The Helvetia area was settled by Swiss immigrants in 1869 — families with names like Merkli, Betler, Isch, Daetwyler, Burki, Fahrner and Zumbach — who came here, many driven by crop failures in their native Bern, to carve a thriving town out of the mountains that reminded them of their homeland. They named their settlement Helvetia, the ancient Latin name for Switzerland.

Nothing earth–shattering has ever happened in Helvetia: no civil war battles, natural disasters or great scientific discoveries. What is remarkable about the place is that is way of life created by those 19th–century Swiss immigrants — independent, courageous, sometimes eccentric, completely original — still exists here.

I’ve sought to understand this life and to record as much of it as possible. I’ve often roamed the area with a grizzled–looking Appalachian native named Rogers McAvoy, a psychology professor at West Virginia University who owns a home in Helvetia. We have spent hours driving around the mountains in his old Jeep, stopping to talk to people sitting on porches or in bars or just walking along the roads. He has been a guide and resource tracing the convoluted lineages of families, and exploring the complex mores of a community, part industrious Swiss, part American pioneer.

Rogers debunks common misconceptions about Appalachia, about such things as poverty and laziness. He explains how the mountains have acted as a barrier to the homogenizing influences of mass media and modern urban life, preserving the area’s uniqueness and shaping its character. Rural mountain living fosters both fierce independence and self sufficiency, and a strong sense of community and family, qualities that make Helvetia something of an anomaly today. “To the rest of America,” he says, “Appalachia is like another civilization.”