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Whistle Over the Mountain by Ronald G Schmidt & William S Hooks
Whistle Over the Mountain by Ronald G Schmidt & William S Hooks
Timber, track & Trails in the Tennessee Smokies
Soft Cover
169 pages
Copyright 1994
CONTENTS
WHISTLE OVER THE MOUNTAIN
Prologueiv
Table of Contentsvi
Introduction and Historical Perspective viii
Using This Bookxiv
The Rail-Trail System
What to Look For
Where to Look
Other Relics
LOWER BASIN
The Early Years2
Walland8
Property Map12
Townsend, The Town16
Mill Facilities
Railway Operations
Rail Cars
WEST FORK BASIN
West Fork40
Hesse Creek Basin48
Eldorado and "The Hurricane"50
EAST FORK BASIN
East Fork56
Elkmont62
Timbering on the East Fork75
Jakes Creek78
Main Trunk88
Three Forks92
Fish Camp Fork96
Fish Camp
Rough Creek
Back Down the Gorge106
Meigs Creek108
MIDDLE FORK BASIN
Middle Fork114
Tremont118
Lynn Camp and Thunderhead Prong 128
Spruce Flats and Walker Valley132
Epilogue146
APPENDICES
Acknowledgements152
Map Legend155
Glossary156
Engine Roster160
Wrecks on the Little River162
Sources of Information163
Index164
ON THE BACK COVER
Visitors to the western slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park see green mountains and sylvan glades. The park is tranquillity, a natural treasure created for the benefit of everyone through the wisdom of our forebears. Few realize that a noisy, smoky drama of natural resource development once gripped these rugged slopes. Over a period of less than 40 years from the turn of the century, an immense forest went from undisturbed natural wonder, remote and inaccessible, to scarred land stripped of its verdant cover. It has taken more than another 50 years for nature to restore it to its present condition. This book is the story of the people and the events which shaped a remarkable history as it unfolded on the Little River in Tennessee. The Little River Lumber Company and its servant, the Little River Railroad still live today if you but know where and how to look for them.
PROLOGUE
They came from Pennsylvania; a place called Clearfield. They were not strangers to mountains and forests, for that place was in the heart of the thickly wooded Alleghenies. But the timber there was nearly gone and they c=ame to the Smoky Mountains where the silver mists that swathed these great peaks had for centuries nourished the blanket of timber which draped the slopes. Under these benevolent conditions, the trees grew to towering proportions. Here they waited silently for their destiny.
These men, led by Colonel W.B. Townsend, were drawn to the Smokies by demand for a steady source of tanbark to supply a new tannery at Walland. Successful lumbermen, they knew that it was not tanbark that would make them rich, but cutting and milling of the giant timber itself. They also knew that a successful lumbering enterprise would require the creation of a transportation system to serve it. These entrepreneurs from Pennsylvania would have a profound impact on the physical character and economic resources of the area, one which would far surpass what anyone could imagine in 1900. By the end of that year, logging had begun on the western slopes of the mountains in the drainage of the Little River. Soon this development would spread to all of the other slopes of the mountains as well.
Formidable problems faced these resource entrepreneurs. In the rugged mountains the great stands of timber were all but inaccessible. The hand logging methods employed when a few small mills furnished lumber for local use were inadequate for the scale of enterprise envisioned by the group. Massive exploitation of this resource could only be achieved by using mechanized methods developed elsewhere in the late nineteenth century. What was needed were railways and tramways to move timber from the steep slopes to a place where a large mill could be built to cut lumber. Rail transportation to major population centers was required to move the mill output to market in a continuous flow. Given the challenges of the Great Smokies, ordinary men might have found the task insurmountable.
Our story is about the Little River Lumber Company and its founders, the Clearfield men, who boldly and quickly established a steady supply of timber, a rail transportation system to move it, and a major mill to process the lumber.
Intensive lumbering in the Smokies lasted from the turn of the century to the late 1930's, a period of almost 40 years. The canny owners of the lumbering industry in the Smokies knew that a great deal of time would have to lapse before new growth could reach the stage where recutting would be feasible. They found a way to recover their investment before that time and to preserve the land. Thus it was that the forest which had yielded its treasures to them became a ward of the federal government , to be renewed for all to enjoy.
Today, there are few traces of the exploitation which scarred the mountains in those years. If you have visited Great Smoky Mountains National Park roads or trails, you have probably not suspected the extent of forest cutting and transportation operations of a few decades ago. Although they are fading rapidly, the signs of massive, widespread timbering are still to be seen in many places. This book will guide you to those places and, we hope, make the history come alive.
It is also the purpose of this book to provide an historical perspective to the beauty, tranquillity, and strength of this majestic mountain environment and the people who inhabit it. If we can capture a sense of what has been, perhaps we can better understand what is yet to be.
Yellow Springs, Ohio Gatlinburg, Tennessee July 1994
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