Yeah, nothing of note has happened here recently. No NASA, no Dell, there’s absolutely no music in Austin, and the Houston museums are just plain empty etc etc . 
The Missouri bootheel is river bottom land from the Mississippi and flat Flat FLAT.
The Clampetts could have been from southern Missouri, northern Arkansas or even a bit of northeast Oklahoma.
I distinctly remember Granny saying something about being Volunteers, with a capital V. Not that they were alumni of the college, but alluding to how the folks from that fine state originally got that moniker.
Hmmm, I seem to be channeling overlyverbose on that one.
I could’ve mentioned those and thousands of others but I figured that since these came AFTER oil was discovered then they wouldn’t count.
Just TV taking advantage…IIRC BC was actually on Designing Women when he was merely the Governor of Arkansas. Charlene was always rambling on about cousin Bill. I don’t remember her mentioning the Clampett’s. BUT I culd’ve missed it. She did resemble Ellie May a little bit.
Number Six boot heal ya say? When Josey Wales passed through there it was probably boot hill.
KRM I was reading some cite that showed there was a Bugtussle in OK, MO, TN. Ark. and KY. It didn’t say if the towns were older than the TV series or perhaps the series picked a name that would fit in with lots of places. I have been led to believe it was the latter based on some comments on the Bev.Hillbillies web site. In reality, I don’t think it was ever actually said for certain what state Jed and Ellie were from… *in reality[/] :rolleyes: 
I’m with Sean Factotum on this one. There is an episode where some battle of the Civil War will be enacted, either as a re-enactment type activity or as a part of a movie. Jethro ends up on one side and he wears a Tennessee Volunteer uniform that he inherited. The location expert (for the re-enactment or movie) identifies it as such and states that the uniform was extremely authentic.
Beef.
Texas’ primary claim to fame before oil was cattle, cowboys, and, of course, it’s history as an independant Republic…
Wherever they’re from it’s someplace with hills and hillbillies. That lets out Texas and Oklahoma. The American Anglo-Celtic-Protestant “Highlands South” subculture known as “hillbillies” comes from the Ozarks, the Appalachians (southern half – from West Virginia on down), and noplace else. Right? I mean, there are no (indigenous) hillbillies in the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada. Or in western Pennsylvania.
Actually, the Ozarks extend into the eastern part of Oklahoma, not far from the aforementioned Bug Tussle. And they’re full of hillbillies.
Since the Clampetts came from the same area as Hooterville, etc., we can assume their ZIP Code would be similar. On the Green Acres reunion movie from the early 90s, Sam Drucker mentioned their ZIP Code was 417??1/2 (I forget a couple digits). Now, there is no such thing as a 1/2 at the end of a ZIP, but 417etc. is a Kentucky ZIP, southern KY, as a matter of fact.
Sir Rhosis
Jed and Elly Clampett lived close to Bug Tussle near Branson, Mo. Granny who was Jeds mother in-law, moved from Tennessee to live with Jed and Elly. Pearl and Jethro Bodine lived a short distance from the Clampetts in Arkansas. The old truck sits in a museum at Point Lookout, Mo. just south of Branson. Various towns and locations in both the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks are mentioned in many episodes. The 417 that somebody referred to is probably actually a area code and not a zip code since the Missouri Ozarks is area code 417.
a believe the theme song describes Jed as a ‘poor Mountaineer’, so I always presumed West Virginia. This thread makes is clear, however, that the Ozarks could also, and probably were, the home ground. Not much oil in WV, Tenn, or Arkansas, is there? Oklahoma, yep.
An episode of the show took place in Silver Dollar City.
The shows characters were obviously inspired by Li’l Abner comic and Dogpatch USA.
That puts them on the Arkansas/Missouri border.
I seem to recall they lived just outside of that area.
What about Pixley? That was considered the big city in the entire Hooterville Trilogy.
I lean close to Tennessee being the state in question. In the later years of the Hillbillies though, they spent several episodes in Silver City, which was supposedly near their home. Silver City is in Missouri as I understand it.
Dammit! Ninja’d again!
A bit more detail on the Silver Dollar City connection.
Hooterville and Pixley (and Crabwell Corners) were where the Douglases and Bradleys lived on Green Acres and Petticoat Junction, respectively. Jed and clan visited the area in a few crossover episodes, due to some convoluted family relations. They were always more Midwest flatlands than Southern hills and mountains.
Jethro’s uniform was indeed that of the Tennessee Volunteers.
The show premiered in 1962 but I can’t find state level oil production data until 1981. In that year, production levels (in thousands of barrels per day) were
MO: 1
TN: 3
WV: 10
AR: 50
OK: 422
They often refer to mountains, in reference to where they are from.
Oil exists in East Tennessee, & Kentucky, & those areas have mountains.
I assume Appalachia.
Li’l Abner deserves a lot of credit for the popularity of the 60’s rural shows.
Daisy Mae is likely the inspiration for Ellie Mae. They toned down the character’s sexy costume for tv. Donna had Daisy’s curves and could have easily starred in a Li’l Abner movie.
What, no hillbilly zombie jokes yet? This thread is thirteen years old. Sigh. The SDMB just ain’t what it used to be…
You can see production by state from 1960-2015 here in 1,000’s bbl/yr.
https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/sep_prod/SEDS_Production_Report.pdf
West Virginia was a major oil state much further back, No. 2 in 1900 behind Ohio. California, Texas and Oklahoma (which was No. 1 for awhile from 1907) began dominating in the early 20th century. The fields along the Pennsylvania/NY border dominated from the dawn of the modern petroleum industry till the 1890’s. But 1900 production was tiny by today’s standards. WV in 1900 avged 44,000 bbl/day which was around 1/4 of total US production. By 1960 it was 6,000 bpd out of ~7mil nationally. Now it’s 21,000 of ~9.4mil.
Anyway it seems Beverly Hillbillies cognoscenti have identified several direct references to the Ozarks area near the Arkansas-Missouri border. And while the whole show is farcical, obviously, very loosely speaking the Clampetts are a comical suddenly rich version of the Joads in ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, who were from the Ozark Uplift part of eastern OK (hardly any of the state’s oil production), though not hill people per se. The oil part is relatively more fanciful than the rest.