High mountain walls and bridgeless streams marooned the people of the
Blue Ridge for centuries, shut them off from the outside world so that
they lost step with the onward march of civilization. A forgotten people
until yesterday, unlettered, content to wrest a meager living from the
grudging soil, they built for themselves a nation within a nation. By
their very isolation, they have preserved much of the best that is
America. They have held safe and unchanged the simple beauty of the song
of their fathers, the unsullied speech, the simple ideals and
traditions, staunch religious faith, love of freedom, courage and
fearlessness. Above all they have maintained a spirit of independence
and self-reliance that is unsurpassed anywhere in these United States of
America. They are a hardy race. The wilderness, the pure air, the rugged
outdoor life have made them so: a people in whom the Anglo-Saxon strain
has retained its purest line.
The Blue Ridge Country comprises much of Appalachia, happily called from
the great chain that runs along the Atlantic coast from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. It is a well-watered region having
numerous streams and rivers throughout, being drained by the Cumberland
and Tennessee as well as by smaller, though equally well-known,
rivers--Big Sandy in northeastern Kentucky, which flows into the Ohio,
and the Yadkin in North Carolina, which eventually reaches the Atlantic
Ocean.
In general the region includes three parallel chains, the Cumberlands,
Alleghenies, and Blue Ridge. Like a giant backbone the Blue Ridge,
beginning in the southwest portion of Old Virginia, continues
northeasterly, holding together along its mountainous vertebrae some
eight southern states; northeastern Kentucky, all of West Virginia, the
eastern part of Tennessee, western North Carolina, the four northwestern
counties of South Carolina, and straggling foothills in northern Georgia
and northeastern Alabama. The broad valley of the Tennessee River
separates the mountain system on the west from the Cumberland Plateau
which is an extension of the West Virginia and Kentucky roughs.
Throughout its vast course the Blue Ridge is not cut by a single river.
A narrow rampart, it rises abruptly on its eastern side south of the
Potomac to a height of some two thousand feet, cutting Virginia into
eastern and western, and descends as abruptly on the west to the
Shenandoah Valley. Similar in topography in its rough, broken steepness
to the Alleghenies across the valley, it consists of a multitude of
saddles or dividing ridges many of which attain an elevation of six
thousand feet. As it extends south, rising from the Piedmont Plateau, it
grows higher. In North Carolina alone there are twenty-one peaks that
exceed Mt. Washington's six thousand feet in New Hampshire. Contiguous
to the Blue Ridge there is another chain between the states of North
Carolina and Tennessee, which to Carolina mountaineers is still the
Alleghenies. However, the United States Geological Survey has another
name for it--the Unakas. It is higher as a whole than the Blue Ridge to
which it is joined by transverse ranges with such names as Beech and
Balsam and a sprinkling of Indian names--Cowee, Nantahala, Tusquitee. It
differs, too, in physical aspect. Instead of being in orderly parallel
tiers the entire system, unlike the Blue Ridge, is cut by many rivers:
the Nolichucky, French Broad, Pigeon, Little Tennessee, Hiawassee. The
parts so formed by the dividing rivers are also named: Iron, Northern
Unaka, Bald, Great Smoky, Southern Unaka or Unicoi. Though many of its
summits exceed six thousand feet, the chain itself dwindles to foothills
by the time it reaches Georgia and crosses into Alabama.
If you flew high over the vast domain of the Blue Ridge, you would view
a country of contrasting physical features: river and cascade, rapids
and waterfall, peak and plateau, valley and ridge. Its surface is
rougher, its trails steeper, the descents deeper, and there are more of
them to the mile than anywhere else in the United States.
The southern mountaineer has to travel many steep, rocky roads to get to
any level land, so closely are the mountains of Appalachia crowded
together. It is the geography of their country that has helped to keep
our highlanders so isolated all these years.
This region has the finest body of hardwood timber in the United States.
Black walnut is so plentiful and so easy for the carpenter to work that
this wood has been used freely for gunstocks and furniture, and even in
barns, fences, and porches.
White and yellow poplars grow sometimes six to nine feet in diameter.
"Wide enough for a marrying couple, their waiters, and the elder to
stand on," a mountaineer will say, pointing out a tree stump left smooth
by the cross-cut saw. The trunks are sixty to seventy feet to the first
limb. Chestnuts are even wider, though sometimes not so tall. White oaks
grow to enormous size. Besides pine, and the trees common generally to
our country, these southern mountain forests are filled with buckeye,
gum, basswood, cucumber, sourwood, persimmon, lynn. The growth is so
heavy that there are few bare rocks or naked cliffs. Even the "bald"
peculiar to the region which is sometimes found on the crown of a
mountain belies its name, for it is covered with grass--not of the
useless sage type either, but an excellent grass on which sheep might
"use" if they chose to climb so high.
The lover of beauty finds delight in these mountains from the first
daintiness of spring on through the glorious blaze of wonder that is
fall in the Blue Ridge. Beginning with the tan fluff of the beeches, the
red flowering of maples, the feathery white blooms of the "sarvis," on
through the redbud's gaiety and the white dogwood's stark purity, all is
loveliness. The enchantment continues in the flame of azaleas, which is
followed by the waxy pink of the laurel and the superb glory of the
rhododendron. These have scarcely vanished before the coves are golden
with the fragrance of grape blossom.
The beauty of the woodland is a paradise for birds. Early in the spring
the spotted thrush wings its way through leafy boughs. The cardinal in
his bright red coat stays the year round. Neither snow nor winter wind
dulls his plumage or stills his song. His mate, in somber green, sings
too, but he, unmindful of southern chivalry, attacks her furiously when
she bursts into song; ornithologists explain that jealousy prompts the
ungallant act. The oriole singing lustily in the spring would seem
conscious of his coat of orange and black. These are the heraldic colors
worn by the servants of Lord Baltimore. The nightingale and the
whippoorwill sing unpretentiously in the quiet of eventide. The
blackbird makes up for his somber dress in good deeds. He destroys
insects on leaf and bark. The eagle still finds a haven of safety in
giant trees and hollowed trunks.
There is neither tarantula nor scorpion to be feared in the Blue Ridge;
the harmless lizard is called scorpion by the mountaineer. Nor are there
large poisonous reptiles. There are snakes of lesser caliber, but only
rattlers and copperheads among them are venomous. The highlander is not
bedeviled by biting ants but there are fleas and flies in abundance
though no mosquitoes, thanks to the absence of stagnant pools and lakes.
There are no large lakes as in the eastern section of the United States
and few small ones though the country has numerous cascades, rapids, and
waterfalls.
The Blue Ridge is a well-watered region, and characteristic of the
country are the innumerable springs which form creeks and small streams.
A mild and bracing climate results from these physical features. The
rapidity with which the streams rise and their swiftness, together with
almost constant breezes in the mountains, reduce the humidity so
prevalent in the southern lowlands. Although the rainfall is greater
than anywhere else in the United States, except Florida, the sudden fall
in the topography of the watercourses brings quick drainage. The sun may
be scorching hot in an unprotected corn patch on a hillside, yet it is
cool in the shade. And, as in California and the north woods, a blanket
is needed at night. The climate is contrasting, being coldest in the
highlands where the temperature is almost as low as that of northern
Maine. Yet nowhere in the United States is it warmer than in the
lowlands of the Blue Ridge.
In the highlands, carboniferous rocks produce a sandy loam which is
responsible for the vast timber growth there. Throughout it is rich in
minerals, coal, iron, and even gold, which has been mined in Georgia. In
some sections there are fertile undulating uplands contrasting with the
quagmired bottoms and rocky uplands of other parts of the Blue Ridge.
There are high and uninviting quaternary bluffs that lure only the eye.
It was the fertile valleys with their rich limestone soil producing
abundant cane that first proved irresistible to the immigrants of Europe
and lured them farther inland from the Atlantic seaboard.
Long before man came with ax and arrow the wilderness of the Blue Ridge
teemed with wild animal life. The bones of mastodon and mammoth remained
to attest their supremacy over an uninhabited land thousands upon
thousands of years ago. Then, following the prehistoric and glacial
period, more recent fauna--buffalo, elk, deer, bear, and wolf--made
paths through the forest from salt lick to refreshing spring. These salt
licks that had been deposited by a receding ocean centuries before came
to have names. Big Bone Lick located in what today is Boone County,
Kentucky, was one of the greatest and oldest animal rendezvous in North
America, geologists claim. It took its name doubtless from the variety
of bones of prehistoric and later fauna found imbedded in the salty
quagmire.
Man, like beast, sought both salt and water. Following the animal trails
came the mound builder. But when he vanished, leaving his earthen house
and the crude utensils that filled his simple needs--for the mound
builder was not a warrior--there was but little of his tradition from
which to reconstruct his life and customs.
A century passed before the Indian in his trek through the wilderness
followed the path of buffalo and deer. Came the Shawnee, Cherokee, and
Chickasaw to fight and hunt. To the Indian the Blue Ridge was a favorite
hunting ground with its forests and rolling plains, while the fertile
valleys with thick canebrakes offered bread in abundance. Sometimes
these primeval trails which they followed took their names from the
purpose they served. For instance, the Athiamiowee trail was, in the
Miami dialect, the Path of the Armed Ones or the Armed Path and became
known as the Warrior's Path. It was the most direct line of
communication between the Shawnees and the Cherokees, passing due south
across the eastern part of the Cuttawa country (Kentucky) from the mouth
of the Sciotha (Scioto) to the head of the Cherokee (Tennessee). Another
trail was called Old Buffalo Path, another Limestone because of the
soil. Then there was a Shawnee Trail named for the tribe that traversed
it.
The Indian was happy and content with his hunting ground and the fertile
fields. The streams he converted to his use for journeys by canoe. He
had his primitive stone plow to till the soil and his stone mill for
grinding grain. The fur of animals provided warm robes, the tanned hides
gave him moccasins. Tribal traditions were pursued unmolested, though at
times the tribes engaged in warfare. Each tribe buried its dead in its
own way and when a tribe wearied of one location it moved on. Unlike the
mound builders, the Indian had a picture language and he delighted to
record it in cuttings on rocks and trees. He would peel the bark from
the bole of a tree and with a sharp stone instrument carve deep into the
wood figures of feather-decked chieftains, of drums, arrows, wild
beasts. And having carved these symbols of the life about him, depicting
scenes of the hunt and battle and conflict, he covered the carving with
paint fashioned in his crude way from the colored earth on the mountain
side. The warrior like his picture language vanished in time from the
Blue Ridge. But not his trails.
These trails, the path of buffalo and deer and the lines of
communication between the tribes, finally marked the course of explorer,
hunter, and settler. As each in turn made his way to the wilderness he
was glad indeed to find paths awaiting his footsteps. The scene was set
for a rugged race. They came and stayed.