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Madison and Yancey Counties, North Carolina

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Wolf Laurel History Blog

The Three Lives of the Willis Cabin

James F. Klumpp
Presented to the Wolf Laurel Historical Society
June 23, 2021

Oscar and Mary Jane Willis

    Two years earlier, as Oscar turned 30, he must have decided that his future was as a farmer.  We are not certain why he decided that his farm should be in Madison County or Upper Laurel.  In November 1878, the Willis brothers purchased 199 acres of land stretching from Haw Ridge down to and including the laurel thicket on this side of Wolf Laurel Branch from a wealthy landowner named Pinkney Anderson.  Oscar probably did not move to the area from Indiana at that time, but continued to invest in his North Carolina farm with the earnings from the brothers’ medicine business.  In November 1879 he purchased another 165 acres from Anderson on the west side of Wolf Laurel Branch, this time in his own name rather than with his brother.  In the spring of 1880, still a resident of Indiana, he contracted with a neighbor – John J. English, known colorfully as “Sober John” – to clear some land on the farm before the summer of 1881.  Most likely that summer was when Oscar returned east from Indiana to farm the land.  According to those who informed Delia Brittain, he built a one room cabin on the west bank of the creek upon his arrival.

    Delia Brittain explained what happened next:  “The common concerns of the first residents created close and lasting friendships.  ‘Sober’ John English became such a friend to Oscar Willis.”  With wood on the site Willis built a two story log dwelling near the original cabin and became a landlord: renting it to Sober John.  Soon, Oscar had fallen in love with Sober John’s sixteen year old daughter Mary Jane.  Despite the twenty year difference in their ages, they were married in 1885.  Soon thereafter their daughter Gertrude was born in the small cabin by the creek; four years later they welcomed her younger sister Estell.  Five more children followed, born in their third cabin, the two-story log structure where David Vega lives today, the first cabin behind the barn in Settler’s Village.

    Oscar was an energetic entrepreneur and his empire was to expand.  He, of course, farmed at first.  But living on a creek with a substantial drop in elevation, his father’s livelihood told him that a mill could be built.  He did so on Willis Branch, building holding ponds, flumes, and sluices to deliver the wild waters consistently onto his wheel.  His highest holding pond remains today at the top of Settler’s Village and the relocated mill wheel graces the plaza beside our fishing pond.  Soon he was milling his own grain and that of his farmer neighbors.  He bought a bell and mounted it on a simple tower.  In the custom of the time, farmers from the neighborhood would clang the bell to bring the miller in from his fields.  On days when he was operating the mill, Oscar could peal loudly to let neighbors know this was a good day to bring their grain.  He later added a saw blade assembly and began milling lumber for the neighborhood.

    From that lumber he also built the large barn and larger cabin in which his family grew.  Today that barn is the Wolf Laurel Community Center and that cabin David Vega’s.  He also built a spring house that survives but with evident modernization later in the twentieth century.  While his family lived in the cabin behind the barn, Willis rented or provided his one room cabin by the road to employees who helped with the farm and mill work.  He was now an employer providing work in a growing farm and mill enterprise.

    Of course, as in all lives, sadness would be mixed in to the everyday life of a family making a success of a farm in this valley.  Oscar and Jane also believed in education for their children, but opportunities for education in the valley were limited.  They sent their eldest, Gertrude, away to finish her schooling.  In the spring of 1902, they took the wagon on a long trip to bring Gertrude from school.  On the trip home, the Toe River in Yancey County was high, and as they crossed, those in the wagon were soaked in the cold waters.  Gertrude developed pneumonia and died within a short time.  The episode made the Willises anxious for the education of their other children and in May of 1906 they sold their farm to Elminor Briggs and moved into nearby Mars Hill.  The sales price was five times the price Oscar had paid for his interest in the farm twenty-eight years before.  That difference represented the value that the entrepreneurial farmer had added to the raw land.

    Shortly thereafter Oscar and Jane moved to Louisiana where Oscar died in 1914 at age 65.  Oscar was in his wagon, pulled by a team of mules, returning from a mill with a load of lumber.  The animals bolted and threw him from the seat and onto the road.  He was run over by the wagon and died the next day from his injuries.  Jane, twenty years younger, returned to North Carolina to live with her children and died forty years later, in 1953 in Asheville.

    That first family who started out in that cabin, raised a growing family, and built a successful life represent to us the families who lived up and down Puncheon Fork and the Big Laurel Creek on the other side of Haw Ridge and Wolf Pit Mountain.  The cabin reminds us of humble beginnings and what dedicated, hard working families can make of a beautiful piece of land, even in a remote mountain valley.

A Rugged Mountain Paradise at Last

    Our story will move ahead a half century.  We know that others lived in that cabin during that interval.  United States Geological Survey Topographical maps tell us that as late as the early 1940s an inhabited cabin sat at that spot beside what was then known as Shed Road.  We cannot document with legal records the continuity of the cabin.  Old timers who have told their stories to researchers over the years have told two different stories.  One is that the front portion of the log structure where we receive our packages today is the cabin that Oscar Willis constructed about 1881.  Others have different memories: that Raliegh English – who owned this land before Bud Edwards – reconstructed the current cabin from a location on US 23.  In researching our book, A Treasure in the Appalachian Sky: A History of Wolf Laurel in Madison and Yancey Counties, North Carolina, we have been unable to locate anyone who can testify that they helped English remove the old cabin or reconstruct another on the spot.  But whichever story is true, by the time Bud Edwards purchased the land in 1964 a cabin sat beside the road waiting to leave its mark as the well-remembered gateway to what Edwards called “Wolf Laurel Boundary.”

    In this second life we will talk about today, it was that signature of arrival at Edwards’ retreat in the mountains that gives the cabin historical power.  In those days Edwards and his friends made a nearly three hour drive from Kingsport, Tennessee, to Wolf Laurel Boundary.  It was not today’s short hour and a quarter drive down a smooth interstate highway, but a drive of starts and stops, along busy two lane roads from Kingsport through downtown Johnson City, then on through downtown Unicoi and Erwin, before beginning its ascent up the mountain through Temple Hill, Ernestville, and Flag Pond, across Sam’s Gap, often behind eighteen wheelers traversing the mountains to Asheville, then down to Smith Creek Road.  From there the trip was on a rutted, dirt and gravel road across Ramsey Ridge and down to the hamlet of English and across a couple fords in Wolf Laurel Branch.  After that arduous journey, when the eyes saw the chimney on that warm cabin, the weary traveler knew they had arrived at Edwards’ mountain paradise for hunting, fishing, camping, picnicking, or just a wonderful weekend with their family.

    Those early “Friends of Bud” told us that even upon arriving at Wolf Laurel, driving to their own cabins was no sure thing.  Mountain snows in winter often required carrying supplies up the mountain by foot from the gate (even if their cars made it as far as the gate).  For many, the first night of warmth was spent in that cabin by the Branch.  Michael Whitt told us of his arrival at Wolf Laurel in the 1970s.  That cabin beside the road was his place to spend the nights as he toiled during the day to complete the reconstructed cabin that he and Brenda call home today.

    Many told us of the meaning of the Wolf Laurel gate in those days.  It was not a security wall regulating who was admitted to Wolf Laurel Boundary.  Rather it was a place of welcome where you first met the warm reception of friends with whom you were sharing a wonderful weekend of adventure.  As one of them described it to us. “There was always a smile at that gate and relief in arriving at a place apart.”  The sheer joy of what Edwards had made from wilderness was represented by that cabin beside the road.

The Music of Friends on a Saturday Night

    As Wolf Laurel grew and people began to build their homes in the 6000 acres, new friendships emerged.  In those days, Wolf Laurel resort had a large staff of workers in a restaurant, a hotel, a golf course, a ski slope, a stable, a roads department, a water department, and a large real estate concern involved with sales and rental.  Most of the workforce for this resort came from Madison and Yancey Counties.  Wolf Laurel in the 1970s and 1980s was the largest employer in Madison County.  Those workers welcomed the new residents and the new residents fondly remembered the warm hospitality and friendship.

    It is important to imagine that gate as a bridge, not a wall.  People moved freely through it and a sense of the difference between those in Wolf Laurel and those “beyond the gate” was not an element of their lives.  And, the third life of the Willis Cabin was that connection of the people of the Upper Laurel community with the people who now made Wolf Laurel home.

    One of the hallmarks of the Southern Appalachians was – and is – the vibrant music that fills the lives of its people.  One of the great memories of those we interviewed from that era at Wolf Laurel was bringing their blankets or their chairs to the front porch of the cabin beside the gate on cool summer nights.  Shag Rice and Paul Hamlin were two employees of Wolf Laurel charged with greeting visitors at the gate (and, we might add, making sure supplies and equipment from all the new construction did not pass out of the gate when it should not).  But Shag was an accomplished banjo player and Paul was a master of the guitar.  They would invite their friends from Upper Laurel and their friends from Wolf Laurel to bring their instruments to the cabin on a Saturday night.  As they enjoyed each others’ talent long into the night, spread out around them were the people from Wolf Laurel beside the people from Upper Laurel come to enjoy the music.

    Saturday nights at the cabin represented for these people the joy of a Southern Appalachian culture filled with music and friendliness.  It made Wolf Laurel more than an enchanted wilderness, it made it a human place where people from so many locales enjoyed each others’ company and shared one of the memorable characteristics of life in the mountains.

Our Historic Cabin

    Those are the three lives of the Willis Cabin.  All endow it as an historic structure.  As you pass it daily in the future, I hope you will remember how much it meant for this nearly a century and a half to so many different people.  It has been a place where a family started and succeeded in the life that was characteristic of this place in that time.  It has been a place where after a dramatic reinvention as a wilderness retreat, those who came to treasure their time here could exhale a sigh of relief and celebrate their transition to the new life they sought for a weekend or longer.  And it was a place where a people who had been here for over a century and people who had come to make a new life in these mountains learned to celebrate their time together and bond around mountain music.

    One of the old traditions of Wolf Laurel was a variety show called “The Last Hurrah” performed in October each year as one of the last events of the season. In 1992, one of the talented people of Wolf Laurel, Ona Renninger, sang a song she had composed in 1990.  Ona was described to us as a signer-songwriter with the voice of an angel.  It was a time of change at Wolf Laurel.  Many in the community were feeling a loss of what they thought Wolf Laurel was.  The poet Ona Renninger sought to capture what those people felt was to be lost.  Her vehicle was that song: “Down by the Old Gatehouse.”  The ballad did what good poetry does: it collected memories around something that would outlast a world so treasured, a world that would be lost.  That is, my friends, the collection of memories that makes a structure historic.

    That cabin had other lives that we could have told too, of course.  I really wish we had access to so much more of that history of a century and a half that the cabin by the road has seen.  But for now, these three lives will stand in for the rest.  That cabin by the gate will do its work as historic: it will trigger these memories of times past, even those that we did not experience but that helped to shape our enjoyment of our mountain home today.

Sources

1850 U. S .Census, Rutherford County, NC, p. 345b.

1870 U. S .Census, Dade County, MO, p. 76a.

1870 U. S .Census, Madison County, NC, p. 447b.

1880 U. S. Census, Howard County IN, p. 464d.

1900 U.S. Census, Madison County NC, E.D. 84, p. 5.

“A Very Historical Site,”  Top of the Bald, 3.1 (May 1990): 7.

Death Certificate, Jane E. Willis, February 20, 1953.  North Carolina State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics. North Carolina Death Certificates. North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Delia Tipton Brittain, Upper Laurel and Her People: Madison County, North Carolina, 2nd ed. (Mars Hill, NC: Wolf Laurel Historical Society, 2002).

“Farmer Dies in Runaway,” [New Orleans LA] Times-Democrat, January 12, 1914, p. 2.

Interview with Jake and Judy Grigg, April 5, 2021.

James F. Klumpp and Warren H. Johnson, A Treasure in the Appalachian Sky: A History of Wolf Laurel in Madison and Yancey Counties, NC (Mars Hill NC: Wolf Laurel Historical Society, 2021).

John J. English to Oscar Willis, 6 Apr 1880, Madison County NC Deed Book I:308-309.

Oscar and Jane Willis to E[l] M[inor] Briggs. 16 May 1906. Madison County NC Deeds 21:129.

P[inkney] Anderson to Oscar Willis, 28 November 1878, Madison County NC Deed Book H:367-68. 

P[inkney] Anderson to Oscar Willis, 25 November 1879, Madison County NC Deed Book I:306-307.

W[illiam] L. Willis to Oscar Willis, 20 December 1886, Madison County NC Deed Book V:229.

The Bald Mountain Tourist Society

James F. Klumpp
Presented to the Wolf Laurel Historical Society
June 22, 2022

Let me begin by introducing you to Squire Osborne Deaver.  Os Deaver was a farmer, raising his family in 1889 on Little Ivy Creek near Forks of Ivy in Madison County, North Carolina.  Like many farmers of his day, he also contributed a second livelihood to the community: in Deaver’s case a store on his property serving his farm tenants and neighborhood.  Unlike other farmers, he kept a day book in an old account ledger making entries of his activities on nearly every day, noting the weather for that day, his comings and goings, and the comings and goings of others.  If you have an image of nineteenth century farmers as isolated mountain folk whiling away their days quietly in their isolated hollers, Deaver’s day book will disabuse you of that idea.  It seemed he was in motion nearly daily; sometimes to Mars Hill, sometimes to Asheville, sometimes visiting neighbors or relatives.  And the many visiting him signaled that he was not alone in that mobility.

The entries that interest us from Deaver’s day book are from October 1889.  The entry for Wednesday, October 16th, a week short of his 58th birthday, began:

"Clear and warm.  I start to Bald Mountain.  Take dinner [the mid-day meal] at Jim Sprinkle’s.  Buy a hat [from] Jake Sams [for] $1.65.  Reached Dr. English’s at sundown.  Stayed there until morning.  Dr. English, O. B. Holcombe, Jim White, Bob Fisher, and myself have a party."

He continued the next day:

"Clear and cool.  We pack our rations for man and beast and start for [the] top. . . .  Several others joining in, we reach the Bald camp at noon, tie up, feed [the horses], take dinner, and start on foot for pinnacle, shooting some birds etc., a Mr. Waldrope joins with his banjo.  Prowled around and got back to camp, feed, and eat supper.  Tom Murry is sick and unable to take much part.  After supper we organized the Bald Mountain Tourist Society.  Dr. English, Pres; Doug Carter, Vice Pres;  S.O. Deaver, sec; J. B Sprinkle, Treas; Zeb Fisher, Sgt. at Arms; and Jim White, corresponding secretary.  Meeting in June and October each year, Thursday before full moon."

The organizing of the Bald Mountain Tourist Society apparently highlighted the journey, for the next morning he records:

"Friday, 18th.  Clear and nice.  The party took breakfast by 4s.  All left for home.  I alone made down through Egypt and across Sampson Gap and got home by 3 PM. . . ."

His commentary ends with a final entry on Saturday, October 19th:

"Cloudy.  I am very sore from my long ride for top of Bald Mountain" (p. 57).

Deaver’s companions on that trip were from across a swath of Madison County.  Forty-nine year old Obadiah B. Holcombe (not to be confused with the Obadiah Holcombe who lived in Upper Laurel) was a neighbor living on the Big Ivy just across the county line in Buncombe.  Twenty-eight year old McCullough (M. C.) Buckner, was a farmer on the Ivy as well, who also taught school, and before our story ends would become Superintendent of Schools for Madison County.  Forty year old Jim Sprinkle was a friend, married to a former neighbor on the Ivy, who lived in Mars Hill.  At Sprinkle’s, where they had dinner that first day, he no doubt had met 22 year old Jim White and 31 year old Tom Murray who lived near Petersburg, west of Mars Hill, as well as 28 year old Zeb, and 30 year old Bob Fisher, from near Marshall.  The adventurers traveled together that day to Dr. English’s.  We will meet him shortly.

The number of people assembled on Bald Mountain on Thursday was not specified by Asheville’s Daily Citizen, only characterized as “a goodly number” (October 26, 1889, p. 1).  The paper credited Deaver with inventing the scheme to get together on the mountain.  Of course, he did not assemble the party via internet or facebook notice, nor by text or email, nor even by telephone, so in his associations and travels he must have succeeded in spreading the word that an adventure was at hand.  The Citizen indicated the purpose of the Society was “taking care of and piloting of tourists and visitors over and about this wonderful mountain.”  It also announced that “Capt. R. B. Johnston has under way the building of a graded road leading from Laurel creek to the top of this mountain.”  Johnston owned the mountain at the time, although it was destined to pass from his estate to the Buck family a little over a decade later.

Before we go further, however, let us stop and consider how the inhabitants of our beautiful mountains and valleys in the shadow of Big Bald lived in that day.  The 1900 census for Upper Laurel conveyed a sense for how these people put bread on their tables.  Recording “occupation,” the census listed 205 residents simply as “farmers” with seven others (including John Porshia whom you will meet shortly) listed as “farmer and miller” and six others (including Oscar Willis whose land included what we know today as Wolf Laurel’s Village) as “farmer and blacksmith.”  It was not true that these 218 people identified in the census all owned farms in Upper Laurel; nearly half were farming land rented from others.  In addition, 156 residents, often older sons of farmers, were listed as “Farm Laborers.”  Two others were listed as “farm managers.”  Only three occupations were listed sans farming: six residents, generally widows and servants, were listed as “housekeepers”; one was a “teamster”; and one (twenty-two year old Carey Ramsey living with widow Marcy Justice) was a “Literary Teacher.”  Finally, Dr. Issac English was listed as “physician and farmer.”  Ninety-eight percent were farming as an occupation; notably none were listed as storekeepers; none as simply blacksmiths; none as simply millers.  You did these things as a sideline from your farming.

Unique among those occupations, of course, was that of the first president of the Bald Mountain Tourist Society – Dr. Issac Lafayette English – known to his neighbors as Fate or simply as Dr. English.  In 1865, when Fate was a child of seven, his father died from an unspecified illness while a soldier in the Union army.  His mother Axie Phillips English was, however, particularly gifted in raising their children after her husband’s death.  Delia Tipton Brittain notes of Fate:

"Axie’s youngest son . . . went away to medical college.  On graduation he chose to return with little fanfare and served these pioneering people among whom he grew up.  He traveled on horseback over the mountains night or day, cold or hot, wet or dry, through the icy creeks to any place he was called.  When a man knocked on his door, Dr. English knew someone was suffering. . .  With his familiar saddlebags thrown across the saddle, [he] mounted his faithful gray horse and accompanied the anxious man to his dwelling place, be it near or some distance away.  Dr. Fate English ranks high among the unsung heroes of the later 1800s and early 1900s" (32-33).

Fate English was well known to Deaver, provided health care to his family, and was clearly a key touchstone of the Tourist Society.  You can see his grave today in the English cemetery just up the mountain from the ski shop on Puncheon Fork Road.

When the next designated date for the Society to meet came around, in June 1890, Deaver recorded in his day book:

"Tues, 3rd Jun.  Clear but clouded up by storm clouds.  Many went to Bald Mountain.  I did not go, my mare too heavy with colt. . . .  Thunderstorms all around.  (63)

"Jun 4th.  Clear and warm.  This is the big day for the Bald Mountain High Court.
"Jun 5th.  Clear.  Bright morning for the Bald Mountain boys.  Hope they enjoyed the trip, no serious accident occurred."  (64)

Clearly Deaver was on the mountain with his friends in spirit, if not in person.

We do not have complete accounts of all the meetings of the Bald Mountain Tourist Society.  But sixteen years later, Tom Murray had recovered fully from his illness during that first trip and filed a report on the Society’s annual journey to Big Bald for the Madison County Record (4 Aug 1905, p. 4).  Some practices had changed over those years.  The designated June and October dates had been abandoned; the 1905 trip was in July.  Murray and Buckner were still making the journey, but most of the first travelers were absent.  Indeed, I cannot document another trip by Deaver after that first one.  The trip now drew travelers from Tennessee and a broader range of North Carolina counties.  But some things had not changed.

Murray began his colorful account with the gathering caravan heading for Big Bald:

"It was announced that we would go to that beautiful peak on the 18th, therefore the parties that had the nerve to undertake a trip like the one anticipated met at different forks of the road early in the morning, gathering strength in number – and otherwise – as we proceeded.  Before we reached the Walnut Mountain the parties that we relied upon were all in line.  Having plenty of rations, various tents, carpets, quilts and blankets to satisfy that craven appetite and keep us warm, we had no fears.  Hence we made our way into what is known as Upper Laurel.  There the big fat Frenchman known as J. A. Porchia, weighing 815 pounds, met us just below Mack English’s."

Murray’s introduction requires that we pause to meet one of the more colorful characters of early Upper Laurel: Jean Porché.  Porché was born in France, probably in the mid 1820s although his age is of some dispute.  He left France sometime in his teen years, and from one account roamed for a time around England.  On April 19, 1847, he arrived in New Orleans onboard the ship Rappahannock from Liverpool (National Archives Passenger Lists).  He worked odd jobs as he traveled around the South.  Some claim he spent time in Florida.  Somewhere along the way he purchased a monkey and, with a hand organ that he had brought from home, began entertaining as what today we would call a busker.

Eventually his travels brought him to Upper Laurel by the early 1850s.  On the south side of Wolf Pit Mountain, along what is today Laurel Valley Road, he went to work for a farmer named Moses Waldrop.  Waldrop had a daughter Caroline. Soon Caroline fell for the lovable Frenchman.  They were married in 1852 (1900 census).  Jean, his monkey, and his hand organ became popular at all sorts of community events, entertaining children and their parents alike.  Delia Tipton Brittain picks up the story:

"Porché was a hard-working, ambitious man and got a job cooking for timber workers.  Soon he purchased land on both sides of Wolf Pit Mountain.  Puncheon Fork . . . traversed this land, and Porché saw opportunity to improve his economic situation by building a dam across the creek and erecting a grist mill.  He cleared some of the dense laurel beside the creek and built a two-room log house near the mill"  (p. 51)

His great-great grandson, Ken, has told me the rest of the story.  One day Porché was working in the mill, when the monkey bit his son Gus.  Protecting his son, Porché picked up a wrench lying nearby and struck the monkey.  The monkey died from the blow.  In Ken’s words, “great-great-granddaddy cried for days.”  The monkey was buried under an Oak tree along Wolf Pit Road and years later Jean and Caroline were buried by his side.

By 1905, the memorable Jean Porché was the president and central organizer for the Bald Mountain Tourist Society.  Murray again picks up our story and gives us a vivid picture of the day’s event and of Bald Mountain in 1905:

"We reached our place of destination about 4 o’clock.  The camp fires were prepared, tents erected, everything done that was necessary to insure protection from storm.  The clouds that had gathered of their own accord were carried away by a breeze in a moment’s time, then the entire group made their way to the top of the highest peak.  There we viewed 1500 acres of solid sod, we heard the throb of the giant engine at the David M. Buck lumber yard as it moved the great band saw that turns out 25,000 feet of the finest lumber every day.  We heard the whistles of locomotive and the rattle of the freight cars as it moved the lumber to Huntdale.  Then our attention was attracted to the sunset.  All of one accord in one place gazed westward over one grand panorama of peek beyond peak."

To appreciate the sophisticated planning for these annual events, note that the Society brought a photographer to memorialize participants, posing them on Stackrock Ridge on the Bald before each returned to the lowlands below.

Two years later, another report on the Society’s trip to Big Bald appeared in the Madison County Record (7 Jun 1907, p. 4). According to that account the group gathered at Street Gap on Wednesday the 22nd day of May, 1907.  All members had been notified sixty days in advance.  Many headed for Upper Laurel on May 21st and spent an entertaining night with John Porchia before proceeding to the Gap to meet the others.  There a stranger came riding into the group – an excellent drummer and nice fellow they were apprised – and they took him into the fellowship.  Afterwards he “expressed himself as being well pleased.”  Camp was reached about 4 PM.  Although none of the accounts state precisely where they camped, we believe it was at the well watered meadow at Double Springs.  Officers elected in 1907 included Porché as president; Lattie English, Dr. Fate English’s nephew, vice-president; McCulloch Buckner as soliciter; Tom Murray as chief attorney for the Tourist Society; Joe Denton and John Sams, judges; R. C. Peterson, Sheriff; and Wm Guine of Tennessee, chaplin.

You notice many of these officers titled as if court officials.  This was because the “High Court” noted by Deaver as he was lamenting not being able to join the group in 1890, continued to be a highlight of the now annual visit to the splendor of Big Bald.  The Record elaborated the 1907 session of the High Court:

"The first case on the docket was . . .  the World versus Harry K. Thaw, a case transferred from NY to High Bald Mountain Court.  Thaw was prosecuted by M. C. Buckner and Birt Sams of Tenn.  The prosecution refused to go into an exhaustive review of the life and character of Mrs. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw [the victim], but tried the case on its merits.  Prof. Buckner conducted the trial in a very vigorous manner but showed himself too dignified to resort to anything beneath the dignity of a lawyer of high standing.  Thos. J. Murray and Guy V. Roberts were employed to defend Mr. Thaw. . . .  Tom used language . . . that no one understood – neither judge, nor jury, nor himself – doing his best to show that it was a case of justifiable homicide.  After the argument, Judge Sams charged the jury for one hour and the jury retired and returned the verdict in ten minutes.  They were unanimous for acquital.  J. A. Porshia then ordered Judge Sams to notify Judge Fitzpatrick of NY to release the prisoner."

The final day in 1907 brought a “best jokes” contest won by M. C. Buckner, and a trip to the Bald to witness the sunset.

The 1909 gathering took place on August 4th.  The group met in their customary campgrounds at “the big spring on the Tennessee side of the Bald.”  The primary case at trial at that year’s High Court was the charge against Bud Boone for “taking Mrs. Grear’s fodder without leave and destroying her front teeth.”  Dave Buck and M. C. Buckner were the prosecuting attorneys and H. D. Wardrup was the defense attorney.  Apparently Buckner was a better prosecutor with Buck’s help.  Boone was found guilty by the jury and Judge Porshia framed his sentencing:  “Close examination of the public laws of the world, . . . on page 9,767, chapter 11,987, section 3, [specifies] that it’s the duty of this court to get all the good out of guilty defendants possible previous to death.”  He therefore, sentenced Boone to “. . . 22 years and 3 days at hard labor on a public road to be built from Streets Gap to the Bald Mountain and at the expiration of that time he shall be hanged"(Madison County Record, 20 Aug 1909, p. 5).

We do not know how many years the Bald Mountain Tourist Society highlighted the summer tourist season.  We have not found a report on its activities after the 1909 meeting.  Nor was that road on which Bud Boone was to labor ever built.  There are, however, additional interesting things we know about tourism to Big Bald at the turn of the Twentieth century.

The Society spawned a female counterpart.  Perhaps much like the Wolf Pack trip taken by Wolf Laurel women each summer in our own time, a group of women of all ages made an annual pilgrimage to Big Bald Mountain at the turn of the twentieth century.  The French Broad News (28 Jul 1907, p. 2) reported that their 1907 trip  “reached the English settlement on Upper Laurel on Thursday night.”  They were entertained there, participated in a box lunch sale to support the Sunday School at Upper Laurel Methodist Church, and eventually went to the Bald on Sunday.  They returned to Marshall reporting that the “English folks” were excellent hosts. 

A report on the women’s 1908 trip chuckled: “If all the things seen and heard could be reproduced it would indeed be amusing to some who never dreamed that they were talking too loud, or even imagined that there were others along” (French Broad News, 16 Jul 1908, p. 3).  The report did offer, however, that “all present had a most delightful trip and many returned feeling much younger than when they left, having drank at the fountain of youth, which flows so freely down the side of the mountain.”

The Society and its activities were widely known in Madison County, so much so that they became a familiar cultural trope.  In 1908, a column defending the prohibition that came to Madison County in 1901 appeared in the French Broad News (23 April 1908, p. 2).  The article began:

"When whiskey was manufactured and sold throughout Madison county, crime and lawlessness was so common that our county was often referred to as “Bloody Madison.”  Our jail was filled with criminals and special terms of courts were required to relieve the criminal docket." 

But the column’s strategy was to contrast post-prohibition Madison to the old Madison.  Quoth the column: “Were it not for [today’s] crimes caused by [the medical] dispensary liquor, Madison’s criminal court wouldn’t hold longer than one of Tom Murray’s Bald Mountain conventions.”

So, you see, delightful trips to Bald Mountain and all the enjoyments of our wonderful iconic treasure did not begin with Bud Edwards’ purchase of Wolf Laurel Boundary in 1964.  Citizens of our region were catering to tourists, and those lowlanders were coming to enjoy our mountain over a century and a quarter ago.  When we climb Big Bald on a warm summer evening, witness the 360 degree views, marvel at the breathtaking sunset, then retreat along a way lit by a bright full moon, we follow in footsteps placed there 133 years ago by forebearers who loved the beauty and serenity of that mountain as much as we do today.  This striking mountain and this beautiful forest melt time, and across the ages expose the shared human yearning for the special inspiration that nature at its most stunning promises to us all.

Sources

“Bald Mountain,” Madison County [NC] Record, 20 Aug 1909, p. 5.

“The Bald Mountain Party,” [Marshal NC] French Broad News, 16 Jul 1908, p. 3.

“Bald Mountain Trip,” Madison County [NC] Record, 7 Jun 1907, p. 4.

Delia Tipton Brittain, Upper Laurel and Her People: Madison County, North Carolina, 2nd ed. (Mars Hill, NC: Wolf Laurel Historical Society, 2002).

“A Jolly Good Time,” [Marshal NC]  French Broad News, 18 Jul 1907, p. 2.

“A New Organization: The Bald Mountatin Tourists’ Society of Madison,” [Asheville NC] Daily Citizen, 26 October 1889, p. 1.

Os Deaver Historic Diary, 1885-1896, Forks of Ivy, North Carolina (Mars Hill NC: Mars Hill University, 2013).  Special thanks to the Southern Appalachian Archives at Mars Hill University for the assistance of Kern Lunsford’s transcription the day book to assist in interpretation.

Passenger List, S. S. Rappahanock, 19 Apr 1847, Port of New Orleans.  National Archives, Washington DC.

“Prohibition,” [Marshal NC]  French Broad News, 23 Apr 1908, p. 2.

“A Trip to the Bald Mountain," Madison County [NC] Record, 4 Aug 1905, p. 4.

United States Census, Buncombe and Madison Counties, North Carolina, 1880, 1900.   

Where did the railway run?

From 1904 until around 1909 (perhaps a bit later), Wolf Laurel was a stage for an episode in the transformation of the Southern Appalachians.  It was the era of American industrialization at the turn of the 20th century.  From his new home that is now The Buck House Inn at Bald Mountain Creek, David M. Buck managed a 4919 acre logging operation known as Bald Mountain Boundary, owned by a succession of companies including the J. M. Buck Lumber Co., the Bald Mountain Lumber Co., and the Wood-Galloway Lumber Co.  The operation included saw mills, a rail station, support facilities such as a blacksmith shop, and a worker’s dormitory complex located across Bald Mountain Road from today’s Buck House Inn.  Nearer the house sat a company store and perhaps even an early electric generator to power the complex turned by the rushing waters of Bald Mountain Creek.  Timber was gathered by contract from farmers living along Bald Mountain Creek below the Buck House, but the bulk of the cut was on the Yancey County slopes of Big Bald Mountain in what is today the Bald Mountain Creek Nature Preserve.

During the same time, the Caney Valley Railway transported lumber from the operation at the Buck complex to the newly opened railhead of the Ohio River and Charleston Railroad at Huntdale where the Cane River joined the Toe to form the Nolichucky.  The Caney River Railway was completed on July 1, 1904, at a cost of $40,000.  It ran along the banks of the Cane River from Huntdale to the mouth of Bald Mountain Creek, where today Guy’s Store sits, then up the Creek to the saw mill site.  It was narrow gauge with wooden rails that may have been replaced by steel in 1906.

Of course, only ghosts of the railroad exist today.  Driving along Bald Mountain Road, one may occasionally glimpse what appears to be a flat corridor where the tracks may have run.  But the ghosts that interest us are on the mountainside above the Buck House.

How did the felled trees get from the mountainside to the mill across Bald Mountain Road?  Ronald D. Eller, a historian of the era, pointed to two common methods used to move timber from the steep mountainsides of the Southern Appalachians to mills.  One was simply to pull them out with animals, a technique with the nickname “snaking.”  When a mortgage was recorded obtaining operating funds for the Buck led logging operation against its existing capital stock, the collateral included livestock: horses, mules, and steers (likely oxen).  This might indicate use of this technique. 

The other method was known as “sluicing.”  Temporary fill or “splash” dams would be placed on mountain streams.  Water would back up behind them.  Felled logs would be placed into the ponds, then the dams would be blasted and the rushing water would flush the logs down to the mill site.  We know that one of Bud Edwards' first investments in the property when he purchased it in 1964 was restoration work on Bald Mountain Creek.  Perhaps this is evidence that during the logging operations this method was at least tried on the mountain. 

There was another possible method at Bald Mountain Boundary, however, to explain how felled trees were removed from the mountainside: an extension of the railway passed near the creek beside the Buck House and continued up the mountain, perhaps on what later became Town Mountain Road, to a small plateau on the mountainside where a roundhouse was in place.  One railroad historian even reported the track extending on switchbacks all the way to the Big Bald summit.  Perhaps this method delivered timber to the mill.  Mountain-side railroads were tricky projects.  Rail transportation required relatively level railbeds.  Except for cog railways that advanced up the mountain on chain-like cogs, engines moving over rails could not haul weight up steep inclines, nor could they prevent runaways when bringing their burden down the inclines.  The technique to overcome this problem was switchbacks.  Engines would haul their burden along railbeds cut horizontally at a modest angle along the mountain side, ending beyond a switched rail.  The engine would stop at this end of the track, the switch would be moved to an uphill (or downhill) position, then the engine would push its load along a similar slightly angled railbed to the next switchback.  With several of these switchbacks, the loads could be carried up and down the mountain.

Now the mystery:  Which of these was the plan for the railroad on the side of Big Bald?  Was there a roundhouse located on a plateau up a distance from the Buck House, where animals dragged felled timber to be loaded onto rail cars?  Or were there switchback rail beds all the way to the summit of Big Bald where the haul for the animals was a short one to a waiting rail car?

You can help with the search for this answer.  No documentation has been found to this point that would answer the question.  So our best bet is to locate the evidence in the old rail beds.  Can we find a plateau that could have housed a roundhouse?  We are not certain how long the narrow gauge locomotive would have been, so we are not certain how wide the plateau would have been.  Or can we find a plausible rail bed with the requisite switchbacks leading up the mountainside along what are today the trails of the Bald Mountain Nature Preserve?

Now there is a challenge for you hikers and historical detectives!

Map: Fetters

Sources: 

“An Act to Incorporate the Caney River Railway Company.”  Laws and Resolutions of the State of North Carolina, 1903, chapter 70, February 5, 1903, pp. 91-92.

“Caney River RR,” Poor’s Manual of Railroads, 38 (1905):300.

“Charters Granted Five Corporations,” Raleigh Morning News, June 2, 1902, p. 2.

Ronald D. Eller, “The Last Great Trees,” Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization in the Appalachian South, 1880-1930.  (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), pp. 86-127.

Thomas Fetters, “The Caney River Railway,” Logging Railroads of the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. (Hillsboro OR: Timber Times, 2007), v. 1, p. 153-55. 

Railroad Gazette, 32 (July 25, 1899): 122-24.

The Wolf Laurel Gatehouse Cabin

*** A Very Historic Site ***

The old gatehouse [Now the mail shed] at the entrance of Wolf Laurel might be designated as a National Historical Site.  [To my knowledge, never achieved.]  It is over 100 years old and still sits in its original location.

The house was built by Oscar Willis.  The Willis family still lives in this area, and Oscar had two children, Gertrude and Lu who were both born in the cabin that is now the old gatehouse.  Gertrude, the eldest, was born in 1889, and that gives us an idea of just how old the house is.  It was one of two original houses within Wolf Laurel, and the other is still in existence in Wolf Laurel known as Cabin #1, next to the barn [the first cabin beyond the barn on Village Lane].

Families who have owned the gatehouse are Willis, El Miner Briggs, English families and many others.  It has had at different times a kitchen wing (which was later removed), the upstairs had one or two bedrooms and the downstairs had a living room, bedroom, and a flight of stairs.  Mud was between the logs where now there is cement.

The road in front of the gatehouse was originally called "sled road."  There was a gate with wire fencing around the area where they kept cattle and sheep.  The Barn, which is now the office of BMDC, housed the sheep and the cattle for the families that lived in the two houses.

Someone at Wolf Laurel should see about the mechanics to get this area proclaimed a National Historical Site.  The information on these were obtained from Cleo English and Paul Hamlin.

Source: Top of the Bald, 3:1 (May 1990):7.

The Founding of the Wolf Laurel Historical Society