Appalachia is a term used to describe a region in the eastern United States that stretches from southern New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Although parts of the Appalachian Mountains extend through Maine into Canada, New England is usually excluded from the definition of Appalachia.

Over twenty million people live in Appalachia, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, covering mostly mountainous, often isolated areas from the border of Mississippi and Alabama in the south to Pennsylvania and New York in the north. Appalachia also includes parts of the states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, and the entire state of West Virginia. The region contains few intermediate-sized cities, and only two large metropolitan areas are located entirely within the region—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Knoxville, Tennessee. (However, the expansive region served by the Appalachian Regional Commission incorporates some additional urban areas, including Birmingham, Alabama, the northern part of the Atlanta metropolitan area, western fringes of the Charlotte area, western fringes of the Piedmont Triad area, western fringes of the Washington metropolitan area and the eastern fringes of the Nashville metropolitan area.)

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