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Some of Our Show-Places.
 

Fine Scenery.--The scenery of Watauga County is as fine as any in the mountains of North Carolina. From Blowing Rock, the Grandfather, the Bald, Howard's Knob, Riddle's Knob, Elk Knob, the Buzzard Rocks and Dogs Ears views can be had that are sublime. Between Banner Elk and Montezuma are two immense rocks, called the Chimneys, seventy-five and ninety feet high, which have never been photographed, but which are striking objects of nature. Hanging Rock above Banner Elk and the North Pinnacle of the Beech Mountain are accessible and afford fine views. Dutch Creek Falls, within half a mile of the Mission School at Valle Crucis, slide over a rock which seems to e eighty feet high, and Linville Falls, now in Avery County, have two falls, each about thirty-five feet in height. Elk Falls, three miles from Cranberry, are well worth a visit, while the rapids of Elk Creek below the old Lewis Banner mill are wild and attractive. Watauga Falls, just west of the Tennessee line, and, therefore, in Tennessee, are not really "falls" in the sense of having a sheer fall of water in a perpendicular direction, but they are a series of cascades pouring over gigantic rocks in a gorge grand and gloomy in the extreme. It is rarely visited, however, many people imagining that a post office called Watauga Falls between Beech Creek and Ward's Store are the real falls, while in fact there are no falls there whatever. The turnpike leading from Valle Crucis to Butler, Tenn., passes in less than half a mile from the real falls, which, however, are not visible from the road. The "walks" are a series of natural stepping stones across the Watauga River below Flat Shoals, near the Tennessee line. At all times of ordinay high water one can cross on these stones dry-shod. The Wolf's Den on Riddle's Knob is well worth a visit. From the Rock House at the Jones or Little place, and from Tater Hill, both on Rich Mountain, fine views can be had.

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Cove Creek.--From Sugar Grove to the Tennessee line Cove Creek is so thickly settled as to be almost a continuous village. Several creeks come down from Rich Mountain and Fork Ridge, and on such streams many people live and thrive. For Cove Creek is recognized as the Egypt of Watauga County. It contains some of the most fertile land in the State. Its people are progressive and co-operate in all public enterprises. beginning at Zionville, near the Tennessee line, there is a succession of villages, including Mable, Amantha, Sherwood, Mast and Sugar Grove. Two large flouring mills are on the creek, while there is the first cheese factory ever established in the county in flourishing condition at Sugar Grove. Churches, schools and masonic lodges dot the hillsides. Hospitality reigns in every household. The people are prosperous and happy and helpful. From a point near the mouth of Sharp's Creek, looking toward Rich Mountain, is a view that is as beautiful as any in the mountains. A forest of young lin trees has been set out on one of the wornout hillsides and will soon be in fine condition; also grafted chestnut trees--that is, native chestnut trees on which have been grafted French and Italian shoots. A sang garden or orchard is flourishing nearby, while the town of Sugar Grove and vicinity is lighted up with electric lights. Bath tubs supplied with clear spring water are found in many of the dwellings, and an air of prosperity and progress pervades the entire community of Cove Creek. Automobiles and the latest improved farm machinery show the temper and spirit of the people. In short, there is not forward step which can be taken at this stage of its growth that Cove Creek has not taken. Silverstone, in the shadow of the Rich Mountain, is one of the lovliest of all the villages of this vicinity, though it is some distance from Cove Creek. It is, however, part and parcel of that locality.

"The Biggest Show on Earth."-- This is the boast of the Barnum-Bailey shows, but it falls far short of being as fine a show as the wild flowers of Watauga County make from May till December. Nowhere else on earth do the rhododendron, the azalea and the mountain ivy or calico bush called kalmia grow to such perfection as here. Nowhere else on earth do botanists find

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so large and fin a a variety of wild flowers of all kinds. The rhodendron maximum is, as its name indicates, the largest of the rhodondendron family, which derives its name from two Greek words meaning a rose tree. Both its leaves and its blooms are larger than any other variety. It is what we call mountain laurel, as distinguished from the ivy or calico bush, which has spotted, bell-shaped blooms. But we make no distinction between it and what botanists call the rhodondenron catawbiese, which has a smaller leaf and bloom and the bloom being more like the rose in color. The largest trunks of the rhodendron are six inches in diameter and the trees twenty feet high. In her "Carolina Mountains" Miss Morley gives most impassioned and poetic descriptions of the Watauga flowers, saying, among other charming things, that "all flowers are imprisoned sunshine in a figurative sense, but of no others does that seems so literally true as of 'the flame-colored azaleas' (p. 50), to see the perfect fire of which you must come to their mountains." She also calls attention to the fringe bush, and asks how it came to the Grandfather Mountain "when all the other members of its family live in that remote Chinese empire so mysteriously connected with us through the life of the plants?" In this class she places the silver bell tree, the azalea, the fringe bush, the wisteria and ginseng. And she calls attention to the rhodondenron vaseyii, which sheds its leaves in autumn. This was thought to have become extinct, but it is still found on the north side of the Grandfather (p. 59). But all these flowers are surpassed by the lovely blooms of our apple and cherry trees in May and June, for nowhere in the world are apples and cherries finer or more abundant than here, the Moses H. Cone orchard at Blowing Rock at that at Valle Crucis producing fruit as fine and in greater abundance than almost any other orchards in the world. Kelsey's Highland Nursery at Linville City makes a business of selling all our wild flowers. Rev. W.R. Savage, of Blowing Rock, cultivates many of them in his garden. Mrs. W.W. Stringfellow, of the same town, also takes great pride in cultivating both tame and wild flowers and in distributing bulbs and seeds gratuitously among the mountain people.

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Valle Crucis.-- According to a tradition well supported by the statements of many reputable citizens of the present day, Samuel Hix and his son-in-law, James D. Holtsclaw came in 1779 from Cheraw, S.C., through the Deep Gap, to what is now known as Valle Crucis, and erected a palisade of split logs, with their sharpened ends driven into the ground, so as to enclose about an acre and a half surrounding the Maple Spring between the present residence of Finley Mast and that of his brother, Squire W. B. Mast. This was because they feared Indians, not knowing of the agreement between the Watauga settlers and the Cherokees as to the land between the Virginia line and the ridge south of the Watauga River. After a time Hix became uneasy and retired to the wilderness near what is now Banner Elk, where he made a camp and supported himself by hunting and making maple syrup and sugar, thus avoiding service as an American or a Tory. At some time in his career he is said to have had a cabin in a cove in rear of the present residence of Squire W. B. Mast, then to have lived in the bottom above James M. Shull's present farm, afterwards moving down the Watauga River near Ward's Store, where he died long after the Revolutionary War. It is said that he never took the oath of allegiance ot the American cause and that whenever he came home for supplies his mischievous sons would frighten him by firing off a pistol made by hollowing out a buck-horn and loading the cavity with powder, the same being "touched off with a live coal." Just here it may be remarked--a fact not generally known--that a dead coal, which yet has elements of immortality in it to such an extent that, unless it is ground to powder, it remains charcoal indefinitely. Such coals, in beds of ashes, are still plowed up near the Lybrook farm, now the Grandfather Orphanage, one mile from Banner's Elk, still called by old people from the Hix Improvement, that being the place where Samuel Hix "laid out during the Revolutionary War." Whether he had a grant or other title to the Valle Crucis land seems immaterial now, as he had possession of it when Bedent Baird arrived toward the close of the eighteenth century, for Baird, with a pocketful of money, had to go a mile down river to get a home in this wilderness

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of rich land. Then Hix is said to have sold his holdings to Benjamin Ward for a rifle, dog and a sheepskin, Ward selling it later on to Reuben Mast, while Hix moved down to the mouth of Cove Creek. Ward soon got possession of this also, and sold it to a man named Summers, who was living in a cabin on the left bank of Watauga River during a great freshet which lifted the cabin from its foundation and carried it and its inmates, the entire Summers family, to death and oblivion in that night of horrors. A faithful dog belonging to the family swam after the cabin and when it finally lodged against a rock, the dog would allow no one to enter til he had been killed. The Hix Hole, just below David F. Baird's farm, is still so called because of the drowning there of James Hix and a Tester about 1835, when a bull was ridden into the river in order to recover the two bodies. Reuben Mast lived where D. F. Baird now lives, while Joel Mast lived where J. Hardee Taylor resides. David Mast lived where Finley Mast's large mansion now stands. Henry Taylor, whose father was Butler Taylor, came from Davidson County to Sugar Grove about 1849, married Emeline, daughter of John Mast, of that place, then moved to Valle Crucis in time to get some of the money paid out for the construction of the Caldwell and Watauga turnpike. This road must have been begun prior to October, 1849, for Col. Joseph C. Shull remembers that William Mast had the contract to build the bridge across Watauga River one mile below Shull's Mills, and was at work on it the morning on which he drank the poison the slave girl, Mill, is supposed to have put in his coffee for breakfast, for he came to Col. Joseph C. Shull's father's home for medicine and returned to work on the bridge, but soon had to go home, dying that night at about the same time his wife died. It was to the valley above this that Bishop Ives came in 1843, where he erected the school and brotherhood described elsewhere. This valley was what the editor of the "Life of W. W. Skiles," Susan Fenimore Cooper, a descendant of Fenimore Cooper, author of the "Leather Stocking Tales," says the Indians would call a "one smoke valley" (p. 17), from the fact that but one family dwelt there in 1842. That family was that of Andrew Townsend, the miller, whose descendants still live nearby.

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Sugar Grove.-- Cutliff Harmon came from Randolph County to this place in 1791 and bought 522 acres of land from James Gwyn, it having been granted to him May 18, 1791. Cutliff married Susan Fouts first and a widow by the name of Elizabeth Parker after the death of his first wife. It is Sugar Grove that is the most progressive of the Cove Creek towns, having electric lights, a roller mill, the first in the county, and a cheese dairy, established 5th June, 1915. It has also one of the finest school houses in the county. It was here also that Camp Mast was located during the Civil War. The land in this section is considered as about the best in the county. Col. Joseph Harrison Mast, who died September 8, 1915, had his residence here. He was in his prime one of the best and most substantial citizens of the county and still holds the respect and affection of all who knew him. The first roller mill in the county was established here. These people know what co-operation means and act accordingly. The cheese factory is the first that was established in the South, and promises to be successful.

Blowing Rock.--From the "Carolina Mountains" (pp.350, 355) we learn that "from Blowing Rock to Tryon Mountain the Blue Ridge draws a deep curve half encircling a jumble of very wild rocky peaks and cliffs that belong to the foothill formations. Hence, Blowing Rock, lying on one arm of a horseshoe of which Tryon Mountain is the other arm, has the most dramatic outlook of any village in the mountains. Directly in front of it is an enormous bowl filled with a thousand tree-clad hills and ridges that become higher and wilder towards the encircling wall of the Blue Ridge, the conspicuous bare stone summits of Hawk's Bill and Table Rock Mountains rising sharp as dragon's teeth above the rest, while the sheer and shining face of the terrible Lost Cove cliffs, dropping into some unexplored ravine, come to view on a clear day. From far away, beyond this wild bowlful of mountains, one sometimes sees a faintly outlined dome, Tryon Mountain, under which on the other side one likes to remember Traumfest, Fortress of Dreams.

"Off to the left from Blowing Rock, seen between near green knobs, the shoreless sea of the lowlands reaches away to lave

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the edge of the sky. And looking to the right, there lies the calm and noble form of the Grandfather Mountain, its rocky top drawn in a series of curves against the western sky. Long spurs sweep down like buttresses to hold it. Trees clothe it as with a garment to where the black rock surmounts them.

"The view from Blowing Rock changes continually. The atmospheric sea that encloses mountain and valley melts the solid rocks into a thousand enchanting pictures. Those wild shapes in the great basin which at one time look so near, so hard and so terrible, at another time recede and soften, their dark colors transmuted into the tender blue of the Blue Ridge, or again the basin is filled with dreamlike forms immersed in an exquisite sea of mystical light.

"Sometimes the Grandfather Mountain stands solidly out, showing in detail the tapestry of green trees that hangs over its slopes; again it is blue and flat against the sky, or it seems made of mists and shadows. Sometimes the sunset glory penetrates, as it were, into the substance of the mountain, which looks translucent in the sea of light that contains it. As night draws on, it darkens into a noble silhouette against the splendor that often draws the curves of its summit in lines of fire.

"Blowing Rock at times lies above the clouds, with all the world blotted out excepting the Grandfather's summit rising out of the white mists. Sometimes one looks out in the morning to see that great bowl filled to the brim with level clouds that reach away from one's very feet in a floor so firm to the eye that one is tempted to step on it. Presently this pure white level floor begins to roll up into billowy masses, deep wells, open down which one looks to little landscapes lying in the bottom, a bit of the lovely John's River Valley, a house and trees, perhaps. The well closes; the higher peaks begin to appear, phantom islands in a phantom sea; the restless ocean of mists swells and rolls, now concealing, now revealing glimpses of the world under it. It breaks apart into fantastic forms that begin to glide up the peaks and mount above them like wraiths. The sun darts sheaves of golden arrows in through the openings, and these in time slay the pale dragons of the air, or drive them fleeing into

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the far blue caverns of the sky, and the world beneath is visible, only that where the John's River Valley ought to be there often remains a long lake of snowy drift. Sometimes the clouds blotting out the landscape break apart suddenly, the mountains come swiftly forth one after the other until one seems to be watching an act of creation where solid forms resolve themselves out of chaos. The peaceful John's River Valley, winding far below among the wild mountains, is like a glimpse into a fairyland, and one has never ventured to go there for fear of dispelling the pleasing illusion.

"Near the village of Blowing Rock, at the beginning of those green knobs between which one looks to the lowlands, is a high cliff, the real Blowing Rock, so named because the rocky walls at this point form a flume through which the northwest wind sweeps with such force that whatever is thrown over the rock is hurled back again. It is said that there are times when a man could not jump over, so tremendous is the force of the wind. It is also said that visitors, having heard the legend of the rock, have been seen to stand there in a dead calm and throw over their possessions and watch them no more in anger than in mirth as they, obedient to the law of gravity instead of that of fancy, disappeared beneath the tree tops far below.

"Blowing Rock, four thousand feet above sea level, is a wonderfully sweet place. The rose-bay and the great white rhododendron maximum crowd against the houses and fill the open spaces, excepting where laurel and the flame-colored azaleas have planted their standards. And in their seasons the wild flowers blossom everywhere; also the rocks are covered with those crisp, sweet-smelling herbs that love high places, and sedums and saxifrages trim the crevices and the ledges.

"Blowing Rock is also noted for the great variety of new mushrooms that have been captured there, though one suspects that this renown is due to the fact that the mushroom hunters happened to pitch their tents here instead of somewhere else. For other parts of the mountains can make a showing in mushrooms, too."

Some Blowing Rock Attractions.-- Besides the Blowing Rock itself, from which a fine view can be had, there are the Ransom

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and Grand Views. There are several drives and trails in and near the Rock, some of which surpass in sylvan beauty any to be seen on the Biltmore estate, as the former are through primeval forests, noteably the drive between the Stringfellow and Cone Lakes. The Randall Memorial Work Shop was conceived by the late W. G. Randall, who was born in Burke County, North Carolina, and after many hardships obtained an education and became a famous artist in oils. He spent his summers in Blowing Rock, where he died, after living nearly twenty summers there. His remains lie in Washington, D. C. His wife was Miss Anna Goodlow, of Warren County, North Carolina. It is in this Work Shop that the manual industries of the mountain are preserved and fostered. There are an old-fashioned hand loom, spinning wheels, etc., in this building. The Blowing Rock Exchange is near by, and its object is to afford a greater opportunity to the home people to sell home-made articles, such as woven rugs, coverlids, embroidered bedspreads, laces, articles made of laurel, baskets, etc. In it are a library, a fine collection of Indian relics and mineral specimens. In front of the Work Shop is a garden of rare wild and cultivated plants and one of the two sundials in Watauga County. This garden is the result of the labors of Rev. William Rutherford Savage, who was born in Pass Christian, Miss., October 20, 1854; was graduated at the Episcopal Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Va., and moved to Blowing Rock in September, 1902. He is a worthy successor to the late Rev. W. W. Skiles, of Valle Crucis fame. In the words of Rev. Edgar Tufts, Mr. Savage has done more than any other to create a fraternal feeling among all the denominations of the mountains.

Ante-Bellum Residents.-- Col. James Harper, Sr., of Lenoir, built a frame summer residence at what is now the H. W. Weeden Fairview house, about 1858, and spent the summers there till the Civil War began. John Bryant lived where the Blowing Rock hotel stands, on land belonging to Col. James Harper. Edmund Greene lived near the present site of the German Reformed Church. Amos Greene lived on the opposite

Page 218 side of the road from the present residence of Mrs. Dr. Reeves, and Lot Estes had his home between the present residence of Col. W. W. Stringfellow and the creek. Len Estes, his son, built the mill and dam after the Civil War, but sold out to Colonel Stringfellow and went West. He kept summer boarders and looked like General Grant. William M. Morris bought the Amos Greene place about 1874 and opened a house for summer boarders. He was most successful, and the good things he furnished for his boarders to eat will be forever remembered by all who had the good fortune to sit at his table. He had a most remarkable little bench-legged cow, which gave oceans of the richest milk imaginable. His deep featherbeds were good for tired legs after a day's wading in the creeks fishing for speckled trout. He sold out to Dr. L. C. Reeves, however, and moved east of the Blue Ridge. W. W. Sherrell bought the Harper property and opened two or three small houses for summer boarders about 1877 or 1878 at Fairview. This is now the Weeden place. Robert Greene, father of the late Judge L. L. Greene, lived where the Cone Lake now is. The Kirk Fort was in the Blowing Rock Gap, and trees were felled for some distance down the road so as to give an open view of the country to the east. After Gen. M. W. Ransom became interested in the place, its growth was rapid, and the completion of the Yonahlossee turnpike in 1900 assured its success.

Along the Blue Ridge.--We will now notice the people who originally lived along the Blue Ridge, from Deep Gap to Coffey's Gap. Solomon Green lived in the Deep Gap, and was a good citizen and entertained the traveling public. He was the son of "Flatty" Isaac Green, who lived on Meat Camp near the noted Brown place of 640 acres, the lower part of which is now owned by Lindsey Patterson, of Winston-Salem, and the upper part by L. A. Green, who lives near. L. A. Green is a son of "Little" John Green, who was a son of Richard Green, all of whom are well to do people. The next settled place on the Ridge was called the Old Ellison place, where William Blackburn now lives. The next was the home of the Rev. John Cook, a Baptist minister and a son of Michael Cook, of Cook's Gap, and he lived six

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