Struttingfool is going to unfriend me for so hijacking his thread. Without going back in to history, the EP has had a big influx of DC people for 30+ years since taxes and housing and lifestyle is so much better than DC and it is only a 90 min commute by train or car for them which for some reason they think is good. Typical crowd that will pay 8000/ac and spend mill to restore the old farmhouse.
Now, for history, that area is mostly farm related with little energy related economy. Farms are huge and have been in families since the 1600s. Now as you reach the rise of the Appalachian mountains, energy related jobs from timbering to coal to salts to chemicals are interspersed with the farming industry. This attracted a crowd, in part, by the industry, and in part the topography reminding of their homeland, the Germans, Italian, Irish, Polish, and African. And most this industry did not segregate against these different cultures like much of the country did. Thus the mainland part of the state minus its panhandles tend to be hard working , family oriented , untrusting of outsiders, type of people that worked their day job and farmed their land secondly.
I’m German, Irish, French. Think I have to watch the alcohol attraction much???