10. Many of Appalachia’s images were given to the nation from outside of the region
With the exception of the wholesome family images of an Appalachian town which were presented to the nation by The Andy Griffith Show (Griffith was a native of Mount Airy, North Carolina), most of what is stereotypical of the region were created by outsiders. Al Capp was a Connecticut Yankee from New Haven; the creator of Snuffy Smith, Billy DeBeck, hailed from Chicago’s South Side. Mountain Dew’s hillbilly image was born in a New York based advertising campaign. But Appalachia made many contributions of its own to American culture, outside of the stereotyped image of the area as backward, ignorant, and poverty-stricken.