In Poor Valley at the foot of Clinch Mountain, the Carter Family Fold traces its founding to 1974, when Janette Carter — daughter of A.P. Carter — began hosting music gatherings to honor a promise to her father to keep traditional Appalachian old-time music alive. The dedicated building opened to the public in 1979, seating more than 800. Every Saturday evening from February through November, the no-electric-instruments rule holds — a deliberate preservation practice, keeping the stage clear of the amplified Nashville sound; per Wikipedia, the rule was often set aside for Johnny Cash, a Carter family in-law. Alongside this living tradition, ETSU's Reece Museum holds roughly 22,000 artifacts of Appalachian regional history, and its Archives of Appalachia carries nearly 400 audio and video recordings — folk music, religious worship, oral histories — documenting what this region built and passed down before anyone thought to call it preservation.
