About Appalachia

Appalachia spans across 13 states, an area of 206,000 square miles stretching from southern New York to northern Mississippi. The region’s 26.1 million residents live in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and all of West Virginia. Martin County, KY, where the ARO Main Campus lies, is in the Central Appalachian region along with most of eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. This area holds the highest number of contiguous rural counties that are not near a metro area, creating a highly isolated pocket within Appalachia.