Page 247 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - USA

INTRODUCING THE SOUTHEAST  245

THE SOUTHEAST

One of the country’s most fascinating regions, the Southeast is home to two
of America’s most beautiful cities – Charleston and Savannah – as well as some
of its most pristine beaches and expanses of primeval forests. Culturally, the
region is famous for its vibrant musical traditions: country-and-western music
was born in Nashville, while the blues originated in Memphis.

The Southeast’s cities reflect the region’s rivers, is the heartland of the Colonial­era
proud cultural heritage. Celebrated for their plantation country. Farther inland are the
beauty and sophis tication, Charleston and farmlands of North Carolina, the primary
Savannah are urban gems, with lushly land­ US producer of tobacco products, and
scaped parks and gracious homes. Both the rolling bluegrass fields of Kentucky’s
actively preserve their stately archi tecture verdant Horse Country. At the region’s
and support a wide range of hotels, res t­ center lies unfor gettable mountain scenery.
aurants, and cultural institutions. The quiet
college town of Durham, North Carolina, History
considered the “most educated city in Long before the arrival of the first Europeans,
America,” stands in direct contrast to this area was home to a highly developed
burgeoning commer cial centers such as Native American culture, known as the
Atlanta, Georgia, the economic capital of the Moundbuilders. Evidence of their large
“New South.” Equally engaging are Nashville, cities can be seen at Georgia’s Ocmulgee
the capital of country­and­western music, National Monument. Later generations of
and Memphis, the birthplace of the blues. Native Americans, especially the Cherokee
The region’s natural landscape is just who lived in western North Carolina and
as distinctive. Nearly a thousand miles of northern Georgia, were among North
Atlantic coastline are formed by a long America’s most civilized tribes. Other tribes
series of offshore barrier islands, stretching included the Creek, Tuscarora, Yamasee,
from Cape Hatteras to Cumberland Island and Catawba, but by the early 1800s,
on the Florida border. Just inland, and most of the tribes had been decimated by
linked to the ocean by several broad war and disease, or driven westward.

Kentucky Derby, the annual horse-racing event held in Louisville’s Churchill Downs
Entrance to an elegant Southern home

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