15. Appalachians were forced to become dependent on themselves
As the rest of the United States grew to the west and its cities expanded, fueled by the ports and the railroads, the regions of Appalachia were largely bypassed, other than trains which existed to exploit the region’s natural assets; lumber and coal. By the 1860s citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio, well west of Appalachia, could purchase fresh oysters from barrels packed with salt which had been harvested from the Chesapeake Bay only one or two days earlier. The trains which delivered them returned carrying butchered hogs, but in neither direction were stops in Appalachia deemed worthwhile, since the region had little hard money and thus a stop would generate little in the way of profit.
