The Southeastern Piedmont and Coastal Plain

Piedmont

• Older land, • maturely dissected combination of

metamorphic rocks• Remnants of former-prominent range of

mountains• Worn down to a smooth-rolling surface

The Fall Line

• Marked by waterfalls and rapids on all streams flowing from Piedmont to Coastal Plain

• Limited settlement in Colonial times• Limited urban growth to the west.• Fall Line cities sprang up• Trading and market centers for backcountry

Crops/Economy

• Tobacco was the means to wealth in Virginia• Common preoccupation of hundreds of

Englishmen settling in the Virginia Colony

Crops/Economy

• Nearly every city on the Carolina Piedmont campaigned to finance Textile mills in 1880’s

• Growing demand for employment attracted young white men from the countryside into to towns

• Growing textile demands– Increased immigration– North Carolina population nearly doubles

between 1880-1920

Crops/Economy

• Beginning in the 1960’s, textile and apparel industries leave– Globalization– Cheap labor

Modern

• High-tech industries have appeared in Piedmont region recently.

• Dispersed urban form is now an urban-industrial zone of nearly 4 million people

• Metrolina or Spersopolis

Coastal Plains

• Swamps, marshes, flatwoods, wetlands• Formed during Cretaceous times when land

surface was submerged under shallow ocean waters

• Deep Chesapeake Bay, Outer Banks barrier islands

Topography

• Carolina bays are elliptical depressions often underlain by peat, covered with decomposing vegetation and shrubs

• Comprised of wetlands and shallow stream valleys, cropland , commercial woodland

• Best agricultural land is known as the Inner Coastal Plain– 600 mile

Freshwater

• Northern and Southern limits of Inner Coastal Plain are two of largest freshwater swamps– Great Dismal Swamp– Okefenokee

Agriculture

• Farmers began growing corn and soybean• Livestock feed• Broiler Industry, 1960’s

Economy/Crops

• Rice and Cotton prominent crops• Port of Hampton Roads, VA– Busiest port in the South Atlantic coastlineNewport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and other cities makeup the largest naval installation in the United States.