(bluegrass music) - [David] The Appalachian Mountains extend from Maine to Georgia.

For centuries, they separated the settled East Coast from the wilder lands and the hills into the West.

A part of their history is enshrined in a special highway, and part of that tradition persists in moonshine, NASCAR, hillbilly music, and barbecue.

- Is it all right to lick your fingers here?

- Absolutely.

(peaceful music) - [Announcer] Funding In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

(upbeat music) (people talking from different clips) - The Blue Ridge Mountains are part of the great Appalachian Mountain chain that covers much of the eastern United States.

The Blue Ridge Mountains themselves occupy much of western Virginia and North Carolina.

Down the middle of the range is the great Blue Ridge Parkway, one of our national highway treasures.

And some very interesting cultural observations and phenomena that make North Carolina and Virginia very different.

♪ You'll see her some sweet day ♪ ♪ You'll never miss your mama ♪ Till she's gone, gone, gone ♪ No you'll never miss your mama ♪ - [Bill] We're in Virginia.

This is Carroll County, and this is Hillsville.

It's a small town, but it's a county seat.

They've been holding court here since 1842.

- [David] This town became part of the Confederacy, this county.

- Yes, but 35 miles north of us, the people who lived there formed West Virginia and went with the Union.

- [David] So there was a conflict, even within this hardcore South as to which side they wanted to be on.

- People here were divided.

Families were divided.

People went little north, went south, but right here, it tells us that people from this town, this county, fought in all of these battles, including the great Gettysburg battle.

- [David] So I read here, the men who gave their lives in defense of their beloved Southland.

- When the statue was put up, it was the time of the New South.

And so, the idea of old Confederates, old sags, and Union men, they were coming together.

And so talking about our beloved Southland was just fine.

And this was a time when many of the issues of the Confederacy and the Civil War were over.

Reconstruction was over, slavery had been abolished, but equal had been established firmly.

So what we have right here is the monument to our Confederate dead, a kind of unknown soldier.

This same statue is seen throughout the South, exactly the same, and across the North as well.

Same statue, but it says-- - [David] In defense of their beloved Union, instead of Southland.

- [Bill] Yes.

(upbeat bluegrass music) - [David] Not only got a big central monument to the war dead of the Confederacy, but here is a cemetery extremely well maintained and with very old gravestones.

- Let me show you this, Dave.

This shows the continuation of the Yankee/Confederate, Northern/Southern view of life.

And for the people in this community, Southerners, even in death did not want any Yankee, any Northerner, sitting on their headstone.

(bluegrass music) ♪ My home's across the Blue ♪ Mountain ♪ My home's across the Blue Ridge Mountains ♪ ♪ And I never expect to see you anymore ♪ - The Blue Ridge Parkway is a national treasure.

It's not just a small highway.

It's narrow, but it's 469 miles long, and it runs from central to northern Virginia through to southern North Carolina.

And it is all part of the National Park System.

When the first European settlers arrived in this area, my goodness, more than 300 years ago, they must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven.

First of all, it's warmer here than it was in Europe, but this forest, they had cut all their forests down.

And here they had this magnificent variety of huge trees.

- [Bill] Trees that they could use in every way in their aspect of life.

- [David] Yeah, and it wasn't just for building houses, right.

- Firewood, clear it and have some cattle and some corn.

So this was home, and people settled here until officials started moving west who wanted to see land titles.

They packed up and moved further along the Blue Ridge and built a new home.

(water splashing) This is the country for Daniel Boone, right here, and all of this, Daniel Boone regarded as his home.

He didn't want other people in it, and so, he could see smoke, he moved further west.

- [David] They had already pushed the Cherokee and the native peoples to the west, kept pushing and pushing 'em out of the way.

(birds tweeting) - [Bill] The whole story of building the Blue Ridge Parkway is fantastic, because it was initiated in the 1930s as a program to put young men to work in the-- - [David] During the Depression.

- [Bill] During the Depression and the CCC programs, the Civility and Conservation Corps, initiated it.

- [David] It wasn't finished till 1987, right?

- [Bill] Exactly, it was hard going, so during World War II, they'd put conscientious objectors to work here on the Blue Ridge Highway.

- [David] People who could not in their good conscience fight in a war.

- [Bill] So they worked on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

- [David] An idea of the immensity of the project.

Over the 469 miles, 186 bridges like this.

It's no wonder that it took 50 years to complete.

A huge amount of labor and materials trucked up here, some brought by hand.

(bluegrass banjo music) The Appalachians were famous for music, and it's often considered to be hillbilly music.

It has evolved to be very easily identifiable when you compare it with others, and some of the best musicians are found up here in the hills in the Appalachians, and especially in the Blue Ridge.

♪ This is not '38, but it's Ol' '97 ♪ ♪ You must put her into Spencer on time ♪ - [David] Yeah, Phoenix, Arizona, doesn't have a fiddle shop, and it's a couple million people.

- [Bill] Sure, it's a small city, but people know Galax and they know this fiddle shop.

- [Shop Employee] This is wormy chestnut, the worms started taking it out, and the chestnuts stopped growing, so you can't find this wood anymore.

This wood's almost 100 years old.

- This is an old cigar box guitar.

(string squeaking) - [Ethan] Just set it up on the nut right there, and there she is.

Little tune heads, it'll be ready to go.

♪ It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville ♪ ♪ His line on a three mile grade ♪ - This whole area, the Blue Ridge Mountains, everybody grows up playing fiddles, banjos, guitars.

Mountain instruments.

- As Blended Grass, we play what I call first traditional bluegrass, you know.

♪ Across that big wide mountain ♪ ♪ We'll watch Ol' '97 roll One thing with the Blue Ridge about this area is so many of the first generation musicians have come not only from the Galax area, but all along what they call the crooked road, that a lot of 'em started recording back in the early '20s.

♪ It's a mighty rough road ♪ From Lynchburg to Danville So many musicians that made this music possible come from this area, and they sing about the hills, the mountains, the rivers, the cabins, being back home, that sort of thing.

If you look around the area around here, it don't take long to figure out how the words and all came together in all those songs.

- [David] So the Blue Ridge area affects and infects.

- [Singer in White Shirt] Yeah, it'll grow on you right quick, just like everything else grows around here.

And, of course, we're counting on folks like Ethan to keep this music going, you know, and come to the nursing home and play for me and Marvin one of these days.

- I can do it.

(laughing) - I'll be there, too.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Galax, Virginia, is noted for its music, but it's also noted for the best barbecue in the region, and Bernadette's the one who's produced this.

Beans are barbecued.

They have barbecued mashed potatoes.

- And this is Memphis-style barbecue, but there's sauce from western North Carolina, eastern North Carolina.

- We smoke our chicken in an Applewood.

It's a very mild flavor.

It normally comes on the bone, but I've gone ahead and pulled it off the bone just for you guys.

The ribs, the smoked mashed potatoes, those are all smoked with hickory.

The red container is our house sauce.

It's a Texas-style tomato-base black pepper hot and spicy.

Yellow is Tennessee sweet, tall clear container is our mountains sauce.

Short clear is Susan's Sweet and Sassy.

- Is it all right to lick your fingers here?

- Absolutely, it's practically a necessity.

- Oh, all right.

Mm, this has probably been roasting for about eight hours.

- I was gonna say a couple weeks, but-- - [Bill] Maybe, man, oh.

- You know, it's hard to eat this with delicacy.

It's not more than about a half-hour drive from the Blue Ridge Parkway to Martinsville Speedway, which is the center, the origin of NASCAR in the United States.

It's a wildly popular place, and the people there are very proud of being a Blue Ridge community as well as celebrating their NASCAR-hood - If you go back to the roots of racing, this is really where it began.

(engines roaring) In small, rural areas across the Blue Ridge, Virginia, North Carolina, you had dirt tracks spread out all over, and you go back further than that, obviously you think of the Blue Ridge, you think of this part of the country.

It really began with running moonshine.

I mean, that's part of our history, that's part of our roots, and that's where it began.

Guys running moonshine down back roads of rural Virginia.

Well, people got the idea, can we put them on racetracks and use our talents that way?

And that's kinda the way it started.

I mean, good or bad, that's the way things began.

Back in the day, when they were running moonshine on dirt roads, car control was everything.

That was key to being a successful venture.

Same thing here, you've gotta have good car control.

The cream rises to the top when you come to a place like Martinsville.

But when this place is full of people, there's nothing more beautiful than 50-some thousand people sitting in these grandstands cheering, cars on the track.

That's what makes it all worthwhile.

(engines roaring) - So over the past 15 years, NASCAR has become a national sport and an international sport.

Before that, it was the essential, premier sport of the Southeast, and many people associated Southerners with NASCAR, moonshine, hot dogs, and barbecue.

- I didn't appreciate it until I saw this track, how here 100 feet away from me, cars are gonna be threatening to crash at anytime, going, zooming, accelerating, decelerating, roaring the engines.

Apparently the decibel level for the three and a half to four hours of the race is so great, they recommend you wear hearing protection.

- [Bill] 125 miles an hour on a course this short, wow.

(country music) - If there's any one commodity, any one product, that the Blue Ridge or the Appalachians in general are famous for, it's moonshine, and that's a corn liquor.

It has a long history of being illegal, of clashes between the producers and the federal police.

Prohibition, all this.

But there are a few producers who are now making it legally.

I've read about it all my life.

I've never tasted it.

(bluegrass music) - My family has been making moonshine for hundreds of years in these mountains.

I know that it goes back to at least 1866 when they first started taxing liquor after the Civil War.

You can make it out of corn, which is the most common.

You can make a brandy out of a fruit, like peaches or apples are common around here.

My great uncle made a lot out of plums.

The difference in a moonshine still is it's not as efficient as most modern stills.

Some of the mash comes through in the distillation process, and you taste a bit of it in your product.

(moonshine splashing) This condenser here was my great-great grandfather's.

It's been passed down through the family for about 125 years.

- [David] So that means it escaped the feds for a long time.

- [Cody] Oh yeah, yeah, it's been, it was actually hidden in the barn when I drug it out, and I reconditioned it, because I didn't know what kind of sorghum was on it.

♪ I'll shut up my mug ♪ If you fill up my jug ♪ With that good ol' mountain dew ♪ This is 100 proof.

Well, tequila is usually about 80, 90 proof.

So this is stronger than-- - [Bill] Well, my mustache is curling by the smell.

- Oh, it has a wonderful, wonderful aroma.

You know what that evokes?

Is the ancient spirit of the Blue Ridge of the Appalachians of Mount Mitchell and of the East, and of departed souls.

(Bill laughing) - And it makes me feel connected to North Carolina, the Blue Ridge, the spirit of people who oppose taxes from the 1790s, actually.

- This, really, is as American as apple pie.

It's not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway to a place called the Blacksnake Meadery.

Now, mead is an ancient alcoholic beverage, is brewed from, believe it or not, honey.

It was very popular among the druids.

I didn't realize anybody produced it commercially.

(bees buzzing) And what are those bees eating right now?

- So the bright orange that's coming in is probably from goldenrod, and the bright yellow is probably from stickweed, a little sunflower looking, black raspberry.

- [David] And they all give a different flavor to the honey, is that correct?

- A mead bloom is tulip poplar, and they make a really nice dark honey, and they are done blooming by the first of June.

- [David] So then some other flower becomes a source, it rotates by season.

- [Steve] Right.

- [David] And does it change the flavor of the mead?

- It really does, yeah.

The tulip poplar makes a really nice, kinda complex flavored mead.

You get some kinda nutty character and finish, where a clover honey, you get more of a spicy, herbal character.

Possibly the world's oldest fermented beverage.

Like you said, it is fermented honey.

We have an array of meads here, ranging from dry to sweet with some flavorings added.

We got into this through interest in fermented beverages as well as, you know, natural history and nature.

(glasses clinking) - Confusion to the enemy.

- So you're drinking our Meloluna, which is our sweetest dessert mead.

- Mel, that tastes very much like a port.

- [Woman] It does, yes.

- That is delightful.

(bluegrass music) The sign out on the road said Blue Ridge Pumpkins, and now I'm a believer, because these are pumpkins.

There's no question, look at them all.

But before I get to the pumpkins, I'm told that you gotta go to the maze.

- It just kinda goes with pumpkins.

People in the fall, they love to go through a corn maze, and they love to pick pumpkins.

They kindly just go hand in hand.

You go in, of course, and you get lost.

You have to find your way out, and at the same time, you're getting lost in a big hoot owl.

That's what people in these parts call a great horned owl.

- [David] (laughing) Oh, I see, okay, I should've known.

A horned owl, hoot owl.

- [Barry] So this is your first corn maze?

- [David] It's my first corn maze.

The maize theme is pretty popular, even, you know, before Europeans came, and we have a lot of maize in the Southwest, but there's nothing this high.

And, boom, you get to the edge, and it's an open world.

- It is, it's a whole new world, then.

- [David] With the pumpkins down below.

- [Barry] Yes, yes.

Up here, we've got what we call a New Moon.

- [David] Look at the size of that.

- [Barry] That's a new moon, and-- - [David] How much does that weigh?

- [Barry] That one there is probably about a 35-pounder.

- Pumpkins can get quite large.

This one is one pumpkin from a huge patch of vine, and it weighs about 50% more than I do.

It weighs about 200 pounds.

At Blue Ridge Pumpkins, they have 31 varieties, and some of 'em have creative names.

This is a Warty Goblin.

Good name.

This is a Porcelain Doll.

This is a Fairy Tale.

(air gun pops) - Well, that was in the range, anywhere, of what I was shooting for.

(bluegrass music) (air gun pops) - [Man] Man, once!

Oh, oh!

- To make a proper pumpkin pie, you need cream.

The best source of cream?

A very special breed of cow.

And they're grazing not far away.

Where I grew up in farming country, the ideal cow to have was a Jersey.

They're gentle, and they didn't give as much milk as other breeds, but it was very high in fat content, so you wind up with really good milk with lots of cream, you had Jerseys.

(man speaking off microphone) - They're a gentle breed.

One of the reasons that we started milking with them.

But also, they're just really well-suited to the kind of farm we wanted to have and to the kind of operation we wanted to have.

Yeah, this area used to be all small dairies, lot of small subsistence farming.

And as the farming has gotten bigger and bigger, a lot of 'em have been pushed out.

But what we saw was this opportunity for us to have the kind of farm we wanted, a small farm that was still capable of supporting a family.

I think that's really reflected all the way through.

Through the cows, through the cheese, through the way we work.

Let's steer around the lady who's having her nap.

This farm has been great, too, because we were able to find a farm that hadn't been broken up, you know.

When the farmers went out, a lot of people sold the farms off in smaller packets of land, and it was really hard to find a full farm anymore.

- [David] So this was intact, then.

- [Kat] This was intact, with the springs and everything.

- Make cheese, you take milk, you add something to make it coagulate.

You add something to make it solidify into cheese.

You run it through cheesecloth, and boom, you have a solid.

You put it in a form, you have cheese.

- [Bill] Craft cheese, it's so good, and it has the flavor of the Blue Ridge country.

- All of our cheeses are raw milk cheeses, so they have to be aged at least 60 days before we can sell them.

This cheese, we actually age six months, and so they have to be turned, they have to be washed, they have to be handled in the cellars for that entire time.

We have the most milk when the cows calve in April, and then the least as they finish up in December, and so our volume will float with that.

We make about, maybe 110, 115,000 pounds of cheese a year right now.

This is my 18th year making cheese, and our 28th year in the dairy business.

- May I?

- Yes.

- You're sure you give me permission?

Bill, would you like one?

- [Bill] Oh.

- [David] As your advisor, I recommend that you really promote this.

(all laughing) A very good cheese.

(bluegrass music) So we're in North Carolina.

Believe it's a food truck, enclosed.

(distorted voice on loudspeaker) They just called out somebody about her big burrito.

(laughing) They ordered that, that's not bad chicken.

- We're three miles from the Blue Ridge, imagine that.

- [David] Yeah, and let's see how they are.

(peppy music) (speaking foreign language) So I ordered a kind of a pork taco and Bill was ordering, ordered a little specialty-made tortillas.

This is really, if it's like it sounds, this'll be as good a Mexican food as you can get anywhere in the East, or maybe even better.

And this is Alvis.

- Yes.

(speaking foreign language) - I've always thought of the South, and North Carolina as of the South, as socially being divided into whites and African Americans.

- That's certainly not the case in North Carolina anymore at all.

I think North Carolina's probably getting up around 10% population from Latin America now.

Here in western North Carolina, it might be a bit lower than that.

In some parts of the state and the Piedmont, a little bit higher.

We had about 10 million, and I think it's probably 900,000, hundred thousand, what I like to call new population North Carolinians.

North Carolinians who either were originally Spanish speakers, or their children are Spanish speakers.

(bluegrass music) (crickets chirping) - An influx of people from different regions and different countries is changing the nature of the Blue Ridge Mountain cultures.

It's part of what we call in the United States a melting pot.

It's a great part of our heritage.

(bluegrass music) Join us next time, In the Americas, with me, David Yetman.

A majority of the southwest United States is desert.

Water is scarce and found mostly in a few rivers and streams, but they are becoming exhausted.

A few people here and there are working on ways to confront this slow disappearance of our water.

Their work is vital to every Southwesterner.

(bluegrass music) (intense orchestral music) (peaceful music) - [Announcer] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

(bluegrass music) Copies of this and other episodes of In the Americas with David Yetman are available from the Southwest Center.

To order, call 1-800-937-8632.

Please mention the episode number and program title.

Please be sure to visit us at intheamericas.com or intheamericas.org.

(inspiring music)