Appalachian History

Where’s the Valle Crucis post office? Well, that depends

The town’s Latin name means ‘Vale of the Cross,’ chosen because of the cross-like form of three local streams at their junction.

“Sugar making time was looked forward to with pleasant anticipation by the young people,” writes George Benson Kuykendall in 1919.

“The everlasting ‘Now don’t you ever tell I told you this’ ought to place the speaker on a level with a fellow that carries brass knucks.”

Unaware of the kind of novel that Elmer Gantry was to be, he boasted that the central character was to be modeled on himself.

The Uniform Narcotic Drug Act of 1934 was the first mention of marijuana, or any of its derivatives, in the Virginia Code.

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