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til about 1895, though a trail went through there "furder back" than anyone now remembers.(1) Behind a thick laurel, near where Napoleon Banner now lives, was the camp of a man named Ollis, who was hiding out during the Revolutionary War. Ashes and coals can still be plowed up near that place. He used to live, as did Samuel Hix, by hunting and making a crop of potatoes in a little patch, ekeing out his simple fare with maple syrup and sugar from the maple trees which had made this section their home time out of mind, and which gave its name to Sugar Mountain. After awhile Burton Baird, Delilah's son, married the Widow Keller, and her daughter Aurilda, called "Rildy" for short, married Levi Moody. Below Harrison Aldrich's house on head of Watauga River lived Tom Fudge and two old maids, one of whom was named Laudermilk, for whom he milked, tended garden and did other work.(2) He had a little gun with a very short barrel. He was a little dried-up man, but useful to these two forlorn women. William Baird lived at what is now called Matny. Mike Snider lived at what is now called Elk Park, where he operated a small grist mill. Down at Old Fields of Toe lived James Calloway and the Maxfield family, the Clarks and Braswells living above that place, and there after the Civil War Gen. Robert F. Hoke and associates, James Wilson and Sam. McD. Tate, decided that sheep raising in these mountains would be profitable, got control of the Old Fields of Toe,(3) imported a genuine Scotch shepherd and a genuine Scotch shepherd dog, several fine bucks, and then bought up over a hundred natives ewes. It did not pay as well as had been expected, native dogs being too much for the one imported collie. Even the tie-tie business for pipe stems was carried on. John Hardin and his son, Jordan, moved from the Hardin place, a mile
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Note: (1) Shep. M. Dugger, the distinguished author of the "Balsam Groves of the Grandfather Mountain," and his brother-in-law, J. Erwin Calloway, built the Grandfather hotel, half a mile from Linville Gap, in 1885; but it was burned in 1914. It served a good purpose as a resting-place for tourists to the Grandfather Mountain.
(2) In 1857 Newton, Ab. and Luther Banner, caught trout in the North Toe River, and ran with them to the head of Banner Elk, crossing at Sugar Gap, replenishing the water as they went, and this stocked Elk Creek above Elk Falls. Rev. H. H. Prout also stocked Linville River above the Falls from head of Watauga River. (3) A man named Birchfield was probably among the first settlers at the Old Fields of Toe, dying there of milk-sick many years ago.

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east of Boone, and lived at Crenberry forge from about 1850 til after the Civil War, during which jordan had charge of the property. John Hardin died in 1873. Between these places and Banner's Elk there was constant communication. The rapid development of Banner's Elk and its surrounding country, including all the places named herein, is too recent to need recording here. The coming of the Rev. Edgar Tufts, however, was the most fortunate event in the history of that section. (See chapter on Schools.)

On Foot to Banner's Elk.– Miss Morley gives us this account of her trip to Banner's Elk. Does that "gold tree" still stand we wonder? The only way to find out is to go and see.

"From Valle Crucis to Banner Elk, under the Beech Mountain, is another day's walk, when again you take the longest way up Dutch Creek to see the pretty waterfall there and where the clematis is a white veil over the bushes, and up the steep road by Hanging Rock where the gold tree grows. This is an oak, known far and near because its top is always golden yellow. The leaves come out yellow in the spring, remain so all summer, and in the fall would doubtless turn yellow if they were not already that color. The people say there is a pot of gold buried at the roots, but this pleasant fancy has not taken a serious enough hold to menace the life of the tree.

"Stopping at a picturesque, old time log house to rest, a little girl invites you to go to the top of Hanging Rock, which invitation you gladly accept, thereby getting one of the most enjoyable walks of the summer, your little guide telling you all the way about the flowers and the birds and stopping under an overhanging cliff with great secrecy to show you a round little bird's nest with eggs in it cleverly hidden in the moss. One suspects it was the chance to show this treasure that led the child to propose the long climb to the top of the mountain. The gooseberries of Hanging Rock are without prickles, perhaps because the wild currants growing there have stolen them. Imagine prickly currants! There is plenty of galax on Hanging Rock, the mosses and sedums and all the other growths that make mountain tops so agreeable. The top of Hanging Rock is a

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slanting ledge, from which the mountain gets its name. At Banner Elk you will want to stay awhile, it is so pretty, and you will also want to climb the beautiful Beech Mountain with its grassy spaces and its charming beech groves.

"From Banner Elk you take the short walk over to 'Calloways,' close under the shadow of the Grandfather, and from here the long and beautiful walk down the Watauga River at the base of the Grandfather, then along the ridges back to Blowing Rock, watching as you go details of the mountains beneath whose northern front you are passing. The open benches, the rocky bluffs and abrupt, tree-clad walls of this side of the mountain, which we call the back of the Grandfather, are not impressive like those long southern slopes sweeping from a summit of a little less than six thousand feet down into the foothills. For the mountain on this side is stopped by the high plateau from which it rises. Yet it is good to be at the back of the Grandfather. From the Watauga road we see the profile from which the mountain is said to have received its name, although one gets a better and far more impressive view of it from a certain point on the mountain itself.

"And so you return to Blowing Rock after days of wandering, only to rest awhile and start again, gaining endurance with every trip until the ten miles' walk that cost you a little weariness becomes the twenty miles' walk that costs you none. You cannot tire of the road for every mile brings new sights, new sounds, new fragrances, new friends, new flowers, one charm of walking here being the endless variety. No two days are alike; each has its own pleasant adventures."

Meat Camp.–This was one of the first places to be settled in Ashe County, William Miller, the Blackburns and James Jackson going there from the Jersey Settlement as early as 1799, while Ebenezer Fairchild, of the same colony, settled on Howard's Creek, only a short distance away. Jackson's grave is still pointed out in the woods near the site of the old Jackson Meeting House, while the cabin of an old hunter named Abbey stood in what now is the garden of John C. Moretz. Brown got the first grant to land on this creek, part of the Lindsey Patterson

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farm, before he had ever seen it, having entered it from the natural boundaries furnished him by Daniel Boone and his associates. The cabin in which the old hunters stored their meat and hides when on hunts in this region stood in a rocky patch just above the bend of Moretz's mill pond, the foundation of the old chimney still showing above ground. It was this camp and the use to which it was put as sort of primitive packing house that gave the name of Meat Camp to the creek. John Moretz and his wife and family came to Meat Camp in September, 1839. There was already an old mill there when he came, which he bought form Samuel Cooper, who then moved to Meadow Creek. The dam of the old mill was of logs, but John Moretz put sixty men to work erecting the stone dam which still stands. With the grinding and other work of the mill was also a carding machine. But late in the fall of 1847 the mill burned, the supposed act of an incendiary, as it occurred just before day. But he rebuilt, leaving out the linseed oil feature only. After his death Alfred J. Moretz tore that mill down and built the one which still stands. Alfred Moretz moved to his present home at Deep Gap in April 1885.

The Rich Mountain.–This mountain deserves its name, for it is richer than most bottom lands. This is true of the top as well as of the slopes and coves. It is said that Ezra Stonecypher lived in a cabin above T. P. Adams' barn, and ashes and charcoal are still plowed up there. But, like Daniel Boone, Ezra loved plenty of elbow-room, and so, when a man moved on to Cove Creek and settled there, Ezra moved to Norris's Fork of Meat Camp and built a poplar log cabin. This was several miles from the Cove Creek intruder, and Ezra was happy for a time, but only for a time, as another pushing person obtruded himself on Meat Camp and settled there, which was the straw that broke the camel's back, for Ezra pulled up stakes and moved to Kentucky. One of his sons met Col. Thomas Bingham there during the Civil War, and proved that he knew all about Rich Mountain and that section of the county. Then Dr. Calloway, it seems, got a grant to two tracts called the Big and Little Cay-vit (Caveat?), and after awhile, say about 1840 or 1845, Col. Edmund Jones got

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title to some of the mountain and pastured his cattle there. Several people have lived at what is still called the Jones Place on Rich Mountain, but Allen Beech went there from Caldwell in 1848 and remained several years, his son, Allen W., having been born there February 11, 1854. The late Hon. R. Z. Linney bought the Tater Hill and other land on the Rich Mountain about 1902 and had a turnpike built from the Rich Mountain Gap above Boone to the gap in Rich Mountains above Silverstone, through which a road from Meat Camp passes over to Cove Creek and Zionville. Dr. H. McD. Little owns part of the Rich mountain and pastures many cattle there. The two-story rock house on Dr. Little's land was built by Col. R. Z. Linney and stands on what is also known as the Jones Place. Part of this rock house fell down in June, 1915.

The Tater Hill.–No one ever makes any apology for calling this striking mountain peak by its real name--Tater Hill. For it was never a potato hill, potatoes being mere ornaments for the skill of French chefs. Taters are what we were "raised" on, while city children were "reared" on potatoes. The first man to see the charm of this lonely spot was one Chapley Wellburn. He entered it in April, 1799, four hundred acres of it, and lived there, probably hunting for a living, the people who live on lower levels being the only ones who indulge in the pastime of earning a "livelihood." Well, he thought he had a title to that land, and in 1876 J.B. Todd, by order of the court, conveyed this title to one of his descendants in Wilkes (Deed Book R, p. 108). But Alfred Adams knew a thing or two, one of them being that adverse possession under color of title would "ripen" that title into an "indefeasible estate of inheritance," or words to that general effect. So he got the very best "color" "the air," to wit, a grant from the sovereign State of North Carolina--not from Sovereign Linn, who was living in this county at that time. Adams occupied about three hundred acres of his grant, and when he locked horns with H. M. and W. N. G. Wellburn, through his grantee, John H. Bingham, about the year 1902, over the entire four hundred acres and other lands also, he won three hundred of them handily. (See Minute Docket E. p. 154, Clerk's Office.) It developed in the trial of that suit that one

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Flannery, meaning not necessarily that he had no family, but that he might have been almost any Flannery, claimed the land in the flatwoods under Tater Hill, but left about 1849, after which a man named James, but whether John James or James John is not known, came and brought a pack of hounds with him. Hounds have to eat. So do wolves. In the duel to see which should eat the other, the wolves won. James thought his turn might come next, either to eat or to be eaten, so he returned to Alexander County, whence he had come, which, sad as that fate might be, was better than furnishing the funeral baked meat for a lupine holiday. Then, about 1902, came the late Romulus Z. Linney, who, remembering that his old namesake had been "fetched up" by wolves, boldly entered on this demesne and retained possession til his demise, demesne and demise having different meanings. But he built a rock wing to his four-room dwelling, which still stands and in which he spent many happy days. This is the gentleman who, before he had tasted of the delights of the Tater Hill, was offered a high office in Washington, D. C. In declining it, he said that he would not give up his spring rambles in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes for any office within the gift of the American people. But he gave them up for Tater Hill!

The Grandfather Mountain.–Following is Miss Morley's description of this oldest mountain on earth: "The path beyond the river [Watauga] is cut through dense kalmia and rhodendron maximum (our laurel) that make a wide band along the base of the mountain, then it leads up and up through the more open forest. There is no sweeter walk in the world than up Grandfather Mountain, where the path winds among the trees, a canopy of leaves screening the sky, the forest shutting from view the outer world. Once there were large wild cherry trees on the slopes of the Grandfather, but the wood being valuable . . . there are only saplings left, and a few patriarchs that, though useless for lumber, give an air of dignity to the forest in company with the clear gray shafts of the tulip trees, the grand old chestnuts, the oaks, the maples, beeches, birches, ashes and lindens that mingle their foliage with that of the pines and spruces.

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"You pass beside or under large detached boulders covered with saxifrages, sedums, mosses and ferns, and in whose crevices mountain-ash trees and twisted hemlocks have taken root as though for purposes of decoration, and in the damp hollows away from the path great jack vines hang from tree tops. The rock ledges sometimes make caves where bears were wont to live, for the Grandfather was once a famous place for bears. Squirrels still 'use on the mountain,' as the people say, and a 'boomer' will be apt to bark down at you as you go along. You hear the waters of a stream in the ravine below, and here and there you cross a natural garden of 'balimony' or some other precious herb that the people gather in the season. About two-thirds of the way up you take a path that branches off to the left and leads you over the mossy rocks to an open place on the edge of a gorge, where, looking off, you see the clear-cut profile of the Grandfather sculptured on the edge of a rocky bluff, the bushy hair that rises from the forehead consisting of fir trees that when whitened by the winter snow give a venerable appearance to the stone face. Somewhat above this profile from this pint is also visible another, with smaller and rounder features, which of course is the Grandmother.

"Returning to the main path and continuing the ascent, the way grows wilder and, if possible, sweeter. One has a sense of rising spiritually as well as physically. At the base of a high cliff, framed in foliage and crowned with the rosy-flowered rhododendron catawbiense, gushes out the famous Grandfather Spring that is only ten degrees above freezing throughout the summer. Up to this point there is a bridle path; beyond here it is necessary to walk The rose-bay still in bloom clings to the rocks, in whose crevices little dwarf trees have taken root along with the mosses, ferns and saxifrages.

"The path gets very steep and rocky. You are now among the balsam firs, those trees to name which is to name a perfume, and you go climbing up over their strong red roots. The pathway becomes a staircase winding about moss-trimmed rocks in whose crevices are tiny contorted balsams like Japanese flower-pot trees. Enormous coal-black lichens hang from the

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cliffs and the ground is softly carpeted with mossy growths and oxalis, out from whose pretty pale leaves look myriads of pink and white blossoms. Long after the rhododendron catawbiense is done blooming below, one finds it in its prime on the high peaks of the Grandfather.

"Up among the balsam firs and about the rocks grow large sour gooseberries and enormous sweet huckleberries and it was here we found a new and delicious fruit The bushes crowding the woods in places were loaded with bright red globes the size of a small cherry, each dangling from a slender stem. These delightful berries were mere skins of juice, tiny wine-bottles full of refreshment for a summer day . . . we discovered them on other mountains, though never much below an altitude of six thousand feet . . . Up through the spruces and balsams you mount in the resplendent day, lingering at every step . . . Thus climbing through the resplendent day you reach the summit, 'Calloway's High Peak,' the highest point on the mountain, but from which one cannot command the circle of the horizon. It is necessary to get the view from two points, which is all the better. The rocks at the lookout towards the south being covered with heather, one can lie on the delightful couch studded all over with little white starry flowers, to rest and receive the view . . . In the distance lies White Top, on whose summit three States meet . . .

"Leaving this place and walking on to the point that looks to the south, one shares the feelings and almost the faith of Michaux. The view is very impressive, because of that steep descent of the mountain into the foothills, the long spurs sweeping down in fine lines to a great depth . . . The Black Mountains stand forth very high and very blue , and beyond them, among the many familiar forms, are distinguished what one supposes to be the faint blue line of the Smokies, or is it the nearer Balsams? . . . Sooner or later you will find your way to McRae's, which is to the south side of the Grandfather what Calloway's is to the north side, a farmhouse, where you can stay awhile. There is a trail over the end of the Grandfather by which you can go directly from Calloway's to McRae's, but to

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strike this trail you have to walk down the Linville River, which, rising in an open space but a stones throw from the head of the Watauga, flows in quite the opposite direction, and through so narrow a pass that you have to keep crossing and recrossing it, no small matter in a season of rains, for there are no foot logs at all . . . But the Linville is one of the streams you are glad to know through all its sparkling length, from the spring behind the Grandfather to where it escapes in wild glee through the gorge below the falls. There are peacocks at McRae's, and Mr. McRae has not forgotten how to play on the bagpipes that have so stirred the blood of his race . . . But you will have to coax him to do it. McRae's stands on the Yonahlossee road that connects Linville, just below the mountain, with Blowing Rock . . . From McRae's there is a path up the Grandfather . . . to another peak reached by a very sweet climb through the balsams, which, in this region, are smaller and more companionable than the straight giants of the Black Mountains, these of the Grandfather being twisted and friendly and profoundly fragrant. From this peak one can see in all directions, excepting where one of the Grandfather's black summits obstructs the view.

"It is the lichens growing an [sic] the rocks that give so sombre an appearance to the top of the Grandfather, those big, black lichens with loose and curled up edges. Grandfather's black, rocky top is eight miles long, and once Mr. Calloway (with the assistance of others) blazed out a rude trail so that we could all take that wonderful knife-edge walk up in the sky over the peaks of the Grandfather, Indian ladders--that is a tall tree trunk from which the branches have been lopped, leaving protruding ends for steps--helping us up otherwise insurmountable cliffs.

"The Yonahlossee road ought to be followed early in the summer, for then the meadowy tops of the long spurs are like noble parks created for man's pleasure. The rhodondendron catawbiense lies massed about in effective groups and covered with rosy bloom, beyond which one looks out over a wide landscape of mountains and clouds. From these open, flower-decked spaces

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the road passes into the shadowy forest, to emerge upon a bushy slope where blazing reaches of flame-colored azaleas astound your senses. There are other flowers along the way, but you scarcely see them, intoxicated as you are with the glory of the rhododendrons, and after them the azaleas, for these marvelous growths almost never blossom within sight of each other You would say they know, like ladies at a ball, how important it is to avoid each other's colors.

"Under the trees along the roadside the earth is covered with a superb carpet of large and handsome galax leaves, for the Grandfather is distinguished by the great beauty and abundance of its galax. Laurel, too, claims standing room on the side of the grand old mountain, and here, as elsewhere, one notices the apparent capriciousness of the laurel, which forms an impenetrable jungle for long stretches and then stops short, not a laurel bush to be seen for some distance, when with equal suddenness it reappears again.

"The splendid slopes of the Grandfather are enchanting also when autumn colors them--deep red huckleberry balds, trees wreathed in crimson woodbine, vivid sassafras, tall gold and crimson and scarlet forest trees--it seems more like the brilliant display of a northern forest. You would say that the outpouring of fragrance must pass with the summer. Not so. As you walk among the trees in their thin, bright attire you have a feeling of their friendliness. The forest, as it were, breathes fumes that distil from a thousand pines, firs and hemlocks. When the leaves of the trees are growing scarce and changing to duller hues, into the open spaces witch-hazel weaves its gold-wreathed wands and brightens the woods like sunshine.

"Turning to the right from the Yonahlossee Road, a short distance up from McRae's, you walk along under the chestnut trees just beginning to open their burs, away from the Grandfather out over a beautiful spur that ends in an open, rounded summit. The road to this place has side paths that lead you to high cliffs, whence you look off towards Blowing Rock, and where the sweetest of mountain growths cling to the crevices

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