Perhaps it is merely the result of evolutionary process, economic rather
than intentional, that man has wiped out many reminders of the past;
that the forest primeval has passed to make room for blue grass,
tasseled corn, and tobacco; that forts and blockhouses gave way to the
settler's log house encircled by a garden patch; that the windowless
cabin has gone to make room for the weather-boarded frame of many rooms
and glass windows; that the village has vanished for the town--the
industrial center.
The Wilderness Trail broken first by mastodon, then panther and bear and
frightened deer, has been transformed into a modern highway. The Shawnee
Trail along which Indians lurked and tomahawked white men has become
Mayo Trail, taking its name from a country schoolteacher. He was a
far-seeing man, who stumbled sometimes hopelessly along the lonely way,
when he needed help to bring out of the bowels of the earth the treasure
in coal he knew to be hidden there. Mayo Trail is an amazing engineering
feat that connects mountains with level land. Limestone Trail in Mason
County has left along its course only a vestige of vegetation to remind
us it was once the path of buffalo and Indian. To motorists hurrying
onward it is merely U. S. 60 that leads to another city.
The rugged, unbroken path once pursued by the lad Gabriel Arthur, a
Cherokee captive, called on Hutchins Map in 1778 the "War Path to the
Cuttawa Country," uniting today with the Wilderness Trails, has become
the open gateway to the West. Boone's Trace, or Boone's Path, leading
from Virginia through Cumberland Gap, to the Ohio River, still is called
Boone's Path. Since 1909 it has been a national motorway, being a part
of the Dixie Highway which runs from Michigan to Florida. It was over
this same path that Governor Duncannon of Virginia built the first wagon
road in 1790. During the Civil War the region of the Gap was fortified
and occupied by Confederate and Union soldiers in turn. Later, in 1889,
the first railroad entered the Gap. Today Skyline Highway--U. S. 25 and
58--leads from the saddle of the historic Gap to the top of Pinnacle
Mountain, commanding a view of six states, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.
And the scene has changed.
Spring has come to the Blue Ridge. The hum of industry echoes along once
lonely creeks, through quiet hollows. We see no more the oxcart
lumbering, creaking laboriously along, higher and higher up the rugged
mountain side. The latest model motor glides swiftly over the smooth
surface, winding its way upward and upward. Off yonder the TVA has
harnessed the waterpower of the Holston and Tennessee, made a great
valley to burst into a miracle of man's genius. Modern industrial plants
steam along the banks.
Good roads, the automobile, schoolhouses, the airplane have wiped out
all barriers between mountain and plain. The Blue Ridge casts a long,
long shadow across blossoming valleys. The mountaineer of yesterday with
his Anglo-Saxon speech of Elizabeth's time, his primitive plow and loom,
has vanished before the juggernaut of progress. But the children of the
hills are blessed with a rich, a priceless heritage in tradition, song,
and love of independence that will not die as long as mountains stand
and men of the mountains survive to defend and preserve it.
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