There used to be a time — and that time, in many respects, might still be now — when most people thought of urban areas as the only places in to find any sort of measurable or visible LGBT presence. As gays move forward in our movement for civil and social equality, attention on our issues and recognition of our communities are starting to mount up in even the most unlikely of places.

An oral history project at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., researching and documenting the LGBT communities of the Appalachian Mountains received a $6,531 grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a private statewide non-profit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

According to a press release the project aims to document the presence of LGBT Appalachian communities and their effect on regional character and social development. Submitted to the Humanities Council in September, project coordinators Kathy Staley and Mike Howell originally requested more than $8,000 from the group. The money will be used to compile oral histories, hold a public symposium and facilitate contributions to a national interactive website on the subject.

The Appalachian State oral history project isn’t the first in-depth look at gay life in the famous Eastern mountain range. In 2009, New York University Press published Mary L. Gray’s book-length “Out in the County: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America.” Gray spent time visiting rural communities in Kentucky, some located in the Appalachians. In 1995, Kate Black and Marc Rhorer published the essay “Out in the Mountains: Exploring Lesbian and Gay Lives” in The Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association. An updated version of the essay appeared in the 2001 collection “Out in the South” edited by Carlos Lee Barney Dews, Carolyn Leste Law. Annually, students, faculty and campus organizations and departments host “Gay in Appalachia” forum events at Virginia Tech.