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Volume 2 of "If Rails Could Talk..." is the second of a planned eight volume series about the railroad logging along the Blue Ridge and adjoining North Carolina Smoky Mountains. In volume 2, there are the stories of logging the West Fork of the Pigeon River watershed by rail. Located near present day Lake Logan, the logging town of Sunburst, North Carolina is the center of the story that spans the years from 1906 through 1926. The book covers the extensive logging railroads built by Champion Lumber and Suncrest Lumber into the Shining Rock and Middle Prong Wildness and Areas. It also contains the story of the beginnings of the Champion Fibre Company. The book contains over 75 photographs, many published for the first time. Author Ron Sullivan, his wife Marilyn, and hiking partner Jerry Ledford spent many days hiking the old grades, most of them off of established trails and roads. They carefully used a GPS to trace the rail grades and transfer them to USGS topo maps. Edited by Gerald Ledford.
Volume 4 of ¿If Rails Could Talk¿¿ is the fourth of a planned eight volume series about the railroad logging along the Blue Ridge and adjoining Smoky Mountains. In volume 4, there are the stories of the logging railroads that ran from Waynesville, NC; Band Mill Bottom, through Dellwood, and Maggie Valley. Waynesville is the story of the final attempt by Suncrest Lumber Company to log the Cataloochee Boundary of timber. For 25 years, the Cataloochee lands had been just out of reach geographically to 4 lumber companies. The book contains many photographs, some printed for the first time. It also contains track maps of all of the railroad grades, with accompanying aerial photographs of the same areas. Author Ron Sullivan, his wife Marilyn, and hiking partner / editor Jerry Ledford spent many days hiking the old grades, most of them off of established trails and roads. Ron used a GPS to trace the rail grades and transfer them to USGS topographic maps.
Seeking a taste of unspoiled wilderness, more than eight million people visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park each year. Yet few probably realize what makes the park unusual: it was the result of efforts to reclaim wilderness rather than to protect undeveloped land. The Smokies have, in fact, been a human habitat for 8,000 years, and that contact has molded the landscape as surely as natural forces have. In this book, Daniel S. Pierce examines land use in the Smokies over the centuries, describing the pageant of peoples who have inhabited these mountains and then focusing on the twentieth-century movement to create a national park. Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials, Pierce presents the most balanced account available of the development of the park. He tells how park supporters set about raising money to buy the land--often from resistant timber companies--and describes the fierce infighting between wilderness advocates and tourism boosters over the shape the park would take. He also discloses the unfortunate human cost of the park's creation: the displacement of the area's inhabitants. Pierce is especially insightful regarding the often-neglected history of the park since 1945. He looks at the problems caused by roadbuilding, tree blight, and air pollution that becomes trapped in the mountains' natural haze. He also provides astute assessments of the Cades Cove restoration, the Fontana Lake road construction, and other recent developments involving the park. Full of outstanding photographs and boasting a breadth of coverage unmatched in other books of its kind, The Great Smokies will help visitors better appreciate the wilderness experience they have sought. Pierce's account makes us more aware of humanity's long interaction with the land while capturing the spirit of those idealistic environmentalists who realized their vision to protect it. The Author: Daniel S. Pierce teaches in the department of history and the humanities program at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, and is a contributor to The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.
Join Chef Glenn McAllister on his Appalachian Trail adventures, covering 1001 miles of rugged footpath, inspirational mountaintops, and unbounded nature. Glenn's eloquently written journal entries paint vivid pictures of the wildness of the AT, the fascinating variety of characters he met along the way, and the unexpected love story that unfolded between Georgia and West Virginia. Author of Recipes for Adventure: The Ultimate Guide to Dehydrating Food for the Trail, Chef Glenn includes a supplemental chapter with some of his favorite recipes, from unstuffed peppers to pumpkin pie, and the basics for preparing dehydrated meals.
Set in what remains some of the wildest country in the United States, Sound Wormy recalls a time when regulations were few and resources were abundant for the southern lumber industry. In 1901 Andrew Gennett put all of his money into a tract of timber along the Chattooga River watershed, which traverses parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. By the time he wrote his memoir almost forty years later, Gennett had outwitted and outworked countless competitors in the southern mountains to make his mark as one of the region's most seasoned, innovative, and successful lumbermen. His recollections of a rough-and-ready outdoors life are filled with details of logging, from the first "cruise" of a timber stand to the moment when the last board lies "on sticks" in the mill yard. He tells how massive poplars, oaks, and other hardwoods had to be felled and trimmed by hand, dragged down mountain slopes by draft animals, floated downstream or carried by rail to the mill, and then sawn, graded, and stacked for drying. He tells of buying timber rights in a land market filled with "sharp" operators, where titles and surveys were often contested and kinship and custom were on an equal footing with the law. Gennett saw more than potential "boardfeet" when he looked at a tree. He recalls, for instance, his efforts to convince the U.S. Forest Service to purchase undisturbed areas of wilderness at a time when its mandate was to condemn and buy up farmed-out and clear-cut land. One such sale initiated by Gennett would become the Joyce Kilmer Wilderness in North Carolina. Filled with logging lore and portraits of the southern mountains and their people, Sound Wormy adds an absorbing new chapter to the region's natural and environmental history.
In 1974, Paul M. Fink published Backpacking Was the Only Way, a memoir of exploration in the Smoky Mountain backcountry that is long out of print. The basis of the book was a journal kept from 1914 to 1938, combined with evocative photographs that Fink compiled into a manuscript he called Mountain Days. The manuscript is now considered to be a unique and insightful first-person account of the region. Containing rare historical accounts of the manways, camps, and cabins once used by adventurers exploring the mountains before the advent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, this is the first widely-accessible publication of Mountain Days. This edition features a new foreword by Ken Wise, professor and director of the Great Smoky Mountain Regional Project at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville's John C. Hodges Library. An open access edition of Mountains Days is available from the Hunter Library at Western Carolina University.