Things That Go "Bump" in the Mountains

[From September 17, 2017]

A worldwide phenomenon, “The Hum,” remains a mystery.  Generally described as a low-frequency droning or pulsing sound, it is often compared to the sound of a distant diesel engine.  

Visualization of "Hum" frequencies

For the small percentage of people who can hear the noise at any given location, it can become quite disturbing, sometimes leading to suicide. 

If I possessed marketing savvy, I would embellish this story (and most of the posts in this blog) with conspiratorial claims, “rock-solid evidence” of alien visitors, or secret lore channeled through my Cherokee shaman grandfather.  But I prefer being true to the stories, even if most people are drawn to gimmicks. 

And, fortunately, there is a “Hum” researcher who tries to play it straight, as well.  Dr. Glen MacPherson has compiled a map showing thousands of reports of the odd, droning sound.  And he has invited discussions on evidence-based theories about “The Hum.”

Among the possible explanations: tinnitus or other disturbances of the auditory system, the mating call of the midshipman fish, mechanical devices, industrial processes, meteorological sources, and geological anomalies.

Rumbling Bald Mountain

Back in the 1800s, reports emerged from various spots in the mountains regarding unusual sounds: drones, bangs, booms and rumbles.  Bald Mountain, in the Hickory Nut Gorge near Chimney Rock, acquired the name “Rumbling” Bald Mountain after earthquakes in 1874.  

I’ve written about this in the past and will be revisiting this incident in a future post.  But, in short, the State Geologist, W. C. Kerr described the origin of the rumblings:

The basal rock, which occupies the bottom of the gorge, and forms the principal material of the escarpment beneath the vertical cliffs, is a soft, friable, horizontal, thin-bedded gneiss, which easily weathers and crumbles down, and is swept away by the stream. The jutting, solid masses above being unsupported, break off in huge sheets and massive blocks, and either slide down the face of the cliff with a grinding movement or topple over and go thundering down the steep slopes often for half a mile or more, with much jarring and commotion, frequently shaking the earth for miles around.

Rabun Bald

Several years later, other strange, loud noises were reported in the vicinity of Rabun Bald, Georgia near the North Carolina border.  

Macon County, NC resident Barry C. Hawkins submitted this story for the Monthly Weather Report on October 8, 1897:

There are several instances of sounds in nature, for which no reasonable or proved explanation can be found and, probably, the most remarkable of these is the phenomenon known as the “barisal guns.” The facts relating to these seem to be as follows: At a certain point near the seacoast in India, sounds are heard resembling distant cannon firing. These sounds have been extensively studied, but no reasonable hypothesis has been advanced which accounts for the “guns.” [The unexplained explosive sounds were heard on the delta of the Ganges River.]  Mention has been made in the MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW of certain sounds heard on Black Mountain, N. C., in 1876, and obviously caused by the slow falling or sliding and crushing of rocks.

But I am going to describe a phenomenon which seems to be very similar to the famed “barisal guns,” and located right in the United States. No account of these sounds has ever been published, and no scientist has ever taken the slightest interest in them, or paid any attention to them, so far as the writer knows.

In northern Georgia, in the extreme north of Rabun County, close to the North Carolina State line and thirty-fifth parallel of latitude, is Rabun Bald Mountain, forming one of the highest peaks on the very crest of the Blue Ridge. This mountain has the same bulky shape and long rambling ridges running for miles in all directions as are spoken of by Hugh Miller as characterising the gneissic mountains of Scotland.

On the east side there is a small cliff over which a small stream falls in wet weather, and from the ranges to the east the peak appears in form exactly like a brace.  The entire mountain is of gneiss. Now, on this mountain are heard mysterious sounds resembling distant cannon firing, and these sounds have been heard for many years, probably at least fifty; they have been heard in all kinds of weather and at various points on the mountain.

Numerous observers have noted the sounds, and two reliable gentlemen once spent a night on the summit. About 10 o'clock p. m., sounds were heard which were supposed to be cannon firing in Walhalla, S. C., in celebration of the presidential election, this being in November, 1884; but soon the sounds were found to issue from the ground and from a ridge to the southwest of the mountain. The explosive sounds continued till late in the night. At times they seemed to proceed from the ground immediately under the observers.

In early days when bears were plentiful the pioneers said the sounds were caused by these animals rolling small boulders off the mountain sides in search of worms, snails, etc., but the bears have passed and the sounds still continue. Later the sounds were ascribed to “harnts” (haunts or ghosts); two men were murdered in “the sixties" and buried at some unknown point on the “Bald.” Some have heard these sounds so near them in the woods that the sound was like that of a falling tree. But ordinarily the sound is like distant firing, as noted above. They are not heard at all times, people having spent the night on the peak and heard nothing. The writer can verify all the statements made above. They are strictly true, and it is with the hope of calling the attention of scientific men to the subject that I present this brief account of the mystery of a mountain.

Roan Mountain

In the 1870s, sounds wafting around Roan Mountain, on the North Carolina/Tennessee border, more closely resembled “The Hum.”  

Henry Colton had travelled extensively around the Southern Appalachians, but the “mountain music” he heard on Roan was one of the most inexplicable phenomena he ever experienced:

In the month of July, 1878, I spent several weeks at the Cloudland Hotel on Roan Mountain, in Western North Carolina, which is 6387 feet above the sea-level. On the eastern side of the Roan Mountain range is a kind of rough table-land about 2000 feet lower than the summit of that mountain. On the west the mountain descends into the East Tennessee Valley, which may be said to be about 4000 feet lower than the same point. The land on the top of the Roan is singularly free from tree growth, the Canada balsam coming to a certain elevation and there ceasing. The somewhat level top is covered with a luxuriant growth of grass. I give this description as preliminary to what I intend to relate. The hotel is on a plateau near a glen, between two peaks somewhat higher than the general top of the mountain.

Several of the cattle-tenders on the mountain and also General Wilder had spoken to us about what they called “mountain music.” One evening they said it was sounding loud, and Dr. J. T. Boynton, of Knoxville, Hon. M. Thornburgh, and myself, accompanied General Wilder to the glen to hear it. The sound was very plain to the ear, and was not at all, as described, like the humming of thousands of bees, but like the incessant, continuous, and combined snap of two Leyden jars positively and negatively charged. I tried to account for it on the theory of bees or flies, but the mountain people said it frequently occurred after the bees and flies had gone to their winter homes, or before they came out.

It was always loudest and most prolonged just before there would be a thunder-storm in either valley, or one passing over the mountain. I used every argument I could to persuade myself that it was simply the result of some common cause, and to shake the faith of the country people in its mysterious origin; but I only convinced myself that it was the result from two currents of air meeting each other in the suck between the two peaks, where there were no obstruction of trees, one containing a greater, the other a less amount of electricity, or that the two currents coming together in the open plateau on the high elevation, by their friction, and being of different temperatures, generated electricity. The "mountain music" was simply the snapping caused by this friction and this generation of electricity. Many have noted the peculiar snapping hum to be observed in great auroral displays, particularly those of September 1859 and February 1872.

As the amount of electricity in the air-currents became equalized or surcharged, they, descending to either side, caused the thunderstorms usual every day in the valleys near the mountain, and sometimes immediately on the edge of the timber surrounding the great bald top. The air-currents of the Western North Carolina mountains and the East Tennessee Valley form an aerial tide, ebbing and flowing. The heated air of the valley rises from nine in the morning until three or four in the afternoon, making a slight easterly wind up and over the Roan Mountain. As night comes on the current turns back to the valley, almost invariably producing a very brisk gale by three or four o'clock in the morning, which, in its turn, dies down to a calm by seven, and commences to reverse by nine o'clock. This continual change of the currents of air makes it an impossibility for any great malarial scourge to exist in the East Tennessee Valley, especially its north-eastern end.

The Roan Mountain is one of the curiosities of nature. It is a part of the great range formed of metamorphic rocks which border on the true silurian formation from the Canadas to Alabama; though not so high as the Black Mountains, in the same county, it and many others of the same range present a peculiarity not known to those higher peaks of the eastern range. This peculiarity is the vast tracts of land entirely devoid of trees and mostly covered with a luxuriant grass, much loved by cattle. The highest range of the thermometer, an accurate government instrument at the hotel, during the past summer, was 74°.

The Great Smokies Piscatorial Shambhala

Fishing is not an escape from life, but often a deeper immersion into it.  

– Harry Middleton

My friend, Jonathan, is the best hiking buddy a person could ask for.  If not for some arm-twisting on his part, I would have missed out on adventures at remarkable places of the Southern Appalachians - the Black Mountain Crest, to name just one. And this week, he made the necessary arrangements to get us onto another memorable trail.  

Several years ago, I was trying to identify the most remote section of the Smokies.  I had a large map and a small saucer.  After sliding the saucer around on the map for a minute, I found one spot where it did not touch any roads.  And that was in the middle of Hazel Creek.  Park as close as you can to Hazel Creek, find a trailhead, and then...good luck hiking to Hazel Creek and returning to your car in one day. 

The alternative is to cross Fontana Lake by boat and proceed up the Hazel Creek arm of the lake.  I tried that in a kayak once and it took me a couple of hours to get there.  I had time enough to explore the remains of Proctor, a town built to handle the timber and copper ore extracted from the Hazel Creek watershed.  After construction of Fontana Dam during World War II, most of Proctor was inundated.  

On my prior visit, I had lunch near a hilltop cemetery and enjoyed the company of some other kayakers I'd met on the way.  But the day was not long enough for me to go past Proctor and hike any distance up Hazel Creek.  So, after lunch, I hurried to the lake shore at the mouth of Hazel Creek and paddled back to Cable Cove.  

This week brought a long-awaited return to Hazel Creek, a day-hike made feasible by taking a shuttle from Fontana Marina.  On a big motorized boat, the crossing takes less than 15 minutes.  We disembarked at 8:30 AM with the understanding that the shuttle would pick us up at 3:00 PM.  A lack of punctuality would have severe consequences.  There was no time to waste for the trek up Hazel and then to the end of the Bone Valley Trail followed by the return trip along the same route, about 15 miles in all.  That's not an unreasonable distance to cover in six and a half hours, but hourly water breaks, a leisurely lunch, and meanders to mysterious century-old structures were out of the question.  

The need for speed did nothing to lessen the excitement of exploring the area.  As soon as we jumped off the boat, we saw footprints, very large footprints, of bears that had been ambling along the water's edge not long before our arrival, and we wondered if there would be more ursine encounters along the way.

Most long hikes in the Smokies involve an arduous gain in elevation.  Hazel Creek is a notable exception.  The trail alongside the creek is smooth and wide with a very gradual climb.  Long ago, it accommodated a rail line for transporting timber and ore.  

The overall ambience of Hazel reminded me a bit of Noland Creek or Deep Creek.  But this was distinctly different.  The trail seemed bigger, the creek seemed bigger, the flat terrain bordering the creek seemed bigger.  And compared to Deep Creek, which attracts hundreds or even thousands of visitors daily, Hazel Creek was pristine and quiet.  We hiked all day without seeing another soul, which is unusual in the National Park.

Hazel Creek holds a certain mystique.  I knew that already, though I'd never experienced it myself.  The allure is especially powerful for fly fishing enthusiasts.  There might not be another trout stream in the Southeast that rivals the legendary draw of Hazel Creek.   Part of the credit goes to two outdoorsmen who could wield an ink pen as deftly as a fly rod.

Horace Kephart (1862-1931) was a St. Louis librarian with a passion for camping and hunting.  In 1904 he moved to Western North Carolina and began to explore the Smokies: 

When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond.... I wanted to enjoy a free life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of the chase, and the man’s game of matching my woodcraft against the forces of nature...

He was methodical in selecting a place to settle:

I took a topographic map and picked out on it, by means of the contour lines and the blank space showing no settlement, what seemed to be the wildest part of these regions; and there I went....I picked out the upper settlement of Hazel Creek, far up under the lee of those Smoky Mountains ...scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there was a copper mine, long disused on account of litigation, and I got permission to occupy one of its abandoned cabins....

From his base camp on Hazel Creek, Kephart got acquainted with the mountains and the mountaineers, wrote numerous articles for hunting and fishing magazines and collected stories for "Our Southern Highlanders" (1913), a classic volume of Smokies lore.

Harry Middleton (1949-1993) was an outdoors columnist for Southern Living magazine in the 1980s.  He had a passion for fly fishing and made frequent trips to Hazel Creek.  His 1991 book, "On the Spine of Time" recounts adventures in the Smokies and remains a book beloved by many anglers and other readers.

After many days fishing Hazel Creek, Middleton shared a lesson learned:

Trout are excellent company, creatures of noble and admirable and perplexing qualities, much like human beings only more honest and sincere.  They are totally unpredictable and therefore totally bewitching, at once brutal, beautiful, suspicious, graceful, and powerful, fastidious and wary, cautious and aggressive.  Raw instinct burns like electric current through their cold, wild flesh.  There is a charming snobbery about mountain trout, a stubbornness that is absolutely unbending.  Their needs are specific rather than arbitrary and capricious.  They know nothing of compromise.  Life means moving water, fast water, clean water, water rich in prey and with at least a measure of wildness, meaning a solitude free of the whirl of cities and civilization....

Our hike through the wildness became an even more immersive experience after turning up the Bone Valley Trail.  At one point, the trail led to the edge of the creek.  

Any possibilities to rock hop the 20 foot distance to the other side?  No, not at all. For the first crossing I took off my boots and socks.  The water was so cold on my feet that I could feel my sinuses open up.  After another stream crossing or two, I grew impatient with taking off and putting on my footwear, and remembered that leather and wool will dry out...eventually.

We had eight creek crossings, four up and the same four coming back.  But maybe it was even more, and I simply lost count. It was good to experience the water, either barefoot or in wet boots.  Harry Middleton insists that trout from Hazel Creek taste better than any others because of the water.  And I would defer to Harry on such matters.

I don't naturally have the temperament to be a fly fisherman, which is all the more reason to learn.  I wonder if I could find my proper place in the choreography of fly and fish, dancing on the water, casting and playing the line to bring it to life.  What a place for such reverie!

It is easy to recognize what Horace and Harry found here on Hazel Creek.  

From my backpack, I pulled out a paperback copy of "On a Spine of Time" and declaimed one of Harry's lyrical passages: 

It was a good day along the creek.  Just before noon, the sky turned black as wet coal and it snowed hard for hours, a great whirlwind of snow, and still I fished.  Snow was soon piled up on the backs of dark, smooth stones, and the sudden cold, the unexpected turn of weather, stirred me as much as it did the trout.  I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to fish the high country in a good snowstorm.

I don't think I'll ever forget how much fun it is to be on Hazel Creek, snowstorm or not.  After hiking past what remains of Proctor, we got back to the lake shore with time to spare.  And just a few minutes later, our shuttle appeared from far down the lake, a welcome sight!

Captain gave us the news that the weather had been blustery on the lake and at the marina, and that Newfound Gap Road was shut down because of high wind and falling temperatures ahead of the precipitation.  GSMNP officials were encouraging  visitors to leave the Park.

That was surprising news, considering how pleasant had been the weather along the creek all day - barely a breeze, mild temperatures, overcast skies and no rain.  Ideal hiking weather.  How could the weather be so agreeable on Hazel Creek, while conditions were deteriorating everywhere else? 

I came to the conclusion that it really is Shangri-la.  And I know that Horace Kephart and Harry Middleton and a host of dedicated fly fishermen would agree.   

Ronald Reagan, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Tennessee Valley Authority

If events proceed according to plan, I will watch this morning's sunrise from the deck of a boat crossing Fontana Lake.  I anticipate a chilly voyage, but once we embark on the trail to Hazel Creek, it shouldn't take long to warm up.  I've been assured that a much-needed rain is still one day away.   It will be a time and a place to concentrate on the present moment, but I can't go near Fontana without recollecting how it used to be.  I've always been intrigued by Fontana Village, though my first visit came long after it had morphed from a company town to a vacation resort.  When a French existentialist toured Fontana, almost 80 years ago, he saw it as a harbinger of America's future.  Maybe, in some sense, he was right...

[From December 24, 2008]

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
-Jean-Paul Sartre

One such [big government program] considered above criticism, sacred as motherhood, is TVA. This program started as a flood control project; the Tennessee Valley was periodically ravaged by destructive floods. The Army Engineers set out to solve this problem. They said that it was possible that once in 500 years there could be a total capacity flood that would inundate some 600,000 acres. Well, the engineers fixed that. They made a permanent lake which inundated a million acres. This solved the problem of floods, but the annual interest on the TVA debt is five times as great as the annual flood damage they sought to correct. Of course, you will point out that TVA gets electric power from the impounded waters, and this is true, but today 85 percent of TVA's electricity is generated in coal burning steam plants. Now perhaps you'll charge that I'm overlooking the navigable waterway that was created, providing cheap barge traffic, but the bulk of the freight barged on that waterway is coal being shipped to the TVA steam plants, and the cost of maintaining that channel each year would pay for shipping all of the coal by rail, and there would be money left over.
-Ronald Reagan, 1964

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
-Jean-Paul Sartre

I’ve been wanting to write about the oldest and most successful land trust in the United States, the Celo Community in Yancey County, NC. I find it ironic that Celo’s founder, Arthur Morgan, was the first chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority. But anytime the TVA is involved, you’ll find plenty of irony and paradox. The Celo story will have to wait.

During the early 1960s, Ronald Reagan adroitly exposed the contradictions of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and he paid a price it. A long time spokesman for General Electric, Reagan earned the scorn of GE (a major supplier of turbines to TVA) due to his continuing criticism of the agency as a problematic symptom of big government. In 1962, GE fired Reagan over his conservative rhetoric and that same year he officially changed his voter registration to the Republican Party.

A New Deal program created in 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was designed to provide flood control, electricity generation and economic development for the hard-hit Tennessee Valley region. While promising modernization and a better way of life for millions, TVA’s impact was tragic and destructive for many communities and individuals. Just ask the people who lived along the Little Tennessee River in Graham and Swain Counties. Homes, farms, schools, churches and stores were wiped out for Fontana Lake.



Jonathan Daniels, who traveled the South just before the commencement of the Fontana project, touted one side of the TVA paradox:

Nobody can see the South and its possibilities who does not see the Tennessee River and the meaning round it of the Tennessee Valley Authority. It is, as everybody knows, devoted to the use of the river, the planning of the river, the valley, and its resources for power, flood control, national defense, and soil improvement through both its technics and its phosphates. Actually, I think, its principal interest is people; and under David Lilienthal (he does not carry the full command but he has it), it is the single most stirring and hopeful agency in the South.

It is still not Eden: the river runs with its development by the signs of stupid land boom at Muscle Shoals, by tough little towns which wanted the government to give them cheap power to go with their cheap wages, by Scottsboro where the boys were tried, by Dayton, Tennessee, where the South's laws against evolution were reduced to dramatic and judicial farce. Not far east of it the worst soil erosion in the South has made a red desert of mountain tops. But along such a river a design for Southern living in terms of Southern possibility does grow. A traveler could not hope to see the signs of the present direction of the South without seeing that plan in its place.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where the highest mountains, the finest remaining forests in the East are already saved for the future, lies properly on the road beyond TVA. The two contemplate both earth and men together, the dark mountain cabins by the steep cornfields, water and wash, man and mountain, a less steep pull, a more lasting America.

Even while Daniels was looking forward to the brighter tomorrows ushered in by the TVA, the government was accumulating photographs of homes and communities destined to disappear under the waters backing up behind the enormous dam.

Bushnell Hotel

The town of Judson

Churches in Judson

By 1943, the TVA had created a brand new town to accommodate the thousands of workers needed to build Fontana Dam. The following photos show pre-fabricated houses brought to Fontana from a factory in Michigan.

The dormitories and pre-fabs of Fontana Village were supplemented with a beauty parlor and a barber shop; a basketball court and a softball field; a post office, library, grocery, and soda stand; a dentist’s office and a small hospital; a movie theater; a school with a dozen teachers and 300 students; even a tiny jail. Over 90 percent of the town’s inhabitants were men.

The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre made a brief stop at Fontana in 1945, along with a group of other foreign journalists observing the American war effort. Sartre was amazed by the city that had sprung up overnight in the wilderness. Knoxville writer Jack Neely gave an account of Sartre’s visit:

Sartre wrote an essay called "American Cities," in which he described the transitory, distinctly un-European quality of New World communities. In his fertile mind, the prefabricated village TVA had built to house the workers at Fontana became the symbolic American city.

"The striking thing," he wrote in Le Figaro, "is the lightness, the fragility of these buildings. The village has no weight, it seems barely to rest upon the soil; it has not managed to leave a human imprint on the reddish earth and the dark forest; it is a temporary thing."

"In America, just as any citizen can theoretically become President, so each Fontana can become Detroit or Minneapolis; all that is needed is a bit of luck. . . . Detroit and Minneapolis, Knoxville and Memphis, were born temporary and have stayed that way."

Then one last metaphysical flourish: "They have never reached an internal temperature of solidification."

It’s been more than 60 years since Daniels and Sartre beheld the handiwork of the Tennessee Valley Authority. I wonder what they would say if they could come back today for a return visit. The contradictions of the TVA are as pronounced as ever, evidenced by this week’s flood of toxic coal-ash sludge at the agency's Kingston Steam Plant. It was a tragedy for Perry James and all those who lost their homes this week, reminiscent of the tragedy suffered by the residents of Bushnell, Judson, Proctor and the other communities along the Little Tennessee.

Seeing how history works, I just hope that TVA’s massive dams and towering smokestacks don’t obscure the human costs of the agency’s good intentions. I doubt Sartre had the TVA in mind when he crafted that line, "If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat." 

The paradox continues.

(Samuel M. Simpkins/The Tennessean)

# # #

Images and explanation of Kingston Coal-ash Sludge Disaster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OkI1gIgThw



From United Mountain Defense
http://unitedmountaindefense.org/

Afternote:

I would remiss if I did not mention the 1960 motion picture "Wild River" which featured a terrific cast, including Montgomery Clift as a TVA bureaucrat. Though the trailer is a bit lurid, the film is well worth watching.

Calhoun in Cashiers - Visits to the Valley

[From October and November 2009]

 As reported here several days ago, John C. Calhoun examined the Tuckasegee Valley in 1836 as a possible route for a rail line from Charleston to Cincinnati. That trip is mentioned in an 1891 book by a Calhoun family friend, Dave U. Sloan.

Here’s a passage from Sloan's Fogy Days, and Now: Or, The World Has Changed:

Traveling through the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, Mr. Calhoun, Col. Gadsden and my father stopped over night at a mountain cabin home. There was but one spare room, and in it a bed and a pallet. My father arranged for himself and Col. Gadsden to take the pallet and Mr. Calhoun to take the bed. About midnight the mail-rider stopped in, and seeing but one person in the bed, said: "Git furder thar, old horse, and spoon," and familiarly piled in with the Senator. In the morning the hostess came in the room and finding Mr. Calhoun there alone requested him to climb up a ladder into the loft, and hand her down a shoulder of bacon, which the Senator complied with, as gracefully as circumstances would permit.

Our party spent several days on this trip in Cashier's Valley at the home of the old man, James McKinney. Mrs. McKinney was quite a stout, red-faced, middle-aged lady, celebrated far and wide for her curiosity as well as her loquacity, as also her unsophisticated manner; entering the room where the gentlemen were talking, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows, her arms akimbo, addressing my father, with whom she was acquainted, said: " Colonel Sloan, is this the great John C. Cal-houn that I have hearn so much talk about."

My father answered in the affirmative, saying: " Mr. Calhoun, allow me to present to you our hostess, Mrs McKinney."

Mrs. McKinney grasped the proffered hand, saying: "Do tell; why, you look jist like other folks. I reckon you've got a mighty purty wife to home haint ye?"

Mr. Calhoun answered, that he intended bringing Mrs. Calhoun on a visit to the mountains, and she would have an opportunity to judge for herself, when Mrs. McKinney broke in again," Well, I low she's got lots of purty bed quilts down thar," when old man McKinney spoke out, "Thar now, Sally, you've played h—l agin," and for one time in his life our great Statesman seemed at a loss for a reply.

Mr. Calhoun made frequent visits to these mountains with my father, examining the topography of the country in view of a railroad crossing the Blue Ridge, and could often be seen cracking rocks in search of minerals. He was first to discover the indications of gold in that section, and afterward, my father and others, worked expensive gold mines there.

Mr. Calhoun was noted for his wonderful forecast of coming events. Many are still living who remember his predictions about Marthasville, now Atlanta, the coming city of the South. Nearly fifty years ago he said it would become a great railroad distributing point and a great city. He greatly desired about that time a railroad connection between Charleston, S. C., and Knoxville, Tenn., which enterprise was finally undertaken before the war, and after an expenditure of several millions of dollars, under bad management, was abandoned for want of further means, the failure proving a great misfortune to South Carolina.

Calhoun in Cashiers - The Railroad That Never Was

From October and November 2009]

Who was this man…

…and what was he doing in Cullowhee?

Back in 1836, a major railroad line extending from Charleston, South Carolina to Cincinnati, Ohio passed right through Cashiers and Cullowhee, North Carolina.

At least it did in a plan proposed by John C. Calhoun.

The powerful politician, who resigned as Vice President of the United States to take a seat in the Senate, advocated a rail line to connect the docks and warehouses of Charleston with the farms and markets of the Ohio Valley.



One of the technical problems with such a railroad was the crossing of the formidable Blue Ridge. After examining the mountains of Western North Carolina in 1836, Calhoun believed that he had found an ideal route, and he discussed his proposal in a September 22, 1836 letter to the Pendleton Messenger newspaper.

Essentially, the rail line would have followed an old Indian trading path from Charleston toward the mountains. From the vicinity of Pickens, SC it would have proceeded along the edge of the Keowee River to the Whitewater River, and thence along the current route of NC 107 as it heads north through Cashiers and across the continental divide. From there it was to continue along the Tuckasegee River to its confluence with the Little Tennessee, and from there, northwest toward the Ohio Valley.

On his search for a gap through the Blue Ridge, Calhoun was accompanied by Colonel James “Gadsden Purchase” Gadsden, William Sloan, and James McKinney. They spent more than a week exploring the mountain region, travelling the entire length of the Tuckasegee River on their trip.

Starting their journey from South Carolina, the men reached the Whitewater River as they ascended the southeastern face of the Blue Ridge. Calhoun described Whitewater Falls and noted that the river had the potential to provide power (using a system of waterwheels and cables) to assist locomotives climbing the relatively steep grade:

At this point the White Water, one of the branches of Keowee, which rises on the summit of the mountain, (a stream about the size of the Eighteen Mile), after cutting down and turning the Chatuga mountain, leaps from the top of the Alleghany in two perpendicular falls near to each other, about 45 or 50 feet, and then continues its rapid descent to the valley below. The length of the section is bout 29 miles; and, from the best information we can obtain, the elevation to be overcome will not exceed 30 feet to the mile. The line of ascent may be conveniently lengthened or shortened to any considerable extent, to suit the grading, so as to diminish the rise probably below what I have estimated; or if it should be thought advisable to reduce it to the lowest rate, it may be effected with little expense or delay, and without a stationary engine, by using the power which the waters of the White Water afford, which is more than sufficient to elevate the heaviest train.

Calhoun described a route across the Cashiers Plateau of about 16 miles in length:

It passes through two valleys of nearly equal length and extent, divided by a low narrow ridge of about 150 feet high. The two valleys are nearly on the same level. The one on the east of the ridge is called Cashier's, and that on the west Yellow valley, from the brownish yellow which the decayed fern gives to it….

The White Water collects its waters in the eastern, and the Tuckasiege in the western valley. The sources of both are on the top of the low ridge that separates them, and but a few feet apart. The two valleys form the gap, which we named the Carolina gap to distinguish it from the Rabun or Georgia gap, which is 35 or 40 miles to the south west of it.

Calhoun suggested that a tunnel was the best way to cross the continental divide north of Cashiers:

The low ridge, or the crest of the Alleghany, as it may be called, that separates the valleys, may be easily passed at a low angle, by gradually ascending on the slopes on the south west side of Cashier's to its summit, and descending in like manner on the opposite side, or the south western slope of the Yellow valley; but it would be both shorter and cheaper in the long run, to pierce the ridge with a tunnel, which would not exceed 200 yards, and which would give a beautiful run, nearly level, for 16 miles on the summit of the Alleghany, from fall to fall.


Portrait of Calhoun as Vice President

Beginning the descent into the Cullowhee Valley, Calhoun stopped to admire the Great Falls (or High Falls) of the Tuckasegee:

The sight is beautiful. The volume of water is greater than that of the White Water. The falls consist of four perpendicular leaps in the space of about a mile. Tbe first was estimated at 50 feet, and the last at 70 or 80. — The slope of the mountain on the west side of the stream was very favorable for grading, as far down as our examination extended, and we were informed that it continued equally favorable all the way down.

The elevation of the fall may be overcome by a rise from below, certainly not greater than that to the top of the Alleghany, which I stated at 30 feet to the mile; or it may be turned, as we are informed, by passing up Shoal creek, which enters the Tuckasiege on the east side, below the falls a stream of considerable size, and which, according to our information, rises in the Alleghany near the eastern sources of the Tuckasiege, at a point where there would be no difficulty to pass from the one to the other, and, passing around the ridge that limits the Yellow valley on the east, descends with a rapid current, but without a leap, to where it joins the Tuckasiege. But, if a grading of still more gradual rise than could be effected by either of the routes should be thought advisable, here, as well as on the eastern slope of the Alleghany, there is the same cheap power to raise or let down gently the heaviest tram.

Calhoun saw little to interfere with construction of the line from Cullowhee to the Little Tennessee River:

The next and last section extends from the termination of the last to the mouth of Tuckasiege.— It is difficult to imagine a pass through a mountain region finer than this section. The river is remarkably straight, and free from all sudden turns. The road would pass along its east side two-thirds or more of the way, on level ground, requiring but little expense in grading. A large portion of the residue, where the hills come in, would be on favorable slopes free from rocks. In the whole length, there were not two hundred yards of rocky cliff to encounter; and, through the whole length, no walling in the river. We did not extend our examination farther, as the survey of captain Bache, under the orders of the war department, gives ample information in relation to the Tuckasiege to the head of steamboat navigation on that river. It is sufficient to say that there is no serious difficulty below.

For those who might have wondered why such a desirable route for the Charleston to Cincinnati Line had never been suggested, Calhoun had these words:

It may be asked how it can be explained that a route, which, on the examination I have given it, appears to possess so many advantages, has attracted, heretofore, so little attention. The only reason that I can assign is, that the gap leads to a portion of North Carolina little known, and which has but lately been acquired from the Indians, and between the two established routes by Asheville and Rabun, through one or the other of which most persons going to the west pass. But it was not so obscure as not to be known by the neighborhood, and to attract the attention of those whose duty it was to explore the mountains, in order to find the best pass over it. General Hayne, whose devotion to the great undertaking is so well known, undertook to examine the gap, but unfortunately his guide was not sufficiently well acquainted with the section of the mountains, to which so many ridges converge, and which on that account is so intricate, as to conduct him through the proper route.




Two decades later, the proposal to run the railroad through the gap at Cashiers had been forgotten. Instead, work had commenced on the Blue Ridge Railroad taking a more westward course through Rabun Gap. The Stumphouse Tunnel, north of Walhalla, SC was started, but never finished. Huge stone towers, intended to support a railroad trestle, still stand along Dicks Creek near the Chattooga River in Rabun County, GA. Financial problems, and the Civil War, doomed the project.

And the great corridor of commerce – the railroad that almost passed through Cashiers and Cullowhee – was never completed.

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Dillsboro's Very Own Mastodon

Long, long ago mastodons frequented the banks of the Tuckasegee River.  Or so suggests one old newspaper clipping.  But this discussion requires some background before we investigate the evidence found in Dillsboro, North Carolina.

Mastodons and other megafauna

First off, mastodons and mammoths were two distinct creatures.  Mammoths originated in Africa and migrated through Eurasia and North America.  The woolly mammoth, which went extinct about 10,000 years ago, was closely related to the elephant.

Mastodons lived in Central and North America before their extinction, also about 10,000 years ago.  Compared to mammoths, they were slightly smaller, with shorter legs and flatter heads.  They were anywhere from seven to fourteen feet tall and covered in long, shaggy hair.  Both animals were herbivores.

During the Pleistocene Era, 12,000 years ago, humans and megafauna (including mastodons) quite possibly encountered one another on the Great Smoky Mountains.  Though glaciers did not reach this far south, the climate was much colder than today.  The highest peaks must have been tundra-like environments with permafrost and few trees.  The fossil record reveals many large mammals inhabiting the park region prior to the Quaternary Extinction: Jefferson’s ground sloth, Harlan’s ground sloth, tapir, horse, half-ass, long-nosed peccary, flat-headed peccary, stout-legged llama, helmeted musk-ox, bison, white-tailed deer, caribou, elk, giant beaver, black bear, Florida spectacled bear, giant short-faced bear, cougar, jaguar, saber-toothed cat, scimitar-toothed cat, coyote, dire wolf and mastodon.

Spear-points found in this area indicate that migratory hunters came to this area in search of mastodons and other large prey.  A paleontological site near Nashville, Tennessee has provided abundant information about mastodon-hunting in the Southeast.  The Coats-Hines-Litchy site has yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, one of which was directly associated with Paleoindian stone tools such as blades and scrapers, signs of a successful hunt on one day 10,000 to 14,000 years ago.

Ominous events at the Cowee Tunnel

This brings us back to Dillsboro and the year 1882.  Construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad was underway and the “Cowee Tunnel” adjacent to the Tuckasegee River was posing many challenges for the convict laborers digging their way through the mountains.

An ominous note from “Sojourner” appeared in the September 18, 1882 issue of the Asheville Weekly Citizen:

I did not intend to convey the impression in my last letter that the entire Cowee tunnel had fallen in.  The workmen on the west end of the tunnel came to dirt, and it has fallen in several times. Mr. Dick Wilson says they are having much trouble in bracing it up, the dirt falls in so fast.  Many thousand yards of rock and dirt have been taken out, and some think the trees from the top will come through soon.  It is a serious drawback in the work on the tunnel, and there is some talk of having to make it a cut, but that seems impracticable.   If the dirt can be removed, and the hole walled in safely, the work will proceed on the tunnel as usual. 

The ”big” story coming less than six weeks later, was reported in North Carolina newspapers and reprinted in papers across the country:

The skeleton of a full grown mastodon has been found in the Cowee tunnel on the Ducktown branch of the Western North Carolina railroad.  When the monster was discovered the convicts fled in terror, and it was by hard work that they could be induced to return to their picks.  It was found six feet below the surface of the earth.  It was in a perfect state of preservation, and crumbled to dust as soon as exposed to the air.  The mastodon is the Russian term of fossil elephant, and is extensively found in Russia and all over Europe.  It became extinct, according to geology, near 10,000 years ago, died on the Pleistocene beds.  In 1799, one was found in the icy districts of Russia, the hide of which was in a fair state of preservation, and was of such weight that it took ten men to support it a distance of 150 feet.  The one found in the Cowee tunnel was stretched out a distance of forty feet – supposed to have been devoured by carniverous animals, and the bones disengaged from their original position.  The largest mastodons range from fourteen to twenty-four feet in length, and from nine to twelve feet in height.  - The Greensboro Patriot, Oct. 27, 1882  

Questioning the newspaper account

The temptation is to dismiss the story as fake news, something too preposterous to be believed. 

Maybe so. 

On the other hand, as the earlier story reported, the tunnel was not cut through solid rock.  Is it plausible that an unfortunate mastodon, grazing alongside the Tuckasegee River on a chilly day 12,000 years ago, was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was buried by a landslide? 

Perhaps.

Steam locomotive emerging from Cowee Tunnel, ca. 1892

But isn’t it almost too convenient that the bones of the Dillsboro mastodon practically vanished into thin air before the discovery could be verified?  It turns out that long-buried bones can crumble fairly quickly when exposed to the air.  That issue was broached in a 2017 newspaper report of mastodon bones unearthed at a Michigan construction site:

Eagle Creek Homes, the developer behind the Railview Ridge housing project, reached out to University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology Director Dan Fisher. Fisher has 40 years of experience investigating claims of prehistoric remains found in the region….

Most remains of mastodons and mammoths found in Michigan, Fisher said, are somewhere in the range of 11,000 to 15,000 years old.

"That was at a time that humans had found their way to North America," Fisher said. "These were some of the animals that they were sometimes lucky enough to bring down or otherwise get access to. So people butchered them, ate them and stored their meat."

As glaciers moved through Michigan several thousand years ago, they created lakes, ponds and swamps that became surrounded by vegetation attractive to the American mastodon and Jefferson woolly mammoth. Fossils of both are prevalent in the southern two-thirds of the state.

The age of the bones means they are often very fragile, and can sometimes disintegrate when exposed from the sediment that has been preserving them all that time.

"They dry, shrink, crack and sometimes they literally fall to pieces," Fisher said.

Those words from Dan Fisher go a long way toward erasing my doubts about the veracity of the Dillsboro mastodon story. 

But not completely. 

Overshadowed by tragedy

If workers actually found a mastodon skeleton in Dillsboro, why haven’t I heard about it until now?

One reason could be that the event was overshadowed by a tragedy that occurred two months later, on December 30, 1882.  As convict laborers were crossing the river to start another day’s work on the Cowee Tunnel, their barge capsized.  Nineteen men, shackled together, drowned in the Tuckasegee.

Is it any wonder that some crumbling bones of an ancient animal were soon forgotten?   On January 3, 1883, the News and Observer in Raleigh reported on the accident:

"A few days since we published an account of the trip of Governor Jarvis to the Western North Carolina Railroad, and gave an account of the operations at the Cowee tunnel, which is near the bank of Tuckaseegee River, in Jackson county. On that section of the road are employed about 200 convicts. Yesterday Lieutenant-Governor James L. Robinson, who came down from his home in Macon county, brought the news of a horrible disaster at the crossing of the Tuckaseegee River, the news of which he received from Mr. W.B. Troy, the officer in charge of convicts on the Western North Carolina Railroad.

" It appears that the camp of the convicts, that is, the stockade in which they are quartered, is on the bank of the Tuckaseegee river, opposite the Cowee tunnel. The river is at that particular point deep, with a current somewhat sluggish as compared with parts immediately above and below, where it breaks into rapids and rushes with the swiftness peculiar to those mountain torrents. The means of ferriage across the stream has been a large barge or flat boat, capable of containing fifty convicts, a rope stretched across being grasped by the hands and the boat then pulled over.

On Saturday, while thirty convicts were being thus transferred, they became alarmed on seeing some water and ice in the boat, and despite the fact that there was no danger, rushed panic-stricken to one end of the boat, which was at once capsized and all the men thrown into the cold river, there deep, though not more than fifty yards wide. A white guard who was on the boat went down with the rest.

A terrible scene followed, as the men struggled to get out, each man looking only after his personal safety. Many of the convicts swam ashore, or after being washed down a short distance reached the bank ere they came to the swift water. Twelve thus saved themselves, but eighteen clasped each other so closely that they became a struggling mass and were all drowned. The guard was taken from the water to all appearance dead, and it was only by dint of great and long continued efforts that his life was saved.

" The gang of convicts at this particular place, or rather section of the road was in charge of Mr. J.M. McMurray. Yesterday afternoon Capt. E.R. Stamps, chairman of the board of Penitentiary directors, left for the scene to make investigation of the disaster, which as, he state to a reporter, fairly appalled him. It was one of those accidents which seem to be unavoidable, and due to the sudden panic which seized the convicts in the boat, which it is said was in no danger of sinking, the water having fallen in it from the rains. Some of the drowned men were found some distance below, locked together in a last and fatal embrace. Many who could swim were hampered by others, who clutched them in a death grip.

"This is the greatest disaster that has happened on the road. A portion of the Cowee tunnel was of so treacherous a character that it caved in on a number of convicts, and they narrowly escaped death. The utmost precautions were used to prevent a repetition of the occurrence, an immense “cut” being made and arched over. The dirt was replaced, and all made secure. The tunnel is eighteen miles from the Balsam mountains, and thirty-four miles from Pigeon River, and is on what is known as the Ducktown branch of the Western North Carolina Railroad.

- News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), January 3, 1883

Butterflies of the Mountains

 [From November 3,  2008]

With the turning of the seasons, I suppose we've seen the last of the butterflies until next spring. From what I observed this year, and from what others mentioned to me, butterflies were unusually abundant. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the past couple of years.

The butterfly is a flying flower,

The flower a tethered butterfly.

~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

~Chuang Tzu

This great purple butterfly,

In the prison of my hands,

Has a learning in his eye

Not a poor fool understands.

~William Butler Yeats, "Another Song of a Fool"

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

~Rabindranath Tagore

"A Way I Know"

 

Cullasaja River, October 2015

From The French Broad Hustler, April 23, 1908

The Cullasaja
(By Charlotte Young)

I wish you knew a way I know
   Along the Cullasaja.
There, everything to quietness
   And happy thoughts persuade you.

The river sings its own wild song
   Around the rocky turnings,
There honey-suckles light the banks
   With red and yellow burnings.

Along the cliffs the ferns uncurl,
   And trails the pink arbutus,
And here the wood thrush lilts a song
   As sweet as any flute is.

I wish you knew a way I know
   By dreaming flowers and river,
The little cares that hurt you so
   Would float away forever.

--Charlotte Young  [1878-1985]