an integral part of the relatively impoverished regional economy since the 1800s. During the 20th century, coal mining underwent significant decline as oil became the hydrocarbon of choice and as coal reserves in other parts of the country began to compete with the Appalachian fields. In those earlier times, marginal subsistence farming and timber extraction were the only other significant economic activities.

North of Pennsylvania, glaciation has given the mountains a smooth, rounded appearance and has littered the valleys with boulders and rocks. Since both the mountains and the glaciation extended right to the Atlantic, the coastline is highly irregular, heavily sculpted, and more characterized by rocky outcrops than sandy strands. Without a coastal plain, this region is not particularly well suited to agriculture. Immediately offshore, however, there are vast areas of relatively shallow water where fish used to be abundant. Consequently, European settlement of the region occurred earlyprimarily to exploit the fishbut initially was confined to coastal regions and only gradually penetrated the interior valleys. Well before 1492, according to Mark Kurlansky in his book entitled Cod, Basques were regularly crossing the Atlantic every summer and establishing temporary fishing camps along the south coast of Newfoundland. This maritime tradition always has been a key component of the regions identity. Moby Dick, the early emergence of Nantucket as the world center of whaling, and the recent dramatic narrative of The Perfect Storm all testify to this. New England, the American portion of this northern Appalachian region, has long been recognized as one of the cultural hearths that contributed to the forging of a distinct American identity. Furthermore, the industrial revolution spread to this part of the United States before any other and it is fair to say that industrial decline seriously afflicted this region many decades before the mid-West rust belt began to cope with the same problem. The Canadian part of the Appalachians, by contrast, always has been a bypassed region that never experienced substantial population growth or industrial development. Canadas heartland lies many hundreds of miles to the west in the St. Lawrence Valley, and the Atlantic Provinces have remained neglected and poor. Poorest of all was Newfoundland, but many people in the larger region now nurture the misguided hope that recently discovered offshore oil and natural gas deposits will at last bring prosperity to this land of perpetual deprivation. Throughout the Appalachians, logging, mining, and marginal farming provided a regional life support system in the face of a poor long-term prognosis. From one end to the other, however, the Appalachian landscape is beautiful, and for better or for worse a growing visitor industry is beginning to effect a level of physical transformation that was unattainable by those more traditional forms of human activity. Although separated from the southern Appalachians by the broad valley of the lower Mississippi, the Ozark-Ouachita Upland manifests the same physical and cultural characteristics. Here too, a ridge and valley pattern nearer the coast is displaced by a dissected plateau landscape more to the interior. Here too, the traditional ways of life are being challenged by an onslaught of tourism. This island of hilly, forested upland is surrounded by relatively monotonous lowland terrain on all sides, and with no other mountains for miles around the urban multitudes of Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and Dallas-Fort Worth increasingly retreat to this rugged land.