WATAUGA COUNTY, NC - HISTORY - A History of Watauga County, North Carolina
			       Chapter 14, Part 1
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A History of Watauga County, North Carolina

John Preston Arthur


Page 209
Chapter XIV.

Some of Our Show-Places.

Fine Scenery.--The scenery of Watauga County is as fine as any in the
mountains of North Carolina.  From Blowing Rock, the Grandfather, the Bald,
Howard's Knob, Riddle's Knob, Elk Knob, the Buzzard Rocks and Dogs Ears views
can be had that are sublime.  Between Banner Elk and Montezuma are two immense
rocks, called the Chimneys, seventy-five and ninety feet high, which have
never been photographed, but which are striking objects of nature.  Hanging
Rock above Banner Elk and the North Pinnacle of the Beech Mountain are
accessible and afford fine views.  Dutch Creek Falls, within half a mile of
the Mission School at Valle Crucis, slide over a rock which seems to e eighty
feet high, and Linville Falls, now in Avery County, have two falls, each about
thirty-five feet in height.  Elk Falls, three miles from Cranberry, are well
worth a visit, while the rapids of Elk Creek below the old Lewis Banner mill
are wild and attractive.  Watauga Falls, just west of the Tennessee line, and,
therefore, in Tennessee, are not really "falls" in the sense of having a sheer
fall of water in a perpendicular direction, but they are a series of cascades
pouring over gigantic rocks in a gorge grand and gloomy in the extreme.  It is
rarely visited, however, many people imagining that a post office called
Watauga Falls between Beech Creek and Ward's Store are the real falls, while
in fact there are no falls there whatever.  The turnpike leading from Valle
Crucis to Butler, Tenn., passes in less than half a mile from the real falls,
which, however, are not visible from the road.  The "walks" are a series of
natural stepping stones across the Watauga River below Flat Shoals, near the
Tennessee line.  At all times of ordinary high water one can cross on these
stones dry-shod.  The Wolf's Den on Riddle's Knob is well worth a visit.  From
the Rock House at the Jones or Little place, and from Tater Hill, both on Rich
Mountain, fine views can be had.

Page 210

Cove Creek.--From Sugar Grove to the Tennessee line Cove Creek is so thickly
settled as to be almost a continuous village.  Several creeks come down from
Rich Mountain and Fork Ridge, and on such streams many people live and thrive.
For Cove Creek is recognized as the Egypt of Watauga County.  It contains some
of the most fertile land in the State.  Its people are progressive and co-
operate in all public enterprises.  beginning at Zionville, near the Tennessee
line, there is a succession of villages, including Mable, Amantha, Sherwood,
Mast and Sugar Grove.  Two large flouring mills are on the creek, while there
is the first cheese factory ever established in the county in flourishing
condition at Sugar Grove.  Churches, schools and masonic lodges dot the
hill sides.  Hospitality reigns in every household.  The people are prosperous
and happy and helpful. From a point near the mouth of Sharp's Creek, looking
toward Rich Mountain, is a view that is as beautiful as any in the mountains. 
A forest of young lin trees has been set out on one of the worn out hillsides
and will soon be in fine condition; also grafted chestnut trees--that is,
native chestnut trees on which have been grafted French and Italian shoots.  A
sang garden or orchard is flourishing  nearby, while the town of Sugar Grove
and vicinity is lighted up with electric lights.  Bath tubs supplied with
clear spring water are found in many of the dwellings, and an air of
prosperity and progress pervades the entire community of Cove Creek.
Automobiles and the latest improved farm machinery show the temper and spirit
of the people.  In short, there is not forward step which can be taken at this
stage of its growth that Cove Creek has not taken.  Silverstone, in the shadow
of the Rich Mountain, is one of the loveliest of all the villages of this
vicinity, though it is some distance from Cove Creek.  It is, however, part
and parcel of that locality.

"The Biggest Show on Earth."-- This is the boast of the Barnum-Bailey shows,
but it falls far short of being as fine a show as the wild flowers of Watauga
County make from May till December.  Nowhere else on earth do the
rhododendron, the azalea and the mountain ivy or calico bush called kalmia
grow to such perfection as here.  Nowhere else on earth do botanists find

Page 211

so large and fin a variety of wild flowers of all kinds.  The rhodendron
maximum is, as its name indicates, the largest of the rhododendron family,
which derives its name from two Greek words meaning a rose tree.  Both its
leaves and its blooms are larger than any other variety.  It is what we call
mountain laurel, as distinguished from the ivy or calico bush, which has
spotted, bell-shaped blooms.  But we make no distinction between it and what
botanists call the rhodondenron catawbiese, which has a smaller leaf and bloom
and the bloom being more like the rose in color.  The largest trunks of the
rhodendron are six inches in diameter and the trees twenty feet high.  In her
"Carolina Mountains" Miss Morley gives most impassioned and poetic
descriptions of the Watauga flowers, saying, among other charming things, that
"all flowers are imprisoned sunshine in a figurative sense, but of no others
does that seems so literally true as of 'the flame-colored azaleas' (p. 50),
to see the perfect fire of which you must come to their mountains."  She also
calls attention to the fringe bush, and asks how it came to the Grandfather
Mountain "when all the other members of its family live in that remote Chinese
empire so mysteriously connected with us through the life of the plants?"  In
this class she places the silver bell tree, the azalea, the fringe bush, the
wisteria and  ginseng.  And she calls attention to the rhodondenron vaseyii,
which sheds its leaves in autumn.  This was thought to have become extinct,
but it is still found on the north side of the Grandfather (p. 59).  But all
these flowers are surpassed by the lovely blooms of our apple and cherry trees
in May and June, for nowhere in the world are apples and cherries finer or
more abundant than here, the Moses H. Cone orchard at Blowing Rock at that at
Valle Crucis producing fruit as fine and in greater abundance than almost any
other orchards in the world.  Kelsey's Highland Nursery at Linville City makes
a business of selling all our wild flowers.  Rev. W.R. Savage, of Blowing
Rock, cultivates many of them in his garden.  Mrs. W.W. Stringfellow, of the
same town, also takes great pride in cultivating both tame and wild flowers
and in distributing bulbs and seeds gratuitously among the mountain people.

Page 212

Valle Crucis.-- According to a tradition well supported by the statements of
many reputable citizens of the present day, Samuel Hix and his son-in-law,
James D. Holtsclaw came in 1779 from Cheraw, S.C., through the Deep Gap, to
what is now known as Valle Crucis, and erected a palisade of split logs, with
their sharpened ends driven into the ground, so as to enclose about an acre
and a half surrounding the Maple Spring between the present residence of
Finley Mast and that of his brother, Squire W. B. Mast.  This was because they
feared Indians, not knowing of the agreement between the Watauga settlers and
the Cherokees as to the land between the Virginia line and the ridge south of
the Watauga River. After a time Hix became uneasy and retired to the
wilderness near what is now Banner Elk, where he made a camp and supported
himself by hunting and making maple syrup and sugar, thus avoiding service as
an American or a Tory.  At some time in his career he is said to have had a
cabin in a cove in rear of the present residence of Squire W. B. Mast, then to
have lived in the bottom above James M. Shull's present farm, afterwards
moving down the Watauga River near Ward's Store, where he died long after the
Revolutionary War.  It is said that he never took the oath of allegiance to
the American cause and that whenever he came home for supplies his mischievous
sons would frighten him by firing off a pistol made by hollowing out a buck-
horn and loading the cavity with powder, the same being "touched off with a
live coal."  Just here it may be remarked--a fact not generally known--that a
dead coal, which yet has elements of immortality in it to such an extent that,
unless it is ground to powder, it remains charcoal indefinitely.  Such coals,
in beds of ashes, are still plowed up near the Lybrook farm, now the
Grandfather Orphanage, one mile from Banner's Elk, still called by old people
from the Hix Improvement, that being the place where Samuel Hix "laid out
during the Revolutionary War."  Whether he had a grant or other title to the
Valle Crucis land seems immaterial now, as he had possession of it when Bedent
Baird arrived toward the close of the eighteenth century, for Baird, with a
pocketful of money,  had to go a mile down river to get a home in this
wilderness

Page 213

of rich land.  Then Hix is said to have sold his holdings to Benjamin Ward for
a rifle, dog and a sheepskin, Ward selling it later on to Reuben Mast, while
Hix moved down to the mouth of Cove Creek.  Ward soon got possession of this
also, and sold it to a man named Summers, who was living in a cabin on the
left bank of Watauga River during a great freshet which lifted the cabin from
its foundation and carried it and its inmates, the entire Summers family, to
death and oblivion in that night of horrors.  A faithful dog belonging to the
family swam after the cabin and when it finally lodged against a rock, the dog
would allow no one to enter til he had been killed.  The Hix Hole, just below
David F. Baird's farm, is still so called because of the drowning there of
James Hix and a Tester about 1835, when a bull was ridden into the river in
order to recover the two bodies.  Reuben Mast lived where D. F. Baird now
lives, while Joel Mast lived where J. Hardee Talor resides.  David Mast lived
where Finley Mast's large mansion now stands.  Henry Taylor, whose father was
Butler Taylor, came from Davidson County to Sugar Grove about 1849, married
Emeline, daughter of John Mast, of that place, then moved to Valle Crucis in
time to get some of the money paid out for the construction of the Caldwell
and Watauga turnpike.  This road must have been begun prior to October, 1849,
for Col. Joseph C. Shull remembers that William Mast had the contract to build
the bridge across Watauga River one mile below Shull's Mills, and was at work
on it the morning on which he drank the poison the slave girl, Mill, is
supposed to have put in his coffee for breakfast, for he came to Col. Joseph
C. Shull's father's home for medicine and returned to work on the bridge, but
soon had to go home, dying that night at about the same time his wife died. It
was to the valley above this that Bishop Ives came in 1843, where he erected
the school and brotherhood described elsewhere.  This valley was what the
editor of the "Life of W. W. Skiles," Susan Fenimore Cooper, a descendant of
Fenimore Cooper, author of the "Leather Stocking Tales," says the Indians
would call a "one smoke valley" (p. 17), from the fact that but one family
dwelt there in 1842.  That family was that of Andrew Townsend, the miller,
whose descendants still live nearby.

Page 214

Sugar Grove.-- Cutliff Harmon came from Randolph County to this place in 1791
and bought 522 acres of land from James Gwyn, it having been granted to him
May 18, 1791.  Cutliff married Susan Fouts first and a widow by the name of
Elizabeth Parker after the death of his first wife.  It is Sugar Grove that is
the most progressive of the Cove Creek towns, having electric lights, a roller
mill, the first in the county, and a cheese dairy, established 5th June, 1915.
It has also one of the finest school houses in the county.  It was here also
that Camp Mast was located during the Civil War.  The land in this section is
considered as about the best in the county.  Col. Joseph Harrison Mast, who
died September 8, 1915, had his residence here.  He was in his prime one of
the best and most substantial citizens of the county and still holds the
respect and affection of all who knew him.  The first roller mill in the
county was established here.  These people know what co-operation means and
act accordingly.  The cheese factory is the first that was established in the
South, and promises to be successful.

Blowing Rock.--From the "Carolina Mountains" (pp.350, 355) we learn that "from
Blowing Rock to Tryon Mountain the Blue Ridge draws a deep curve half
encircling a jumble of very wild rocky peaks and cliffs that belong to the
foothill formations.  Hence, Blowing Rock, lying on one arm of a horseshoe of
which Tryon Mountain is the other arm, has the most dramatic outlook of any
village in the mountains.  Directly in front of it is an enormous bowl filled
with a thousand tree-clad hills and ridges that become higher and wilder
towards the encircling wall of the Blue Ridge, the conspicuous bare stone
summits of Hawk's Bill and Table Rock Mountains rising sharp as dragon's teeth
above the rest, while the sheer and shining face of the terrible Lost Cove
cliffs, dropping into some unexplored ravine, come to view on a clear day.
From far away, beyond this wild bowlful of mountains, one sometimes sees a
faintly outlined dome, Tryon Mountain, under which on the other side one likes
to remember Traumfest, Fortress of Dreams.

"Off to the left from Blowing Rock, seen between near green knobs, the
shoreless sea of the lowlands reaches away to lave

Page 215

the edge of the sky.  And looking to the right, there lies the calm and noble
form of the Grandfather Mountain, its rocky top drawn in a series of curves
against the western sky.  Long spurs sweep down like buttresses to hold it.
Trees clothe it as with a garment to where the black rock surmounts them.

"The view from Blowing Rock changes continually.  The atmospheric sea that
encloses mountain and valley melts the solid rocks into a thousand enchanting
pictures.  Those wild shapes in the great basin which at one time look so
near, so hard and so terrible, at another time recede and soften, their dark
colors transmuted into the tender blue of the Blue Ridge, or again the basin
is filled with dreamlike forms immersed in an exquisite sea of mystical light.

"Sometimes the Grandfather Mountain stands solidly out, showing in detail the
tapestry of green trees that hangs over its slopes; again it is blue and flat
against the sky, or it seems made of mists and shadows.  Sometimes the sunset
glory penetrates, as it were, into the substance of the mountain, which looks
translucent in the sea of light that contains it.  As night draws on, it
darkens into a noble silhouette against the splendor that often draws the
curves of its summit in lines of fire.

"Blowing Rock at times lies above the clouds, with all the world blotted out
excepting the Grandfather's summit rising out of the white mists.  Sometimes
one looks out in the morning to see that great bowl filled to the brim with
level clouds that reach away from one's very feet in a floor so firm to the
eye that one is tempted to step on it.  Presently this pure white level floor
begins to roll up into billowy masses, deep wells, open down which one looks
to little landscapes lying in the bottom, a bit of the lovely John's River
Valley, a house and trees, perhaps.  The well closes; the higher peaks begin
to appear, phantom islands in a phantom sea; the restless ocean of mists
swells and rolls, now concealing, now revealing glimpses of the world under
it.  It breaks apart into fantastic forms that begin to glide up the peaks and
mount above them like wraiths.  The sun darts sheaves of golden arrows in
through the openings, and these in time slay the pale dragons of the air, or
drive them fleeing into

Page 216

the far blue caverns of the sky, and the world beneath is visible, only that
where the John's River Valley ought to be there often remains a long lake of
snowy drift.  Sometimes the clouds blotting out the landscape break apart
suddenly, the mountains come swiftly forth one after the other until one seems
to be watching an act of creation where solid forms resolve themselves out of
chaos.  The peaceful John's River Valley, winding far below among the wild
mountains, is like a glimpse into a fairyland, and one has never ventured to
go there for fear of dispelling the pleasing illusion.

"Near the village of Blowing Rock, at the beginning of those green knobs
between which one looks to the lowlands, is a high cliff, the real Blowing
Rock, so named because the rocky walls at this point form a flume through
which the northwest wind sweeps with such force that whatever is thrown over
the rock is hurled back again.  It is said that there are times when a man
could not jump over, so tremendous is the force of the wind.  It is also said
that visitors, having heard the legend of the rock, have been seen to stand
there in a dead calm and throw over their possessions and watch them no more
in anger than in mirth as they, obedient to the law of gravity instead of that
of fancy, disappeared beneath the tree tops far below.

"Blowing Rock, four thousand feet above sea level, is a wonderfully sweet
place.  The rose-bay and the great white rhododendron maximum crowd against
the houses and fill the open spaces, excepting where laurel and the flame-
colored azaleas have planted their standards.  And in their seasons the wild
flowers blossom everywhere; also the rocks are covered with those crisp,
sweet-smelling herbs that love high places, and sedums and saxifrages trim the
crevices and the ledges.

"Blowing Rock is also noted for the great variety of new mushrooms that have
been captured there, though one suspects that this renown is due to the fact
that the mushroom hunters happened to pitch their tents here instead of
somewhere else.  For other parts of the mountains can make a showing in
mushrooms, too."

Some Blowing Rock Attractions.-- Besides the Blowing Rock itself, from which a
fine view can be had, there are the Ransom

Page 217

and Grand Views.  There are several drives and trails in and near the Rock,
some of which surpass in sylvan beauty any to be seen on the Biltmore estate,
as the former are through primeval forests, notably the drive between the
Stringfellow and Cone Lakes.  The Randall Memorial Work Shop was conceived by
the late W. G. Randall, who was born in Burke County, North Carolina, and
after many hardships obtained an education and became a famous artist in oils.
He spent his summers in Blowing Rock, where he died, after living nearly
twenty summers there.  His remains lie in Washington, D. C.  His wife was Miss
Anna Goodlow, of Warren County, North Carolina. It is in this Work Shop that
the manual industries of the mountain are preserved and fostered.  There are
an old-fashioned hand loom, spinning wheels, etc., in this building.  The
Blowing Rock Exchange is near by, and its object is to afford a greater
opportunity to the home people to sell home-made articles, such as woven rugs,
cover lids, embroidered bedspreads, laces, articles made of laurel, baskets,
etc.  In it are a library, a fine collection of Indian relics and mineral
specimens.  In front of the Work Shop is a garden of rare wild and cultivated
plants and one of the two sundials in Watauga County.  This garden is the
result of the labors of Rev. William Rutherford Savage, who was born in Pass
Christian, Miss., October 20, 1854; was graduated at the Episcopal Theological
Seminary, Alexandria, Va., and moved to Blowing Rock in September, 1902.  He
is a worthy successor to the late Rev. W. W. Skiles, of Valle Crucis fame.  In
the words of Rev. Edgar Tufts, Mr. Savage has done more than any other to
create a fraternal feeling among all the denominations of the mountains.

Ante-Bellum Residents.-- Col. James Harper, Sr., of Lenoir, built a frame
summer residence at what is now the H. W. Weedene Fairview house, about 1858,
and spent the summers there till the Civil War began.  John Bryant lived where
the Blowing Rock hotel stands, on land belonging to Col. James Harper.  Edmund
Greene lived near the present site of the German Reformed Church.  Amos Greene
lived on the opposite

Page 218 side of the road from the present residence of Mrs. Dr. Reeves, and
Lot Estes had his home between the present residence of Col. W. W.
Stringfellow and the creek.  Len Estes, his son, built the mill and dam after
the Civil War, but sold out to Colonel Stringfellow and went West.  He kept
summer boarders and looked like General Grant.  William M. Morris bought the
Amos Greene place about 1874 and opened a house for summer boarders.  He was
most successful, and the good things he furnished for his boarders to eat will
be forever remembered by all who had the good fortune to sit at his table.  He
had a most remarkable little bench-legged cow, which gave oceans of the
richest milk imaginable.  His deep featherbeds were good for tired legs after
a day's wading in the creeks fishing for speckled trout.  He sold out to Dr.
L. C. Reeves, however, and moved east of the Blue Ridge.  W. W. Sherrell
bought the Harper property and opened two or three small houses for summer
boarders about 1877 or 1878 at Fairview.  This is now the Weeden place. Robert
Greene, father of the late Judge L. L. Greene, lived where the Cone Lake now
is.  The Kirk Fort was in the Blowing Rock Gap, and trees were felled for some
distance down the road so as to give an open view of the country to the east. 
After Gen. M. W. Ransom became interested in the place, its growth was rapid,
and the completion of the Yonahlossee turnpike in 1900 assured its success.

Along the Blue Ridge.--We will now notice the people who originally lived
along the Blue Ridge, from Deep Gap to Coffey's Gap.  Solomon Green lived in
the Deep Gap, and was a good citizen and entertained the traveling public.  He
was the son of "Flatty" Isaac Green, who lived on Meat Camp near the noted
Brown place of 640 acres, the lower part of which is now owned by Lindsey
Patterson, of Winston-Salem, and the upper part by L. A. Green, who lives
near.  L. A. Green is a son of "Little" John Green, who was a son of Richard
Green, all of whom are well to do people.  The next settled place on the Ridge
was called the Old Ellison place, where William Blackburn now lives.  The next
was the home of the Rev. John Cook, a Baptist minister and a son of Michael
Cook, of Cook's Gap, and he lived six

(Chapter 14 continued)