Early 1900s
The people of these remote areas were a most hardy bunch. Some today might question why anyone would settle in such a dangerous and desolate place. The following story describes the remoteness. Written by backwoods traveler Bud Wunst, it appeared in the July 22, 1900, issue of The Morning Post, Raleigh:
But I have only come three and a half miles from Mrs. Crowder's. In fact, she came part of the way with me. She did not wear the two large navy revolvers around her waist, as I had been told she would: but she did wear a pair of thick canvas leggins to keep the snakes from biting her ankles. I remember her resolute old face now, as she parted with me on the ridge near the Stack gap, while I made a sketch of the Hay-o, the Hang over and the Fodder Stack mountains. She is over sixty years of age. On her sun-tanned, bare arm hung a large tin bucket partly full of salt for the cattle she herds, and in her hand she carried a long stick to kill "rattle bugs" with, as she calls rattlesnakes. She was much distressed when I told her about the bear I had not killed, and she told me she would rather have heard of the death of that "old black man," as she called him, than any news I could have brought her. She ploughs, plants corn and rye and potatoes and turnips and all vegetables, slips her own rails, makes and renews all her fences, having laid over 300 panels last winter, mows her mountain meadow, cuts her own fire wood and hauls it on a sled to house, goes to mill and does all the work a man would have to do if there was one within three miles of her, which there is not, Bowers, her son-in-law, being her nearest neighbor. She is assisted by her two grown daughters, Marge and Caledonia, who is called Doan for short.
It was a hard matter to tear myself away from her; but I had no trouble in parting with Bowers, who, she said, is so lazy he couldn't get his breath if it didn't come "natural."
The rest of the article Wunst retells his meetings with Frank and John Swan, Andy Kirkland, born 1850, (brother of "bushwacker John"), Squire Stratton, age 72, Bill Depety, and Sheet's store on his trek to Jeffries' Hell via Citico, Whiteoak, Waucheesi, Rafter and the Tellico River. He also recalled sitting on a "wool-sac" at Doc Stewart's house on Big Santeetlah Creek and meeting hunter-trapper John Denton who wore "two long curls in front of either shoulder".
In a previous article dated July 15, 1900 in The Raleigh Morning Post he detailed more of his travels to the far western reaches of North Carolina. In his search for Jeffries Hell he hiked along Big Santeetlah Creek passing Arch Stewart's, Arch's son Doc Stewart, and then overnighting at John Swan's place at current day Swan's Cabin. Seven miles to the west he encountered William Stratton's thirty acres with 300 head of cattle on a high secluded meadow. He visited Absalom Stratton's grave site where the early settler is buried half in Tennessee and half in North Carolina. Today the grave which reads "A.S., Was Born 1757, Died 1839" can be seen just a few feet off the Cherohala Skyway at mile 1.6 where Santeetlah Creek Road intersects.
Wunst then hiked across Stratton Bald to Haoe which he called Hay-o and then out to Hangover for a wide view of the mountains. In the magnificent view were Fodder Stack, Slick Rock, the Cheoah River, Yellow Creek, Santeetlah, the Little Tennessee River, and the Snowbird Mountains.
Wunst's hiking partner was eleven-year-old Frank Swan, son of John Swan, who told him how Jeffries Hell came to be named:
If you want to know where Jeffries Hell is I will tell you. It lies between the Sassy Fac Mountain on the south, the Stae sic (State) ridge on the east and the Fodder Stack ridge on the north. Two forks of Citico creek come out of it. It is densely covered with spruce pines and laurel. It covers about twenty-five square miles of territory. It is almost impenetrable. When one gets into it, the trees and undergrowth are so thick that he cannot see out on any side or above. Consequently, one soon gets bewildered and I imagine two would get so too.
Years and years ago a man by the name of Jeffries - not the judge of evil fame - got lost in this wilderness and wandered about in it for days without food. When he got out he said he had been to hell and the name has clung to it ever since. I did not go into it. I can find hell enough to suit me outside.
The tolls on "toll gate road" continued into the 1910s. The last keeper of the toll gate for ten years was Dee Hill. The land, which consisted of some 12-miles of crude roadway, was supposedly owned by U.S. Supreme Court Judge Edward T. Sanford at the time. Tolls were 35 cents per wagon and 25 cents for a man on horseback. Walkers passed through for nothing.
According to Dee Hill's younger brother Green Hill, few people traveled the road and most of them walked. He recalled a number of men carrying a coffin over the road headed upriver to Bushnel in North Carolina. The coffin with a 14-year-old girl was suspended by rope from a stout pole with four men supporting it on their shoulders. Alcoa finally tore down the Toll Booth house circa 1916 after a public road was built during construction of Cheoah Dam. An historical marker marked the location for a number of years. KNS, August 12, 1962, pg 17. (1920 Census, Civil District 11, District 27, Blount Co, Green B. HILL, age 47, Farmer/Cotton Mill; wife Nannie 41)
In 1908 there was a boundary dispute between North Carolina and Tennessee on the line from Deal's Gap to Joe Brown Highway. Engineer Dana Blackburn Burns, a noted surveyor at the age of 31, surveyed the land on foot. The 58 miles was a desolate wilderness from beginning to end.
Circa 1913 a town was actually born on the Dragon. Calderwood, formerly the Howard farm property, was created as living quarters for employees constructing the Cheoah Dam in 1917, Calderwood Dam in 1930, and those workers who maintained the systems. A railway ran from Knoxville, through Calderwood, and followed the Little Tennessee River all the way to Tapoco in North Carolina. Equipment, supplies and workers were transported on this line. Calderwood was also used by Alcoa Aluminum, aka Tapoco, Inc., as a corporate retreat for their executives. There was even a golf course accessed by ferry across the Little Tennessee River. Today’s Tapoco Lodge was also built by Alcoa for their executives. The entire dam and reservoir system provided electric power to Alcoa’s large aluminum processing plant north of Maryville, Tennessee later to become the town of Alcoa.