1920s
By 1923 discussions were underway between Tennessee and North Carolina officials about constructing a highway connecting Knoxville, Maryville and Bryson City. The primary emphasis was to shorten the route from northern cities to Florida. At the time there were no roads crossing the mountains between Newport and Chattanooga Tennessee, a distance of 125 miles.
Two alternatives were studied at the time. One considered was from Maryville, through Cades Cove and crossing the Unaka Mountains at Ekanetelle Gap at an elevation of 3,900 feet. The other, which was several miles longer, followed the path of current day US 129 from Maryville, Calderwood and Deals Gap then passing through Tapoco and Robbinsville. This route crossed much lower elevations up to 2,100 feet. An alternate route would connect Bryson City and Deals Gap directly, current day NC 28.
Bryson City officials played an important role in helping Knoxville interested parties make a decision. A portion of the planned alternate route from Bryson City to Deals Gap had been constructed and monies were available for completion.
An interesting three-day trip was arranged for the Knoxville delegation to explore the proposed route and the existing improvements. The May 1924 exploratory committee was quite an adventure in itself. The group motored to Sevierville where people expressed their support for completing the highway. The party spent the night in Gatlinburg before leaving at 6:30 in morning in Ford automobiles for a two-mile ride on the existing roadway. Then most of the men mounted seventeen horses and mules for the twelve-mile trail ride to the state line. Nine members of the group preferred to walk. They arrived at Lufty Gap, today near Newfound Gap and US 441, at noon where they met a contingent of fourteen people from North Carolina who provided a meal of fried mountain trout. A number of the Tennessee group returned to Gatlinburg. From the State line the rest of the journey was on foot through Cherokee and ended at Bryson City. The group was feted by the North Carolinians and provided free boarding and meals along with gifts of cigars and cigarettes.
The next day the group returned to Knoxville by way of Deals Gap. The route included automobiles to Judson, then a passenger train to Bushnell, and then on flatcars on a lumber train to Fontana. After lunch a steamboat carried the group eight miles to Tapoco Dam. A motor launch was then taken through the boom of the dam. After a tour of the dam the party proceeded to Calderwood by railway motor car. It was the seventh method of transport for the party.
This map appeared in the February 8, 1925 issue of the Knoxville Journal. The Knoxville Automobile Club favored the route through Cades Cove and Ekenetelle Gap, but North Carolina advised this route was too difficult on the North Carolina side and preferred the Deals Gap plan. By June of 1925 contracts had been let to construct the highway number 72 to Deals Gap and connect to the existing roadway to Bryson City.
One of the first references to the Deal's Gap Highway appeared in the June 15, 1925 Middlesboro Daily News, Middlesboro, Kentucky:
MOUNTAIN LINK FOR HIGHWAY
One link in Knoxville's campaign for highways penetrating the mountain barriers which divide Tennessee from its mother state is to be laid in a contract given by the state highway department of North Carolina to R. G. Hill Construction company of Knoxville, to complete a smooth running road between Fontano (sic), N.C. to the state line at Deals Gap.
The contract calls for 18-miles of land surface road wide enough for two automobiles to pass each other. The grading through the North Carolina mountain side has already been done; and the contract awarded the Knoxville firm calls for laying the hard surface common to the famous roads of North Carolina.
When the road is completed the link lacking on the Tennessee side from the big Tapoco dam, almost on the state line, to Calderwood, Tenn., is just eight miles. Automobiles from Knoxville running through Maryville can reach Alderwood, but there is a stretch of a few miles this side of that town, which needs widening and improvement.
The Tennessee side of the double link is designated on the highway map, issued by the state highway department as state and road number 72. It is one of the roads penetrating the mountains, which Governor Austin Peay and J. G. Creveling, have promised to construct in the early future.
When the two links are completed the distance by automobile road between Knoxville and Bryson City, N. C., will be shortened more than 100 miles.
An article in the November 1, 1925 Knoxville Journal praised the new highway:
This highway would connect at Deal's Gap with a highway which North Carolina is building down the Little Tennessee river valley to that point. This highway would connect with the North Carolina state system of public highways. This highway can follow the nearest level route available for a great highway connecting North Carolina and Tennessee.
This route is the most feasible for a great highway and will follow the route of the Cherokee Indian trail that was used for commercial purposes before railroads were built connecting the two states. It would be a scenic highway of much interest. The great lakes provided for power purposes on one side and high mountains on the other side of it.
It would connect at or near Deal's Gap with North Carolina state highway No. 108, extending from Robbinsville, in Graham county, North Carolina, now being located. Such a highway when constructed would be of immense practical utility to the people of Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
All-Year Highway Asserted
Such a highway would be an all-year around highway, as Deal's Gap is the lowest divide in the Great Smoky mountains, being 1,7-- feet above sea level and only about 900 feet above the valleys.
This highway would be the most economical from point of distance and best from point of utility. This highway would be equally useful for business and pleasure, and is an absolute public necessity.
A meeting to insure the road to Deal's Gap included connection to Maryville was held at the Maryville courthouse on November 3, 1925. A number of speeches stressed the great desirability to land the highway for Maryville. Word was that North Carolina was considering a different route from Slickrock to Madisonville, Tennessee which would be of little benefit to Maryville.
The Knoxville Journal of November 4, 1925 mentioned some of the old designations of the area being considered:
Maryville, the terminus of the old Isaac Anderson route, the first toll-gate route from North Carolina in this end of the state. This was the way used to haul cotton from both Carolinas to the Blount county cotton mills, over the old Black Diamond railroad level, the original survey of the Knoxville and Augusta road beyond Calderwood.
The 1896 Boones Map of the Black Diamond System Railways. Route from Louisville, Kentucky, to Savannah, Georgia via Carrollton, KY, Frankfort, KY, Jellico, TN, Knoxville, TN, Franklin, NC, Augusta, GA, Savannah, GA. Planned route through Deals Gap was never completed in its entirety.
On December 5, 1925 the Tennessee state highway department announced that it had no funds to build the federal highway from Maryville to Deal's Gap. The commission added that a renewed effort would be made to allocate funds at the next meeting. But on December 12, C. N. Bass acting highway commissioner stated that the Maryville to Deal's Gap road and the Gatlinburg to Bryson City road through Indian Gap would be built immediately. Word was that a bond issue in the amount of $150,000 planned for January could not fail in the Blount county court. The Maryville Kiwanis Club announced sponsorship of the building of the highway in order to promote business interests along the route.
The Knoxville Journal article of January 17, 1926 announced that Col. W. B. Townsend, president of the Little River Lumber Company, made the generous offer of donating the old railroad bed to Tennessee adding yet another route into the Great Smoky Mountains. The bed ran from Townsend to Elkmont and would allow for the construction of a hard surfaced roadway with little additional preparations needed. This is today's TN73 also known as Little River Road. The area where the Colonel set-up his sawmill operation was originally called Tuckaleechee Cove, but was later named Townsend in honor of the Colonel.
The area around the Smokies has seen many colorful persons of interest over the years. Some were moonshiners and others were hunters/trappers. And they both provide an interesting look for history to preserve. An article in the February 7, 1926 Knoxville Journal featured comments by "the prophet of the Smokies", Col. Levi Trentham. The 73 year old hunter/trapper/businessman was flown to Nashville to see Governor Peay and promote his running for the third term.
Trentham commented on the issues of the day:
Tips To Highway Engineers
The prophet of the Smokies gave the engineers of the highway some valuable information about the best routes through the Smokies into Carolina.
"You can peep through all the modern transits you engineers want to, but the buffalo that used to feed in the mountains were the best locating engineers in the world," he said.
"They have followed the lines of the least resistance, and made the easiest way, if you want to get to Indian Gap by the cheapest and easiest way you just follow the old buffalo trail up Rough Creek to the gap.
"If you want the best and cheapest roue (sic) to Deal's Gap you just follow the buffalo path up through Cades Cove, to the North Carolina line. I don't care where you locate these roads, I can always depend on 'Aunt Emmaline,' but we have got to look out for our children and our grandchildren."
Asked how many grandchildren he had, Uncle Levi replied that at the last count he had "somewhere in the nineties."
The engineers of the time did not follow the prophet's advice. US 441 was constructed along the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River about one-and-a-half miles north of Rough Creek and the Deals Gap road bypassed the more direct route through Cades Cove and followed the Little Tennessee River valley into North Carolina.
All of the news articles in the Tennessee papers proclaimed this "new direct route to Atlanta" would be a boon to tourism. Why did they not consider a route similar to today's I-75 that skirts the mountains to the west. The travel distance would be farther, but faster by avoiding the more mountainous route through Deal's Gap. No doubt the mountain scenery added to the allure of US 129.
Blount and Sevier Counties appropriated funds in April 1926 to begin construction of the "Little River Scenic Loop" through the proposed Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This included three proposed roads; One from Maryville to Deal's Gap (US 129); one from Maryville through Walland and Townsend to Fighting Creek near Gatlinburg (US 321/TN 73); and one from Knoxville through Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg to the North Carolina line at Indian Gap (US 441). Work was to commence within thirty days.
Newspaper articles in April 1926 proclaimed the coming of "the great flow of tourists" to get a view of the proposed Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The new roads should have been constructed a year earlier and construction was encountering embarrassing problems according to the articles.
An unexpected delay of the Deal's Gap road construction was caused when the Tennessee and North Carolina Railway filed suit to prevent the roadway from encroaching on what they claimed was a 100-foot easement on both sides of the existing one track. Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Beeler commented, "There is no reason why the railway should try to claim all their right-of-way. It has only one track there. It probably will not use any more of the right-of-way for a hundred years." At the contested point the highway had to use part of the right-of-way where high cliffs were on one side and the river on the other.
Heavy rains on November 19, 1927 caused the Little Tennessee River to flood and damage to some of the retaining all construction for the Deal's Gap highway.
The injunction which stopped construction of the Deal's Gap highway was modified on November 21. This allowed the building of the roadway to continue.
On January 2, 1928 bonds were sold for the completion of the road from Bryson City to Deal's Gap. The bonds for the 40-mile of roadway totaled $40,000 and were purchased by the Cincinnati Bonding Company. ACT Jan 3, 1928, pg 5.
An article in the April 21, 1928 The Tennessean newspaper announced a number of Memphis men were "making purchases of a number of lots in the section" near Tallassee Springs. They planned a 125-room hotel, forty log houses each equipped with electric lights and shower baths, a golf course, airplane landing field, steel motor boats and bathing beaches.
In 1929 a study by North Carolina Highway Department was underway to complete a highway into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The Asheville Citizen-Times article of September 1, 1929, stated the route somewhere near Porter's Gap at the state line to connect to Tennessee highways. This location was 4.25 miles north of the final location at Newfound Gap. The article continued citing the practically unknown existing roadway running along the southern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains Highway No. 288 from Bryson City to Deals Gap.
The ACT article spoke of the large creeks along this roadway including Nolan's Creek, Chambers Creek, Hazel Creek, Eagle Creek and Twelve-Mile Creek. The article went on, "it is probable that by the time the United States government takes over the park and completes development of the great mountain highway along the big divide, that there will be a splendid road along each one of these creeks." Today we know that not only were these roads never constructed, but Highway No. 288 was actually flooded and abandoned with the construction of Fontana Dam. A short section of 288 is still in existence near Bryson City and known as the Road to Nowhere.
On August 23, 1929 the Knoxville Journal reported that about 10 miles of the Deal's Gap highway would be relocated due to the construction of the Chilhowee dam and resulting flooding. The new roadway would be necessary from Tallassee Springs to Calderwood.
On August 25, 1929, The Knoxville News-Sentinel ran a half page feature article by the News-Sentinel Motor Tourist with photos of "An Afternoon's motor trip past Calderwood and into Deal's Gap". The trip was made in a new 1930 Buick Standard Six Sedan selling for $1,450 new. The 110-mile trip from Knoxville and return was made with speeds never exceeding 35 miles per hour. Photos included a view from the overlook at Calderwood Dam, the hairpin corner at "The Whip", the construction of a culvert over Rabbit Creek, and a section of roadway with construction camp of "rude cabins" along the side of the road.