Piedmont, << PEED mont, >> Region is an area of gently rolling to hilly land lying between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the United States. It is sometimes called the Piedmont Plateau. It was named for the Piedmont region in Italy. It varies in width from about 50 miles (80 kilometers) in the north to more than 125 miles (201 kilometers) in the south.
The division between the Piedmont Region and the Coastal Plain is marked by a geological border called the Fall Line. Along this line, rivers flowing toward the Atlantic Ocean drop from the harder, rocky ground near the mountains to the softer Coastal Plain.
Many large cities have developed along the Fall Line, partly because of the access to water power and tidewater. They include Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Richmond, Virginia; and Columbia, South Carolina.
The Piedmont Region covers about 80,000 square miles (207,000 square kilometers). It ranges in elevation from 300 feet (91 meters) above sea level on the east to 1,200 feet (366 meters) on the west.
Tobacco is widely grown in the Piedmont Region. The Piedmont cities of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, are major centers of cigarette production. The Piedmont section of Virginia and Pennsylvania is fine apple-growing country. The dairy industry is important in the northern Piedmont. Furniture manufacturing is a major industry in the central Piedmont. The southern Piedmont is a leading U.S. cotton-textile producing area.
