The southern ridges of the Appalachians ware found by the Spanish explorer De Soto in the mid sixteenth century. He named the mountain chain from the Apalachee Indians, one of the many tribes he met on his travels, It is not likely that De Soto reached farther north than our state of Georgia, so that he never realized that the mountains he named reached from Canada to Alabama.

Later, the term Appalachian Revolution was coined to name one of the eventful chapters in the history of the earth. Later still, a hikers highway from Maine to Georgia was named the Appalachian Trail.