Appalachian States

13 states are officially in the Appalachian Region: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The boundary was established by the Appalachian Regional Commission Act of 1965 and covers 423 counties. Unlike cultural regions such as the Bible Belt, Appalachian membership is statutory — each county is in or out by federal law, not academic consensus.

West Virginia is the only state where every county lies within the ARC boundary — all 55. The remaining 12 states are partially Appalachian: Kentucky has 54 of its 120 counties in the region, Tennessee has 52 of 95, and Pennsylvania has 52 of 67. At the other extreme, Maryland has only 3 of its 23 counties in the region, and South Carolina has 6 of 46.

The Northern Appalachian subregion covers New York (14 counties), Pennsylvania (52 counties), Ohio (32 counties), and Maryland (3 counties) — 101 counties total. These states share the ridge-and-valley topography of the central Appalachians and the coal and steel industrial history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Central Appalachian subregion covers West Virginia (55 counties), Kentucky (54 counties), and Virginia (28 counties and independent cities) — 137 counties total. West Virginia lies entirely within this subregion. Central Appalachia has the highest concentration of ARC-designated economically distressed counties of any subregion.

The Southern Appalachian subregion covers Tennessee (52 counties), North Carolina (29 counties), Georgia (37 counties), Alabama (37 counties), Mississippi (24 counties), and South Carolina (6 counties) — 185 counties and the largest subregion by county count. It stretches from the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina to the foothills of northeastern Mississippi.

The name derives from the Apalachee, a Native American people who lived near present-day Tallahassee, Florida. Spanish explorers encountered the name in the 1500s and applied it to a village, then to a distant mountain range they had heard of but not yet reached. The Spanish recorded it as 'Apalachen' as early as 1528 in accounts from the Narvaez expedition.

European mapmakers gradually shifted the name northward as exploration expanded, attaching it to the entire eastern mountain chain. By the 18th century, 'Appalachian Mountains' was the standard English label for the range running from Alabama to Maine. The Appalachian Regional Commission, created in 1965, formalized 'Appalachia' as a defined federal region encompassing 13 states and 423 counties.

West Virginia's 55-county inclusion makes it the only wholly Appalachian state. Kentucky's 54 counties represent 45 percent of its 120 total counties. By contrast, Maryland's 3 Appalachian counties — Garrett, Allegany, and Washington — represent just 13 percent of its 23 counties. South Carolina's 6 counties (Oconee, Pickens, Greenville, Spartanburg, Cherokee, and York) are its Blue Ridge and upper Piedmont corner.

New York's 14 Appalachian counties form the region's northern terminus, all located in the Southern Tier along the Pennsylvania border. Mississippi's 24 northeastern counties are the southernmost extension of the region. Together, these geographic outliers explain why Appalachia spans nearly 1,300 miles from southern New York to northeastern Mississippi.