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volume 7 #2
Missie King Oakley making apple butter. Louis Voorheis' German Shepherd sits nearby. Circa 1933.
SMO KIES LIFE MAG A ZIN E
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Your purchases support important park projects like the elk reintroduction and a wide range of educational programs intended to head-off conflicts between people and bears.
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park could not be born until hundreds of families had agreed to leave their homes, farms, and communities. For most, the loss of home place was agonizing.
From the Editor: The High Price of Our National Park A popular notion regarding the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is that the families who resided here in pre-park days were shoeless paupers living in dirt floor cabins, barely eking out a subsistence living on their worn-out cropland. These folks, as the narrative goes, gladly took the payments that the states offered for their depleted farms, and skedaddled. And, perhaps in a few cases, this is historical fact. However, Rose Houk’s story on the grandest homes in the Smokies re-
minds us that there were also many families who sacrificed their prosperous farms and promising futures to make way for our national park. Yes, happy families with bountiful fields, pastures, and orchards in happy tightknit communities that were compensated a sum determined by a committee and told to pack up and head out. These Messers and Caldwells and Olivers and many, many others were definitely not enthusiastic about their forced departures. In most cases their homes, barns, apple houses, springhouses, and community buildings
Steve Kemp Editor Steve@GSMAssoc.org
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were swiftly and unceremoniously burned or otherwise demolished. Now, individuals making sacrifices for the benefit of the greater public good is as old as civilization. Throughout the 20th century families and communities were displaced for a multitude of dams, highways, railroads, military facilities, and other projects. The ultimate question is: Were their sacrifices worth it? The ultimate answer depends on whether the fruits of their sacrifices are nurtured or squandered.
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Volume 7 Number 2 $6.95 Contributing Editor Steve Kemp Lead Designer Lisa Horstman National Park Service Publications Liaison Kent Cave Designers Joey Heath Karen Key Editorial Assistance Julie Brown Cyn Slaughter Research Assistance Annette Hartigan Advertising Sales Curt Talbot Š2013 Great Smoky Mountains Association. No portion of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from GSMA. Executive Director Terry Maddox Membership & Special Events Coordinator Judy Collins National Park Service Coordinator Elizabeth Dupree Great Smoky Mountains Association Board of Directors Danny Bernstein Warren Bielenberg, Secretary Geoff Cantrell Mitch Crisp William A. Hart, Jr., Chairman Dan Lawson Carolyn Leahy Cheryl Light, Vice Chair Tom Massie David McGuire Ken Smither Kate Welch
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Front cover photograph courtesy GSMNP archives Back cover photograph by Bill Lea Attention Retailers To carry Smokies Life in stores, contact Curt Talbot, Curt@GSMAssoc.org or (865) 436-7318 x350 Advertisers: Contact Curt Talbot, Curt@GSMAssoc.org or (865) 436-7318 x350 416 Cherry St., Gatlinburg, TN 37738.
Smokies Life (ISSN 1937-0725) is published semi-annually by Great Smoky Mountains Association, a nonprofit organization. P.O. Box 130, Gatlinburg, TN 37738-0130 (865) 436-7318. www.SmokiesInformation.org This magazine is a premium for members of Great Smoky Mountains Association. To join, change an address, or make other membership inquiries, contact membership and special events coordinator Judy Collins at the address above or Judy@GSMAssoc.org. Memberships start at $35 per year. No submissions of manuscripts, photographs, or art, please. Written queries are welcome. Copyright 2013 by Great Smoky Mountains Association. Send address changes or other membership queries to Judy Collins at the address above or Judy@GSMAssoc.org. Periodicals postage paid at Knoxville, TN. Postmaster: Send all address changes to Judy Collins, GSMA, P.O. Box 130, Gatlinburg, TN 37738-0130 or Judy@GSMAssoc.org. www.SmokiesInformation.org
The text pages of this magazine are certified by the Forest Stewardship CouncilŠ as adhering to strict environmental and social standards. Printed with vegetable inks.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA
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In This Issue Smokies Life Magazine Volume 7 Number 2 Measuring Mountains Measuring the heights of Appalachian Mountains used to be a much more arduous, even deadly, undertaking. Especially when state newspapers, U.S. Senators, and UNC professors got involved‌. by David Brill
Nance Dude: The Boogeywoman of the Smokies page 8
Many mountain children may have heard that Nance would get them if they didn’t behave, but few knew anything about the real woman. by Maurice Stanley
Breathing In the Smokies Whatever happened to the bad old days of white summer skies, vanishing mountain views, and ozone levels so high that a walk in the woods was truly hazardous to your health? by David Brill
Which House Was the Grandest? Despite the stereotypical view of mountain folk as backward and poverty-stricken, some built grand homes as proof of their social and economic well-being. by Rose Houk
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Get Real!
Cocke County, Tennessee
For your next “Real” Smoky Mountain adventure, give us a holler! www.cockecountypartnership.com 423.625.9675 Smokies Life
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Mountains are Earth’s undecaying monuments. They must stand while she endures, and never should be consecrated to the mere great men of their own age and country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom all time will render illustrious. —Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Sketches from Memory: The Notch of the White Mountains,” 1835
Measuring Mountains: 19th Century Smackdown Over the East’s Highest Peaks Gerardus Mercator’s world map of 1569 is the first to represent accurately the Appalachian Mountains as “a continuous range stretching parallel to the Atlantic seaboard in a southwest-to-northeast orientation,” according to Ken Wise, a regional historian and associate professor with the University of Tennessee Libraries. Wise explores the early history of Smoky Mountain mapmaking in his forthcoming book, Terra Incognita (University of Tennessee Press). As Wise reports, other early mapmakers added “striking details, frequently erroneous” in their representations of southeastern America, including gigantic freshwater lakes. Jacques Le Moyne’s map of 1591 represented, nestled among the Southern Appalachians, a lake fed by an enormous waterfall, beneath which Le Moyne added the caption: In hoc lacu Indigenae argenti gana inveniunt (in this lake natives find grains of silver). In fact, both the lake and its bounteous deposits of silver were fanciful. Nevertheless, for the next 150 years, reports Wise, mapmakers apishly included—and, in some cases, even further exaggerated—these spurious features of the landscape. Maps of the Smokies region produced in the early 18th century reflect increasing accuracy, particularly in the proper positioning of the mountains and also in locating American Indian settlements. Mapmakers’ early efforts to attach names to features and groups of indigenous peoples were, for the most part, likely based on the phonetic pronunciations the native peoples used in referencing their tribes and the villages they inhabited.
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By David Brill Illustration by Dave Plunkert
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, GEOGRAPHY AND MAP DIVISION
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Diego Gutiérrez’s 1562 map of North and South America references the Apalchen mountain region, named for the Apalachee tribe.
The ethnocentric practice of naming prominent peaks for notable statesmen, social figures, and explorers would come later, although it’s worth acknowledging that the Americas were named for Italian navigator and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), the first to assert that the New World was not the eastern edge of Asia, as Christopher Columbus believed. According to Patricia Molen Van Ee, in “Maps of Great Smoky Mountains National Park” (included in Mapping the National Parks, a website created by the Library of Congress), Diego Gutiérrez’s 1562 map of North and South America references the Apalchen mountain region, named for the Apalachee tribe, which inhabited the panhandle of Florida. The map also adorns the waters of the Atlantic Ocean with menacing sea serpents, mermaids, and a rendering of Nep-
tune riding on a seashell and brandishing his trident. Herman Moll’s map of 1732 first located Charakey villages distributed among the Appalatian Mountains. The first use of the adjective “Smoaky” in connection with the mountain region that now includes GSMNP, according to Wise, appeared in a 1789 document drafted by the state of North Carolina ceding what is now the state of Tennessee to the federal government. The Lewis-Tanner map of 1804, reports Wise, first plied the current spelling, “Smoky” on a map.
The Surveyors On the heels of the explorers arrived the surveyors, whose honorable and age-old profession engaged a number of men who became prominent 18th century U.S. statesmen,
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that lay on the horizontal plane, but sought, instead, to determine the elevations of the southern Appalachians’ prominent peaks. The barometer, which served as their primary scientific tool, allowed them to calculate elevation based on the difference in the mercury level, as viewed through the calibrated wall of a glass tube, between one barometer positioned at a lower, known elevation, and a second one positioned atop the peak being measured. The mercury column in a barometer responds to air pressure, which declines as one ascends in elevation. (See “Measuring Mountains: the 19th Century Tool of the Trade” on page 18.) These devices are still in use to predict changing weather patterns: rising mercury indicates increasing pressure and predicts the arrival of more stable weather, while a plunging mercury column forecasts unstable weather and rain. Determining the highest mountains in the region was of paramount importance to these scientist/explorers, and their interests sometimes extended beyond merely gathering data. Indeed, many of them expected that naming rights would accrue to the individuals who first scaled and measured the high crests. Mapmakers’ early efforts to attach names to features and groups Until the 1830s, many peoof indigenous peoples were, for the most part, likely based on the ple—including most geographonetic pronunciations the native peoples used in referencing phers—assumed that Mt. Washington, situated in the their tribes and the villages they inhabited. White Mountains of New Hampshire, ranked as the East’s highest mountain. The wind-scoured summit, a jumble of The Meigs survey line starts near modern Kingston, folenormous granite boulders, is bereft of trees and bears only a lows a relatively straight line to Mt. Collins in the Smokies stunted fringe of slow-growing alpine vegetation. Through (the site is now known as Meigs Post, where the survey team the winter—and occasionally even in summer—a dense rime placed a wooden stake) and then bears southeast to Quillen of ice and snow cloaks the mountain. Mountain, situated on the North Carolina-South Carolina A visual comparison of the relatively balmy, balsamborder. Along the survey line in the park are numerous topped ridges of the Black Mountains of North Carolina, inpoints reflecting the party’s passage through the region, including what is today Mt. Mitchell, against the stalwart cluding Meigs Creek, Meigs Falls, Meigs Mountain, and the massif of Mt. Washington, would suggest to nearly any obcuriously named Blanket Mountain. server that the latter of the two surely is the higher. As the story goes, Meigs placed a colorful blanket atop the In 1835, American writer Nathanial Hawthorne, merely mountain, situated just over two miles southwest of Elkmont, echoing the prevailing belief among most of his contempoand sighted along it in marking his survey line. Though the raries, paid tribute both to New Hampshire’s highest peak Meigs party presumably removed the blanket, the name stuck. and the statesman for whom it is named: “Let us forget the Now-retired rangers Dwight McCarter, Vinn Garoon, other names of American statesmen that have been stamped and Joe Kelly, traced the Meigs survey line, equipped with an upon these hills, but still call the loftiest—Washington” (emantique compass and copies of the surviving pages from phasis added). Meigs’ diary. The original document was partially consumed But Hawthorne and all the others who believed the Eastby the fires set in Washington, DC by the occupying British ern high point rose in the northern, instead of the southern, forces during the War of 1812. Along the way, McCarter and Appalachians, were wrong—by nearly 400 feet. Botanists Kelly, who later published an account of their adventure in André Michaux and his son, François André, were among the The Meigs Line (Grateful Steps, 2009), located two-century-old earliest scientists to suspect that the Black Mountains of axe blazes slashed into trees along Meigs’ route. North Carolina exceeded the White Mountains in height. According to Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup, who, in Naming Rights (and Wrongs) 1883, published Western North Carolina: The Heart of the AllegheBy the early part of the 19th century, groups of explorers— nies, the father and son, who had explored the region near the which included an increasing number of bona fide scienturn of the 19th century, based their conclusion, not on any tists—were not so much interested in apportioning lands including Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Theirs was the task of determining the boundaries separating private land holdings (including those awarded to veterans of the Revolutionary War) and demarking the lines separating the possessions of the French, Spanish, English, and American Indian nations, including the Cherokees. By the end of the 18th century, increasing numbers of white settlers began to intrude on lands the Cherokee insisted—rightfully—to be their own, as defined by the 1791 Treaty of Holston, negotiated by William Blount, the then governor of the Southwest Territory. But the line separating the two nations was widely disputed and frequently ignored, particularly by citizens of the nascent United States intent on westward migration. In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson dispatched 61-yearold Return Jonathan Meigs Sr. (1740-1823), a Revolutionary War hero and government agent to the Cherokees, and surveyor Thomas Freeman to clearly mark the line separating the United States and the Cherokee nation.
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ENGRAVING BY NATHANIEL JOCELYN AND D.C. HINMAN; PHOTOGRAPH OF MT. MITCHELL COURTESY OF MATT MUTEL/ NORTH CAROLINA DIVISION OF PARKS AND RECREATION
scientific effort to assess the mountains’ relative elevations, but, instead, on the alpine flora that grew on Black Mountain summits. According to Zeigler and Grosscup, then U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun, from neighboring South Carolina, asserted to David L. Swain, then congressman and later governor of North Carolina, “we can…congratulate ourselves…that we live in the vicinity of the highest land east of the Rocky Mountains.” (North Carolina may, in fact, boast the highest mountain east of the Mississippi River, but not east of the Rockies. Harney Peak, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, at 7,244 feet, merits that distinction.) Swain, a bit incredulous of Calhoun’s claim, asked the vice president “whether the fact had been ascertained.” Calhoun acknowledged that the Black Mountains had not been measured but assured Swain that “a slight examination of the map” would prove that it was so. Elisha Mitchell, professor at the State University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina) shared the vice president’s opinion and, according to Zeigler and Grosscup, “announced to the Board of Public Improvement his intention to make a systemic geolographical exploration” to authenticate Calhoun’s claim. Mitchell, a sturdy man known for his strength and stamina, set out in 1835, with his barometers, to make good on his pledge, and his probe into the then largely unexplored high ridges of the Black Mountains was surely arduous. In “Mitchell and His Mountain,” an article published in the fall 2006 edition of Tar Heel Junior Historian, author Suzanne Mewborn references a letter Mitchell drafted to his wife describing his July 8 ascent of what he believed to be the Black Mountains’ high point as “the hardest day’s work I have ever performed.” According to Mewborn, Mitchell’s trip, by horse-drawn wagon, from Chapel Hill to the threshold of the mountains at Morganton (167 miles) took one full week. Mewborn notes that, during his ascent of the peak, Mitchell was forced frequently to crawl on hands and knees through jumbles of rhododendron and laurel. Mitchell left one of his barometers at Morganton, to be monitored by an assistant, while he carried the second up the mountain. The differences in the readings provided the basis for Mitchell’s initial calculation of altitude of the highest peak—then known as Big Black or Black Dome. Events of the next 20 years would prove, however, that Mitchell’s success in reaching and measuring the high peak would be relatively easy, compared with the ensuing controversy that required Mitchell to defend his claim, pitted him against career politician Thomas L. Clingman, and ultimately cost him his life. Clingman was one of Mitchell’s former UNC students and a man the professor held, at least initially, in the highest regard. Thomas E. Jeffrey, editor of the Edison Papers at Rutgers University, has produced one of the more thorough treatments of the dispute in “‘A Whole Torrent of Mean and Malevolent Abuse’: Party Politics and the Clingman-Mitchell Controversy.” The 52page, two-part article appears in the July and October 1993 volumes of The North Carolina Historical Review. Jeffrey’s article presents a balanced portrayal of the two adversaries, both of whom hurled barbs and committed significant
Top: A distant view of Mt. Mitchell. Because the peak was so remote, so densely vegetated, and so frequently cloaked with clouds, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to who had climbed it when. Above: Mountaineer Elisha Mitchell was also a professor at the State University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (now UNC).
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Mountaineer Thomas L. Clingman served as a U.S. senator and a brigadier general. Nevertheless, he died a pauper in a North Carolina state institution.
scientific errors, not to mention a spate of highly publicized errors in judgment. Jeffrey contends that both men shared responsibility for allowing what might have been a private dispute to explode onto the pages of what was then Western North Carolina’s highly partisan press. As Jeffrey reports, Mitchell, UNC professor of chemistry, geology, and mineralogy, had developed a warm friendship with Clingman, a student who displayed a keen mind and aptitude for science. According to Jeffrey, shortly after graduating from UNC in 1832, Clingman had begun his own exploration of the Black Mountains and reputedly reached the 5,945-foot summit of Grandfather Mountain. Three years later, in 1835, Clingman, who had entered politics, was busy campaigning for a seat on the North Carolina General Assembly, while Mitchell, accompanied by two local mountaineers who served as guides, took his fateful measurements of the mountain that would, more than 20 years later, come to bear his name. On July 7, a day prior to scaling the grand peak, Mitchell reached the 5,970foot summit of Yeates Knob and from there could view the entire high ridge of the Black Mountains, about five miles to the east. The next day, Mitchell and his companions climbed to the summit of the mountain that Mitchell had, from his vantage point on Yeates Knob, surmised to be the highest, though a dense fog enveloped the mountains and made it impossible for him to know for sure, as he could not clearly see the nearby peaks. Mitchell then took a barometer reading on the mountain’s summit and later compared it with the reading registered on the stationary barometer in Morganton. Mitchell’s initial calculations determined the mountain’s height at 6,467 feet, 216 feet lower than its actual elevation but still high enough to trump Mt. Washington by 179 feet. The error likely resulted from Mitchell’s miscalculation of the elevation of Morganton and not from his mountaintop reading. After discovering the error, Mitchell later adjusted his reading to 6,672 feet, only 11 feet short of the modern measurement (6,683 feet). According to Jeffrey, Mitchell published his finding in the Raleigh Register in 1835 and, four years later, in the American Journal of Science and Arts. Mitchell’s description of the topography and route that had led him to the high peak was, at best, vague, which would cause some, including Clingman, to question whether or not he had actually stood atop the East’s loftiest mountain. In fact, Mitchell himself would later express the belief that he had not, in fact, measured the culminating Black Mountain peak during his 1835 outing. The vague description of the route, coupled with Mitchell’s own self-doubt, would form the basis for the ensuing controversy. In fact, following his return to the Black Mountains in 1844, during which he calculated the elevation of a different peak he then believed to be the highest, Mitchell sent Clingman a friendly letter confessing that, prior to the 1844 expedition, he “had never yet been upon the highest” mountain. The confession would fuel flames of doubt among the public. Most historians now believe that Mitchell had, in fact, ascended and measured the Eastern high point on his 1835 foray, not in 1844, and that his assertion to Clingman to the contrary was made in error. Based on his own knowledge of the Black Mountains, Clingman, perhaps accurately, surmised that, in 1844, Mitchell had
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PHOTOGRAPH OF MITCHELL FALLS BY MATT MUTEL/ NORTH CAROLINA DIVISION OF PARKS AND RECREATION; POCKET WATCH: NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION, WILSON LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL
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Far left: Mitchell Falls, where Elisha Mitchell plunged to his death in 1857. Left: Mitchell’s pocket watch, which purportedly stopped at his time of death.
JAMES MICHAEL SANDERS/ NORTH CAROLINA DIVISION OF PARKS AND RECREATION
Below: The summit of Mt. Mitchell at Mt. Mitchell State Park.
actually scaled Mt. Gibbes, about three miles south of the actual high point. In fact, by then, the inhabitants of the mountain communities had begun referring to the peak that rose beside Mt. Gibbes as Mt. Mitchell, while the actual high point remained unnamed. In 1855, Clingman set out on his own fact-finding mission and took barometric readings on several of the high peaks of the Black Mountains. Clingman acknowledged that his readings were not particularly precise, but he did determine that the peak then called Mt. Mitchell was, in fact, lower than the yet unnamed peak to the north, which Clingman estimated to be 6,941 feet. Clingman announced his finding to the Smithsonian Institution, and subsequent references identified the range’s highest mountain as Clingman’s Peak.
Mountain Peaks and Partisan Politics The newspapers of the early to mid-1800s were unabashedly—and often venomously—partisan, typically aligning with one or the other of the two then dominant political parties, the Whigs and the Democrats. The existence, up until a decade or so ago, of two major newspapers in most large U.S. cities reflects this partisan divide, though in the modern age, most political vitriol remains confined to the papers’ editorial pages. By 1854, Clingman, disappointed with the slow pace of his ascension in Whig Party politics, had switched loyalties and become a Democrat. Clingman’s decision to switch camps was greeted with the same uproar that such a move might inspire in today’s sharply divided political arena. As a result, the
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Mitchell reflects the extent of his anger toward his former pro-Whig Asheville Spectator, formerly Clingman’s most ardent student. In an August 1856 missive, later published in the supporter, became his staunchest public critic. The pro-DemocSpectator, Mitchell accuses Clingman of resorting to tactics rat Asheville News, which had become Clingman’s new mouth“which correct men scorn to employ,” and went on to insist piece and champion, also ran the announcement that Clingthat Clingman’s efforts to perpetuate the controversy “will man, and not Mitchell, had gained and measured the East’s highdo me some injury, but [will do] greater mischief to your est peak and it referenced the mountain as Clingman’s Peak. own character, not only as a politician, but also as a man; esJeffrey maintains that, at least initially, the two men endeavpecially when I take up the pen to expose its untruth, its inored to keep their disagreements civil and remained on cordial justice, its weakness, and its wickedness.” terms, despite the fact that Clingman was not particularly notMitchell’s ire, was, no doubt, greatly fueled by Clinged for keeping a cool head. In fact, in 1845, Clingman chalman’s enemies who hoped to derail the then-U.S. senator’s lenged fellow Congressman William Yancey of Alabama to a political career. duel, after Yancey had publicly questioned Clingman’s integrity. The public conflict between Clingman and Mitchell was Both duelists discharged their weapons but failed to draw blood quieted, though not quelled, a year later. In June 1857, and quickly exchanged apologies. But then the partisan press Mitchell, equipped with more precise instruments than he entered the fray, publishing (often on the front page) Mitchell’s had previously used, made his final visit to the Black Mounand Clingman’s once privately exchanged assertions and claims. tains to regain his honor and set things right. Before scaling By then, Swiss geologist Arnold Guyot, noted both for the the apex of the Black Mountain, he intended to visit with, and precision of his tools and techniques and the accuracy of his take a statement from, William Wilson, a guide who had acbarometric readings, had begun to explore the Black Mountains, companied him on his 1835 expedition. But Mitchell never arand he confirmed that Clingman’s Peak stood 100 feet higher than the summit of what was then still called Mt. Mitchell. Guyot further observed that Clingman’s description of Mitchell’s body was buried in Asheville on July 10, 1857, but in June the Black Mountain topography was of the following year was disinterred and moved to the highest much more detailed than the record point of land east of the Mississippi, which would, henceforth and Mitchell produced from either his 1835 or 1844 excursions. forever, bear the name Mt. Mitchell, though not everyone agreed “Mitchell never challenged Clingon the nomenclature. man’s assertion that the peak he [Clingman] measured in September rived at Wilson’s home. Word of Mitchell’s disappearance 1855 was, indeed, the highest point in the Black Mounspread through the mountain district, and an extensive search tains,” writes Jeffrey. “Nor did he quibble about the accuracy ensued. Ultimately, a local mountain guide, “Big Tom” Wilson, of the congressman’s measurements, since Clingman himself discovered Mitchell’s lifeless body in a 15-foot pool at the made no pretense to their exactness.” base of a waterfall. The professor had apparently lost his footThe question at the center of the debate was wrongly ing on the steep terrain above the pool and fell to his death. cast from the beginning: Had Mitchell stood atop the Mitchell’s body was buried in Asheville on July 10, 1857, highest peak in 1844, as he claimed following his second but in June of the following year was disinterred and moved to expedition to the mountains, or was Clingman the first to the highest point of land east of the Mississippi, which would, scale, measure, and describe the peak in 1855? As Jeffrey henceforth and forever, bear the name Mt. Mitchell, though and other scholars now assert, “The evidence suggests that not everyone agreed on the nomenclature. As Jeffrey notes, the the scientist [Mitchell] had, in fact, been there first, but in Asheville News took one final jab at the now-deceased professor, 1835, rather than 1844.” noting that Mitchell’s remains “had been consigned to their fiWrites Jeffrey: “Mitchell evidently expected that Clingman nal resting place on top of ‘Clingman’s Peak’” (emphasis added). would withdraw his own claims once he realized that the cenThe East’s second highest peak, a rather inconspicuous tral premises on which they had been based were erroneous.” knob situated less than a mile from Mt. Mitchell, would reAs we now know, the Congressman chose to act otherwise. main unnamed until 1915. Mt. Craig, at 6,647 feet, bears the Through 1856 the two former friends’ claims and counname of then-governor Locke Craig, who supported efforts terclaims only escalated, filling the pages of the News and to establish Mt. Mitchell State Park as a way to protect the the Spectator. In his letters, publicly aired in the papers, mountain’s forests from rapacious loggers. Mitchell actually did more harm than good to his position, relying on memories now 20 years old in describing his 1835 route of travel. And Clingman’s own published misClingman Shifts His Sights—and Tactics sives also contained geographic inaccuracies in describing In the year of Mitchell’s death, Clingman turned his attenhis route and the positions of the mountains. tion to another peak, about 70 miles to the west, located in The language used by the typically modest, self-effacing the Great Smoky Mountains. Mitchell could have his peak;
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Clingman would discover his own enduring monument— Spectator soon published the discovery that peaks in the Smoky and one that might, in fact, even exceed in height the site of Mountains were higher than Mt. Mitchell. The report, which Mitchell’s lofty tomb. But to get there, Clingman would not was allegedly submitted by Le Conte (but in fact, writes Wise, only have to scale yet another rugged, trackless mountain; was likely penned by Clingman), credited Clingman, Le Conte, he would also have to persevere through another highly and Buckley with the discovery and placed the estimated elevacharged public debate. tion at 6,900 feet. In 1858, Clingman joined New York scientist Samuel The report, which inaccurately credited Clingman, not Botsford Buckley on an expedition to the as-yet unexplored Buckley, with organizing the expedition, suggested that the peak known as Smoky Dome, high on the Appalachian new peak be named Mt. Clingman. The Spectator, with its spine in what is now the national park. Both Clingman and overtly anti-Clingman leanings, later questioned the claim Buckley suspected that this mountain, and not Mt. Mitchell, and even suggested, snidely, that, if the peak be called Mt. was the highest point in the East. Clingman, “let him be buried there.” As Ken Wise reports in “‘A When Buckley returned from Certain Class of Persons Ambithe mountains, he quickly disputed tious’: Smoky Mountain ExploLe Conte’s (and Clingman’s) claim, ration and the Buckley-Clingman insisting that he, and not Clingman, Controversy,” which appeared in had taken the barometer readings the 2000 issue of The Journal of on the Smokies’ high peak, “with litEast Tennessee History, both explortle assistance from the Senator.” In a ers returned from the expedition later missive published in the Raleigh to make the claim that he, and Register, Buckley plied language in not his companion, had first describing Clingman that echoed measured the Smokies’ highest the ire expressed in Mitchell’s earlier mountain. Each hoped that his dispatches, identifying Clingman as name would forever be affixed to “a certain class of persons ambitious its summit. for distinctions, having little talent According to Wise, Buckley or honesty, who avail themselves of had made his first foray into the the labors of others….” Smokies in 1842, primarily to According to Wise, Buckley latconduct a study of the mountains’ er published his report and field plant life. Buckley and his party notes in the Journal of the American Gereached the peak that would later ographical and Statistical Society and bear the name Mt. Le Conte and suggested naming the Smokies’ secdescended by way of Alum Cave, ond highest mountain for Guyot, then the location of the Epsom the third highest for Le Conte, and Salts Manufacturing Company. the Smokies’ crowning summit for Clingman’s 1883 patent for an incandescent electric light, which he hoped would edge out Thomas On this expedition, according to himself. In his report, Buckley conEdison’s model. Wise, Buckley gained his first tinued to insist that the Smokies, clear glimpse of Smoky Dome. and not the Black Mountains, boastSixteen years later, in 1858, Buckley, equipped with only ed the East’s highest peak. one barometer, returned to the Southern Appalachians and, In 1859, the ever-precise Guyot entered the Smokies and in Asheville, was introduced to Clingman. The two men, determined that Clingman and Buckley had overestimated who shared a common quest, agreed to accompany each the height of Smoky Dome by nearly 300 feet; Professor other into the mountains. Buckley borrowed a second Mitchell’s body did, in fact, repose on the East’s highest barometer from John Le Conte, a geology professor from point of ground. South Carolina College who happened to be summering in Many years later, in 1932, the United States Geographic the mountains of North Carolina. Board officially designated Clingmans Dome as the highest According to Wise, Le Conte had agreed to operate the stapoint in the Smokies and ascribed assignment of the name to tionary barometer in Waynesville, while the two explorers took Guyot. In “Arnold Guyot’s Explorations in the Great Smoky readings on Smoky Dome, but Le Conte departed for Asheville Mountains,” published in the December 1936 edition of Apbefore his and Buckley’s readings could be compared and calipalachia, authors Paul M. Fink and Myron H. Avery explain: brated. Buckley later returned to the dome to confirm his earlier calculations against a carefully tended barometer in WayThe culminating peak in the Great Smokies seems to nesville. As Buckley, by now back in the mountains, took his have been originally known as Smoky Dome. The fimeasurements, Clingman returned to Asheville, and the Asheville nal replacement of this name by Clingmans Dome
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PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA
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The tower atop Clingmans Dome, named for Thomas L. Clingman. The evergreen-covered peak is the highest point in Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains.
Senator Clingman had a trail cut from present Indian Gap to Clingmans Dome for a distance which Guyot notes as six miles.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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Swiss-born geologist Arnold Henry Guyot was known for his precision instruments and strict scientific procedures.
may have been largely brought about by Guyot with the purpose of paying a tribute to Senator T.L. Clingman, who had long labored to attract a deserved recognition for this mountain wilderness...Senator Clingman, with a party of six, including Geologist Buckley and S.L. Love, had ascended the Dome and determined its elevation in 1858. To facilitate Guyot’s later work in obtaining a more correct elevation,
Clingman may have gotten his mountain, but ultimately, by the end of his life, he had lost nearly everything else— including his mind. In 1883, Clingman had received a patent for an incandescent light bulb he hoped would edge out Thomas Edison’s model in lighting American homes. As we know, it didn’t. According to Thomas Jeffrey, author of Thomas Clingman: Fire Eater from North Carolina (University of Georgia Press): “Rather than fortune and fame, his [Clingman’s] costly and unsuccessful venture into electric lighting brought on a host of financial problems.” Another of Clingman’s ill-conceived ventures was based on the alleged healing powers of tobacco, applied as a poultice, to cure a range of ailments, including, according to Jeffrey, “boils, cuts, piles, scabies, stomach irritation, and dog, snake, and insect bites.” In 1885, reports Jeffrey, with his own funds, Clingman published a 42-page pamphlet titled The Tobacco Remedy, whose contents, he promised, “would reduce human suffering 90 percent,” and established the Clingman Tobacco Cure Company in Durham, North Carolina. Within two years, the company, which had managed to sell only $700 worth of its products, had closed its doors. In September 1897, Clingman’s relatives, who had begun to find the cantankerous 85-year-old former senator increasingly difficult to manage and ever less lucid, committed him to the State Hospital for the Insane, in Morganton, North Carolina. He died there two months later.
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A Swiss Bent for Precision
Measuring Mountains: the 19th Century Tool of the Trade The barometer, invented by Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli in the mid-1600s, is a scientific instrument that’s still in use today in forecasting weather and calculating altitude above sea level. The earliest barometers, like those used through the 19th and well into the 20th century, featured a glass tube, usually about three feet long and sealed at one end, placed open end down in a reservoir of mercury. The mercury partially fills the tube and rises and falls in response to changes in the air pressure exerted on the mercury in the reservoir. Increasing atmospheric pressure causes the mercury column to rise, while decreasing pressure causes the level to fall. Rising pressure indicates clear skies, while falling mercury forecasts the arrival of wet weather and storms. Changes in the mercury level also reflect changes in elevation. Atmospheric pressure declines with increasing altitude above sea level, making the barometer the tool of choice for 19th century Torricelli’s baromenter, the first instrument geographers, including those who capable of measuring mapped and measured the mountains atmospheric pressure. of the Southern Appalachians. In the past, geographers increased their accuracy in calculating a mountain’s altitude through two techniques. The first involves placing one barometer at a known elevation, carrying a second barometer to the top of the peak being measured, and then comparing the readings. The second involves repeated readings. Because barometers are affected by humidity, temperature, and other factors, single readings are unreliable. Not only do Waynesville (cited as a known elevation in early surveys) and the summit of Clingmans Dome differ by elevation, their weather, at any given time, likely differs as well. Accuracy improves by averaging multiple readings acquired at different times and in different weather conditions. The aneroid (fluidless) barometer, invented in 1843 but not commercialized until years later, relies on a small metal capsule that expands and contracts in response to changing atmospheric pressure. A needle on a round display, much like a watch face, indicates the degree of change in pressure. Aircraft altimeters, as well as those sometimes used by hikers, rely on aneroid barometers to calculate height above sea level. The aneroid barometer marked a significant advance, particularly for geographers, because of its compact size and sturdy construction. —David Brill
Swiss-born geologist Arnold Henry Guyot (1807-1884) immigrated to the United States in 1848, soon joined the faculty of Princeton University, and spent more than a decade (18491860) charting and measuring the Appalachian Mountain chain. In a 1930 biography of Guyot published in the Faculty Papers of Union College (New York), history professor Leonard Chester Jones characterizes the Swiss scientist as “a spare man, slightly stooping in youth, perhaps a bit below medium height, but endowed with extraordinary strength and endurance” whose “feats of walking are remarkable.” Guyot certainly exploited those attributes in pursing his decade-long study of the Appalachians. Beginning in 1849, Guyot measured the White, Green, and Adirondack Mountains of New England, before venturing into the Southern Appalachians between 1856 and 1860. Guyot arrived in North Carolina in time to witness and participate in the feuds that first pitted Clingman against Mitchell and later against Buckley. Guyot’s earliest scientific investigations had explored the movement of glaciers in the Alps of his homeland, and one of his first mapping projects depicted the Earth’s depths, rather than its heights. By taking weighted soundings, Guyot revealed the subsurface topography of Switzerland’s Neuchâtel and Morat Lakes. Like Mitchell, Clingman, and Buckley, Guyot relied on a set of barometers to determine mountains’ elevations, but his barometers were generally of a superior pedigree (European made) and he used them with much greater precision than any of his predecessors, and he was not timid about saying so. In fact, in his article “On the Appalachian Mountain System,” published in the March 1861 edition of The American Journal of Science and Arts, Guyot devotes much more space to the description of his tools and techniques than he does to the topographical features he used the tools to map and measure. “True,” Guyot writes, “a certain number of barometrical measurements were made a long time ago…; they have not, however, proved to be exact when compared with measurements which I have lately made with greater care and under more favorable circumstances.” Guyot specifically—though dismissively—references “some rather vague determinations in North Carolina, by Dr. Mitchell.” As reasons for his forerunners’ inaccuracies, Guyot cites operator error and inferior instruments. He notes that during the earlier “epoch of exploration of the southern Appalachians (presumably including the efforts of Mitchell, Clingman, and Buckley), “with exception of a very few instruments imported from Europe, I scarcely found in the hands of the observers in this country a single barometer which had a scientific value.” Using his own French-made instruments, Guyot took readings “hour by hour,” and, in some cases, “every quarter hour,” which, he claimed, “render[ed] the error of interpolation almost null.” As another reason for his predecessors’ lapses, Guyot cites
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Since Mitchell’s early trips into the Black Mountains in the 1830s, the state of the science had evolved considerably, not only in terms of more accurate instruments but in the development of ever-more sophisticated formulae and conversion tables for interpreting the data the barometers produced. And Guyot likely contributed more to the science of barometrics and meteorology than any other scientist of his day. In 1830, Guyot produced the first of several editions of Meteorological and Physical Tables for the Smithsonian Institution to account for the influences of weather conditions—chiefly temperature and humidity—on barometric readings and to allow scientists to convert calibrations determined by different systems of measure (for instance, Fahrenheit and Centigrade) and standardize reading taken from barometers of different design and manufacture (Russian, English, French, and U.S. instrument makers produced barometers of varying designs and with different calibration systems). Guyot’s extensive meteorological research led to creation of the Among the previously determined elevations Guyot regarded as reliable U.S. Weather Bureau in 1870. Guyot also made full use of were those produced by the surveyors working for the railroads. Using a existing known elevations in spirit level, a theodolite (a telescope featuring crosshairs), a chain of a placing his stationery baromeknown length, a calibrated rod, and basic mathematics tools, the ter, against which he would railroad surveyors determined the precise elevations of unknown points compare his mountaintop readings. Among the previously debased on those that were known. termined elevations Guyot regarded as reliable were those produced by the surveyors working for the railroads. Using a Thermometer Knob (later shortened to Thermo Knob). spirit level, a theodolite (a telescope featuring crosshairs), a Guyot’s tool of choice was a mercury cistern barometer chain of a known length, a calibrated rod, and basic mathematdeveloped by French instrument maker Jean Nicolas Fortin ics tools (including the Law of Sines), the railroad surveyors, in about 1800. The basic design of Fortin’s device, which although a slow, incremental process, determined the precise elelowed users to adjust and calibrate the column of mercury vations of unknown points based on those that were known. prior to taking readings, is still in use today. While railroad surveyors determined the lowest sites of Guyot’s suite of delicate and expensive tools did not, passage through the mountains, Guyot used those as points however, ease his passage through the rugged southern Apof departure in measuring the peaks towering above. palachians. On the rigors of mountain travel, he writes: In confirming the elevations of Black Mountain peaks, for instance, Guyot used the Charleston, Cincinnati, and Mountains covered with interminable forests, where Chicago Railroad’s determination of the elevations of Hot a footpath rarely guides the traveler’s step, and which Springs (then known as Warm Springs) and Asheville, North it is impossible to cross except with a hatchet in the Carolina. From there, he calculated the elevation of the base hand and with a loss of time and strength often quite of the courthouse in Waynesville, where he placed his stadisproportionate to the results which are obtained…. tionery barometer and conducted “a series of hourly correThe explorer must be ready to march with any trusty spondent observations extending through several days.” guide, and to sleep in the open air, exposed to the inGuyot’s travels and measurements in the Smoky Mounclement temperature of the elevated regions, and tains “have left an indelible mark upon the region,” write obliged to depend for nourishment on the food Fink and Avery in “Arnold Guyot’s Explorations in the Great which he can carry with him. In these circumstances Smoky Mountains.” Guyot’s “accuracy is almost incredible,” the danger of perishing from exhaustion is by no they continue. “The elevations, which he determined for the mean imaginary, as I know by experience. major peaks in the Great Smokies are more accurate than any other elevations obtained up to 1929.” Guyot continues by describing “the thick underbrush, Consider, for instance, that, more than 150 years ago, literally impenetrable, of Rhododendrons and other everGuyot calculated Mt. Collins at 6,188 (precisely the same greens, in which the faint trace of the bear is often the only altitude produced by modern measurement systems) and assistance of the traveler.” the notorious fragility of glass barometer tubes (typically about three feet long), particularly when transported over many miles of rugged and trackless mountainous terrain, and the failure among scientists to adequately prepare for the inevitable. “It is difficult for me to think coolly of so many scientific expeditions, sent at great expense to unexplored countries,” he writes in “On the Appalachian Mountain System,” “in which observations, even if made with an inferior instrument, would have had great value, but in which all barometric measurements become impossible by the fracture of the instrument at the outset of the journey.” To avert such disasters, Guyot traveled with replacement glass barometer tubes and a bottle of purified mercury. We don’t know if Guyot actually fractured any of his barometers while mapping the Smokies, but, according to multiple sources, he did break a thermometer atop a 6,080’ peak, about a half mile west of Luftee Knob, and dubbed the peak
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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The 1926 United States Geological Survey topographic map of the proposed area of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The actual park, established in 1934, is somewhat smaller.
Clingmans Dome at 6,660 feet, a mere 17 feet higher than the modern measurement of 6,643 feet. In the nearby Black Mountains, Guyot and his barometers fixed the height of Mt. Mitchell at 6,707 feet, just 24 feet above the modern calculation (6,683 feet). Though Guyot extensively explored the Southern Appalachians, his publications on his investigations there were somewhat limited, and one of the more valuable accounts he did produce was lost for 75 years. In 1863, Guyot produced a detailed description of the mountains of western North Carolina, but the document languished in the files of the Library of the Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, DC. In 1938, Myron Avery and Kenneth Boardman located the document and published “Arnold Guyot’s Notes on the Geography of the Mountain District of North Carolina” in the The North Carolina Historical Review. Accompanying the manuscript is a detailed map, produced by Guyot’s nephew and frequent collaborator, Ernest Sandoz.
The Fed as Mapmaker In 1879, with a stroke of a pen, then U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes created the United States Geological Survey
(USGS), in part in response to a call by the National Academy of Science (created by President Lincoln in 1863) for a survey of all U.S. territories “that would secure the best possible results at the least possible cost,” writes Mary C. Rabbitt in “The United States Geological Survey: 1879-1989,” an article posted on the USGS website. The newly created USGS was placed within the U.S. Department of the Interior, the same agency that oversees the national parks, and John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran who earned the distinction of being the first to navigate the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, served as the survey’s second director from 1881-1894. Nearly a half century after its establishment, the USGS played a vital role in creation of what would become America’s most-visited national park. In 1926, Congress approved the concept of creating a national park in the Great Smoky Mountains, and the USGS supported the effort by producing the first in a series of ever-more detailed topographic maps of what was then the proposed park area. The USGS maps guided the government’s efforts to identify and acquire the individual private land holdings that would be included in the future park.
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“LIDAR definitely speeds up the process of identifying and locating the specific features—including the park’s small, notoriously elusive streams—we want to pinpoint and study, but mapping that relies entirely on remotely acquired data can create a false sense of confidence in what the computer is telling us about a specific location,” says Colson. “The combination of LIDAR data and GPS coordinates acquired on the ground allows us to confirm that what the computer is telling us is accurate.” v
After GSMNP was officially established in 1934, the National Park Service assumed mapmaking duties, and the new maps catered more and more to park visitors—both motorists and backcountry travelers—and provided information on the park’s trails and natural features as well as humanbuilt amenities like campgrounds, bathrooms, and visitor centers. The map currently in use was created by the Park Service in the 1990s. Though highly accurate, the map was created using technologies that had advanced, yes, but were not all that much more sophisticated than those used by USGS surveyors at the turn of the previous century. The Global Positioning System that today guides us and our cars between any two points on a map was not fully operational until the mid-1990s. But a new technology has since emerged, and it would have left Guyot, Mitchell, Clingman, and their contemporaries scratching their beards in wonder.
David Brill is the author of Desire & Ice, As Far as the Eye Can See, and myriad magazine stories for publications such as National Geographic Traveler and Men’s Health. He lives in a rustic cabin on the Cumberland Plateau. His last story for Smokies Life was on the Benton McKaye Trail.
Note: Great Smoky Mountains National Park place names follow the USGS protocol of not using apostrophes.
Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems, often mounted in low-flying aircraft, emit pulses of laser light that reflect—or bounce—off the land surface below, creating a highly detailed digital map of surface topography. Like the barometer, LIDAR has applications both in mapmaking and meteorology and can map clouds as well as land forms. In 2010, the University of Georgia received nearly $400,000 from the USGS to create a three-dimensional LIDAR-assisted map of the Tennessee section of GSMNP. In a somewhat ironic twist, the dazzlingly new LIDAR technology was mounted in a 40-year old airplane (a Beechcraft Model 18, or “Twin Beech”) that, over the course of a year and a half, made 16 passes over the park. The multiple flyovers produced detailed data representing individual landscape features down to the meter and pegging elevations to within a few inches. “The pass over Clingmans Dome produced an image that shows the trail, tower, and individual trees,” says Tom Colson, GSMNP geographic information systems specialist. Beyond providing way-finding and trip-planning information for park visitors, LIDAR data will also help GSMNP better study and manage the park’s resources. “We have used LIDAR data to detect sinkholes and wetland habitats and to calculate tree height,” says Colson, who adds that LIDAR data helped guide efforts to repair the massive landslide that in January, 2013 took out 200 feet of U.S. 441, the road connecting Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to Cherokee, North Carolina. As you might expect, LIDAR’s remarkable detail and accuracy requires “massive” data computing and storage capabilities, says Colson, who notes that processing data on park elevations alone engaged a computer “gamers would drool over” for more than 30 hours. Colson is quick to point out that LIDAR won’t likely entirely supplant the need for “boots on the ground,” particularly if the individuals wearing the boots are also carrying GPS systems.
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
A Laser-eye View of the Park
The measured elevations of southern Appalachian summits continued to waver throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. LIDAR measurements, just now being compiled, will likely be the final word in mountain heights.
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Nance Dude: The
boogey woman of the
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by Maurice Stanley
The Legend “Scare me, Mommy,” I would say, and she would wrinkle up her face and hold her fingers out toward me and say,
“I’m old Nance Dude, and I’m gonna get you!” It would both thrill me and terrify me. It was great fun! Some years later my mother told me that there really was an old Nance Dude who buried a child alive in a rock cleft near Lake Junaluska (where my mother grew up). One Halloween my mother dressed me up as old Nance Dude: She put a dress on me and stuffed a pillow under my belt, put a bandanna on my head, and I was Nance Dude. Illustrations by Joey Heath
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Lots of people who grew up in the Lake Junaluska and Maggie Valley areas have heard the name “Nance Dude,” but the true story is not well known. Many mountain children may have heard that Nance would get them if they didn’t behave, but few knew anything about the real woman. I learned the story from my mother, who heard it from her mother, who saw Nance and her little granddaughter, Roberta Putnam, out walking that morning in February, 1913. When I grew up I dug deeper into the legend and found some facts about the case. I wanted to find out why a grandmother would harm her grandchild. I went to the files of the old Waynesville Courier, to the court records of Haywood and Swain counties, to prison records in Raleigh, to the people who knew about the case, and to James Turpin’s 1923 book, The Serpent Slips into A Modern Eden, all to present a fuller picture of Nance and the facts about Roberta’s murder and its aftermath. My parents, Claude and Louise Stanley, went with me around Waynesville and Bryson City, through courthouses and cemeteries, and to the homes of some of Nance’s relatives. My father and I even went up the side of Utah Mountain to the little cave where Roberta Putnam was sealed up alive — all so that Nance’s dark story could be told. But Nance Dude wasn’t just a legend or an “old wives’ tale,” or just a “boogey-woman.” She was a living, breathing woman born Nancy Ann Conard on July 20, 1848 to Jim Conard and Elizabeth Finney Conard on Jonathan Creek.
Civil Wars Years – 1861-1865 Nance was a young girl during the years of the Civil War. Although no big battles were fought in the mountains, life was very difficult in western North Carolina at that time. The women and children had to raise the crops and keep the farms going while the men and boys were off at war. W. Clark Medford’s Early History of Haywood County is a good source of how Colonel George Kirk and his Union troops came through the western part of North Carolina from Tennessee by way of Cataloochee, up Jonathan Creek and into Waynesville. They burned homes, they looted and took food and livestock, especially horses. Whatever they needed, they took with no thought of the mountain people. It was an awful time. The Civil War generated bitter feelings among families and communities and even among members of the same family. Sometimes one brother in a family fought
on the Union side and another brother fought for the Confederacy. And the hard times mountain people always had to deal with became, after the end of the war, even harder.
Nancy Conard Marries Howard Kerley In 1865 the men started returning from war, tired and defeated, often gravely wounded but glad to be alive. Many, of course, never came back. Jim Conard returned to Elizabeth and Nance, but he was in such a weakened state that afterwards he was never able to do much work. Nancy Conard was a girl of 17. Among the returning soldiers was one Howard Kerley, a neighbor of the Conards, also 17. He returned to his parents’ home and soon after started courting Nance. Nance agreed to marry Howard. He was a good man and Nance cared for him, but she didn’t really love him. The people in the area knew about Nance. She was shy, even surly, and they didn’t think she would ever marry. She was what folks called “backward” or even “quare.” But Howard apparently loved her. They built a cabin on the Kerley place on Jonathan Creek, in the shadow of Utah Mountain. Nance and Howard had been married a few years when Nance had a son they named William Henry Kerley. When William Henry was a child, about seven years old, Nance’s father, Jim Conard, passed away. Nance’s mother, Elizabeth, soon afterwards sold her home and moved to Tennessee where her sister lived. Nance felt abandoned when her mother moved away, but she continued to do her duties. She cooked and cleaned; cut weeds and hoed potatoes; canned and sewed and quilted. The workday of a mountain woman started early and went late into the evening. Mountain culture was tough on women, but most of them were unaware of any better life. Nance and Howard worked hard to raise food and Nance canned vegetables and dried apples and berries for the winter months. When cold weather came, Howard often hired Dude Hannah, a neighbor and Civil War veteran, to help butcher a hog to keep them in meat all winter. First the hog had to be slaughtered, then scalded and scraped clean of hair before being cut into hams, shoulders, and so forth. Hog-killing had to be done on a cold day since there were no freezers in which to store the meat. Salted and smoked pork was part of most families’ food supply.
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Nance and Dude Hannah Nance and Howard had been married for about sixteen years when Nance left Howard and William Henry and moved in with Dude Hannah. The people on Jonathan Creek did not understand Nance leaving a good man like Howard Kerley and their son to move in with a hell-raiser like Dude Hannah. What was even worse, Nance soon had a baby girl, Elizabeth Ann (Lizzy) by Dude — out of wedlock. Most people around Haywood County concluded Nance was “sorry” and “no
good” or “loose” and they wanted nothing to do with her. Nance found herself in a difficult situation. She had to do the housework and work in the garden and the fields, and raise Lizzy. Dude was a broken man. When he returned home from the war his folks were dead. He became an alcoholic. He wasn’t able to keep a regular job. He did odd jobs — killing people’s hogs for them, building a cabinet, mending a roof and such – to make a little money from time to time, but there was never enough money for his little family. Nance was not one to complain, though. She was not one to talk much at all.
Dude Hannah Burns the Cabin Dude came home one night in a drunken rage and burned down the cabin by throwing the oil lamp against the wall. Nance and Lizzy walked a few miles down the trail to the Garrett farm, where Joe and Jane Putnam and their son, Will, lived. The Putnams let Nance and Lizzy stay, even though space and food were scant.
Nance and Lizzy continued to live with the Putnams. They helped with the cooking, washing, and taking care of old Joe and Jane. Joe and Jane were not well enough to help with any of the chores and housekeeping. Will soon got Lizzy pregnant, and she had a baby girl whom she named Roberta Ann Putnam. By the time the little girl was about two years old, food was becoming scarce for the growing family and the Putnam cabin was not big enough for six people. At Lizzy and Will’s urging, Nance took Roberta and they walked over Cataloochee Mountain to Hartford, Tennessee, where Nance’s mother had moved years before.
Nance Returns from Tennessee Nance found that things were just as bad in Tennessee, and after a couple of months she and Roberta were
turned out by Elizabeth. So Nance had little choice but to return from Tennessee, bringing Roberta back to Lizzy at the Putnams’ cabin. But when they got back, Lizzy told Nance that she and Will could no longer feed and care for Roberta. Nance said that she would take the baby to the county home and maybe they would take her there, or maybe give her to some nice family to raise. Lizzy and Will agreed to it.
A Cold February Morning Nance started out early in the morning of February 26, 1913, after she wrapped Roberta up in several little dresses, for it was a cold morning. She started across Utah Mountain to take the child to the county home, even though the county home, as most people knew, was intended to take in old or sick people, not children. Nance returned in the afternoon, alone. Nance told
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Photograph courtesy of Jack Best and Hobart and Naomi Franklin.
Deputy Sheriff Jack Carver formed a search party of men, women, and children to search Utah Mountain. On the far right is Frank Janes and his dog. The dog turned out to be crucial in the search for Roberta.
Lizzy that a “man in a buggy” came along and offered to help, and that she and Roberta got in the buggy with him. She said to Lizzy that she told the man she was taking the child to the county home, but the man had said that the child was too small to go to the county home. Nance said that the man offered to take the child and give her a good home. So, Nance claimed she gave Roberta to “the man in the buggy.” Lizzy believed Nance’s story and was satisfied—until the neighbors and community got “all stirred up” and were very suspicious and started talking about what had really happened to the child. The righteous anger of the community toward Nance started to build. People began to think Nance had done away with little Roberta. Finally the sheriff’s office was informed of the disappearance of Roberta.
Nance is Arrested Deputy Sheriff Jack Carver contacted the county home and they told him no child had been brought there. Reverend Fincher, the “man in the buggy,” told Deputy Jack that he had given a woman and a child a ride for a short distance, but that he did not “take the child to raise.” Deputy Jack went to the Putnam cabin and questioned Nance, then arrested her on suspicion that she had harmed the child. Nance, age 65, was taken to Waynesville and put in jail. Lizzy and Will were put in jail, too, on suspicion that they were accomplices to Nance’s crime. Deputies Jack Carver and Lucius Leatherwood figured that all three of them knew what had happened to
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Roberta. The people in the community were infuriated about it and demanded—through telephone calls and letters to the editor of the Waynesville Courier—to know what happened to the child. People came from all over the county and looked through the bars of the jail at Nance and hollered, “Witch!” “Hang her!” “Why’d you do it?” Deputy Jack told them to go home and let the law do its job.
The Search Party Deputy Jack formed a search party of men, women, and children to search Utah Mountain and Ad Tate Knob near Dellwood. Many expressed doubts that the child would
ever be found, but their anger at Nance did not abate. They were sure that Nance had done away with her granddaughter, they just didn’t know how. The searchers went up the side of the mountain in pairs or groups of three or four. The search went on for several days. On the fourth day a young boy, Frank Janes, and his dog, went up the mountain ahead of the others. Frank’s dog came upon a pile of rocks enclosing a small cave, and the dog sniffed and scratched at the rocks. Frank whistled for his dog to come back, but the dog scratched and whined until Frank pulled some of the stones away. He peered inside the cave and saw a ball of blond hair. When the stench hit his nose he quickly jumped backward and fell, then got up and ran in a frenzy around the mountainside and screamed and sobbed, “It’s her! It’s her!” Other searchers nearby
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Frank Janes’ dog sniffed frantically at a pile of stones. Lifting some of the stones aside, Frank was horrified to discover the pitiful body of Roberta Putnam. She had been there for over a month.
could hear Frank and made their way up to the little cave. All of them were horrified. The child had been there for over a month. After Roberta’s body was found, Nance was charged with first degree murder. She continued to sit in the Waynesville jail. The coroner’s inquest concluded that the child came to
its death at the hands of Nance by starvation and exposure. Deputy Jack sent Lizzy and Will home and told them not to leave the county because they might well be called as witnesses at Nance’s trial. The people of the county were shocked and horrified at what had been done. On Friday, April 4, 1913 the Waynesville Courier published this story:
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Photographs courtesy of Jack Best and Hobart and Naomi Franklin.
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MURDERS CHILD ___________________ Fastens it Up in Mountain Clif f And Leaves it to Die of Exposure and Hunger and Fright One of the most heartless, cruel and diabolical murders that has ever occurred in this country since civilized people have been in possession, was brought to light yesterday morning, when the body of a little child about two and a half years old was found in the crevice of a rock on Ad Tate Knob in the lower Jonathan Creek section. On Monday Nancy Ann Hannah, an old woman with head as white as a sheep, was brought to Waynesville by Lucius Leatherwood and John Carver and lodged in jail on the charge of putting an end to this child. Waynesville Courier April 4, 1913
The following Friday, April 11, 1913, the Waynesville Courier published this letter:
Court came up Solicitor Alley was ill and the trial was postponed until the next term of court — which would be in 1914.
The Murdered Child Haywood’s citizenship, even to the very lowest class, stands appalled at the brutal, barbarous, fiendish murder of little Bonnie Roberta Putnam. The unspeakable horror and nameless atrocity of the crime against innocence and against our fair mountain land make the hardest heart throb with a sensation of pain and humiliation… —Mrs. W. T. Crawford
Kerley Case To Be Tried In Swain Judge Ferguson believed that Nance could not receive a fair trial in Haywood County because, out of 75 men called for jury duty, all of them were already convinced that Nance was guilty and were ready to see her “strung up.” So in July, 1913, Judge Ferguson decided that the trial should be moved to Swain County Superior Court to be held in October at Bryson City. As soon as Judge Ferguson announced his decision, a mob formed around Nance, and the courtroom exploded into a roar. Some men grabbed Nance and took her outside and dragged her toward an oak tree. Deputies Jack and Lucius, with the help of some law-abiding citizens, stopped the intended lynching. When the October term of Swain County Superior
Nance Is Sentenced To Hard Labor for Thirty Years Nance’s court-appointed attorney, Sam Black, evaluated Nance’s case and then sat down with her and told her the cold facts: Lizzy and Will had signed statements that Nance took the child off on the morning of February 26th and came back in the afternoon alone; neighbors saw Nance out walking up Utah Mountain that morning with the child; Reverend Fincher, the man in the buggy, stated that he gave Nance and Roberta a short ride and that Nance said that she was taking the child to the county home; upon her return to the Putnams’ cabin Nance had told Lizzy that she had given the child to a man in a buggy who said he would give her a good home; the county home knew nothing of the child; Reverend Fincher was known to be an honest man, and he said he had given a woman and a child a ride; the woman wanted to give the child to him, he said, but he did not take her. And now the search party had found the child’s body, sealed up, left to die slowly from starvation and exposure. Lawyer Black explained to Nance that a jury would never believe that she didn’t do it. She had told too many versions of the story. Black informed her that the jury would find her guilty and that the judge would send her to the electric chair. Black told Nance that he knew she
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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION AT UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA LIBRARY AT CHAPEL HILL.
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In prison Nance remained her old taciturn self, rarely speaking to anyone. She was sentenced to 30 years hard labor. She was paroled after fifteen years due to her advanced age, but, surprisingly lived another 23 years.
wasn’t a mean person or a crazy person but, if she pled not guilty, the jury would not believe her. So Nance, through her counsel, pled guilty to second degree murder, and she was sentenced to Central Prison in Raleigh in 1914.
Nance In Prison She served 15 years, working on a dike on the Roanoke River. The prisoners faced the danger of dike breaks and malaria. Life in prison was hard, but not much harder on Nance than her life outside. She had food and a home, and she was used to hard work. She didn’t dislike prison at all. She had never known freedom anyway. While Nance was in prison she was required to carry a Bible, which all the prisoners were required to do to show penitence.
Nance Is Released Nance was paroled May 21, 1929 at age 80, “in view of her age,” the prison record said, and she wasn’t expected to have that many years left. But Nance endured. She lived out her remaining years with her son, William Henry Kerley, in a little settlement named Conley’s Creek near Bryson City, North Carolina. The small cabin had no running water and no electricity, but later on William wired the cabin and the power company hooked the power lines to the cabin (according to information given to me by Nance’s greatgranddaughter). They got water from a nearby spring. Nance died September 12, 1952, at the age of 104! She was buried in the Bumgarner Cemetery in Wilmot, North Carolina, located in Jackson County. Her headstone, located beside William Henry Kerley’s, was a jagged black rock with no inscription.
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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JACK BEST AND HOBART AND NAOMI FRANKLIN.
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The Daughters of the American Revolution have provided a grave marker for Nancy Kerley. Nance after her release from prison. Although many people despised Nance, her lawyer had some sympathy for his client, writing in a letter to Lizzy, “She was guilty, in my opinion, only of being impoverished to a point of such degradation and desperation that she believed that her own survival, and yours, depended upon the sacrifice of little Roberta.”
support of the theory that she was a total and utter moral reprobate; that her degeneracy was complete both by heredity and personal training; that only half of her personality had been cultivated or allowed to develop by natural tendency, and that her moral self had steadily beaten the paths of least resistance. Her life stood shrouded by the mists of darkness and moral neglect. -James A. Turpin, The Serpent Slips Into A Modern Eden, pp. 74-75.
Did Nance Commit the Crime? Many questions since then have arisen about what happened: Many people have argued that Nance was too frail to put the rocks up to the cave. Some believe that Lizzy and Will buried the child in the cave and let Nance take the blame since she was an old woman. Some believe that Will forced Nance and Roberta out because he thought that Roberta was not his child. Some thought she was doing her duty to the family. But all this is speculation—not fact. When my parents and I visited Nance’s relatives in the mid 1980s, they told us that Nance was a good old woman, and that she couldn’t have murdered anybody, especially her granddaughter, whom she loved. To them Nance was not a monster. The Turpin book depicted Nance very differently: There can be no doubt that Nancy Kerlee was one of the most pronounced of these human freaks. Her very looks, her face and form, are the most eloquent and convincing arguments in
As far as I am aware, no one really knows for certain what happened on Utah Mountain that February day in 1913. Nance never confessed to putting Roberta in the cave. Nance had tried to find a place for herself and Roberta. She had been to Tennessee weeks before the crime, but there was no help there. She had tried to give the child away to the families of Haywood County, but those people had all the children they could care for. Nobody helped. v Maurice Stanley grew up in Clyde, North Carolina. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a retired lecturer of philosophy at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is the author of the historical novels The Legend of Nance Dude, Midwinter, and Sorrows End, as well as the college texts Logic and Controversy and God, Hope, and Freedom. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
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BREATHING IN THE SMOKIES:
Just over a decade ago, Great Smoky Mountains National Park topped the list as the country’s most-polluted national park, with a host of airborne toxins threatening visitor health, damaging vegetation, and limiting mountain views to fewer than 12 miles.
A Remarkable Success Story
Visitors entering Great Smoky Mountains National Park on hot, humid summer days in 1999 surely noticed the gray-white haze. But, otherwise, most of them likely assumed that the park’s freeflowing streams and ambient air were clean—cleaner, certainly, than the polluted urban waterways and air they had left behind when they departed the city, bound for the mountains. The perfectly reasonable assumption was that a national park— in this case, the most visited national park in the country—existed as an island of environmental health, whose protection was insured by the provisions of the Clean Air Act and the enforcement powers of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA
But during that sweltering summer, park visitors drew into their lungs air that was, on some days, more polluted than the shroud of smog that lay atop some of the nation’s largest cities. Most of the air’s toxic constituents could be traced to the combustion of coal and oil.
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In the years since, the haze has started to clear, and park visitors are savoring expanding views and filling their lungs with ever-cleaner air. By David Brill
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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF J. MILES CARY/KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL
Jim Renfro has been working on air quality issues in the Smokies for nearly 30 years. For those who know him, the adjectives “tireless” and “persistent” always come to mind. His willingness to present the park’s message to the public, elected officials, utility managers, educators, students, and agency personnel, time and time again, is a primary reason that air in the Smokies is now trending toward transparency and breathability. It would not be inconceivable to imagine that, at some point, in some glittering office tower, executives conceded that it would be easier to just go ahead and clean up a dirty power plant than to weather another barrage of meetings with Renfro.
A MAN WITH A MISSION Unlike most professionals, Jim Renfro knows he’s doing his job well when he can’t see the products of his labors. In fact, when Renfro takes in the view from high atop Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) and sees nothing but the distant tree-fringed ridges—instead of a veil of unhealthy haze—he knows his efforts as the park’s air resource specialist have begun to pay off. Renfro joined the GSMNP staff in 1985 and became the park’s air resource specialist in 1993. Over the years since, Renfro has devoted untold hours to sharing the story of the park’s air quality with visitors, students, media representatives, citizen action groups, lawmakers, scientists, park staff, and anybody else willing to listen. In the early days, Renfro got the word out the old fashioned way, by “making copies, sending faxes, and mailing out information packets.” As presentation and communications technologies advanced, Renfro’s messaging grew in sophistication and reach. Ask him to tally the number of PowerPoint® presentations he’s made, and Renfro puts the number in the hundreds. Since 1980, monitoring equipment distributed throughout the park has collected air-quality data and indicated how conditions are trending. (For more information on GSMNP’s air-quality monitoring program, see “Reading the Wind” on page 39.) In all cases, Renfro lets the data speak for themselves, offing them up for anyone to use, provided that the use is “accurate, timely, and precise.” Though the three-decade saga of air quality in GSMNP includes chapters marked by deterioration and decline, of late, Renfro’s range of air-quality monitoring equipment has told an increasingly positive story. From the late 1990s through 2012, the Tennessee Valley
Authority’s (TVA) emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from coal-fired power plants proximate to the park have declined 95 percent, and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from the same sources have declined 95 percent. These emissions reductions have helped improve air quality in the park. In fact, visibility in the park on the haziest days has improved from an average of 9 miles to 24 miles, and views are slowly being restored to their natural average range of 77 miles. Park streams and soils have begun to shed some of their unhealthy acid loads—deposited chiefly by sulfur- and nitrogen-infused rain, mist, particles, and gases. And levels of ground-level ozone—a potentially harmful pollutant—have declined by 27 percent on the park’s worst air-quality days. All good news, Renfro will tell you, particularly compared with the condition of the park’s air just over a decade ago.
CLEAN AIR CHAMPIONS In 2002, three conservation groups—Appalachian Voices, National Parks Conservation Association, and Our Children’s Earth Foundation—released Code Red: America’s Five Most Polluted National Parks. The report was based on an air-quality index combining ozone, haze, and acid rain data collected from 1991 through 2001 at 10 U.S. national parks with extensive monitoring programs. (GSMNP’s air-monitoring program has produced one of the National Park Service’s most detailed and comprehensive collections of data.) The report handed GSMNP the dubious distinction of being the country’s most-polluted national park, with Shenandoah running a close second. Newspapers throughout the region picked up the story and ran it on their front pages. For some of GSMNP’s unsuspecting visitors, the news likely carried the disappointment of learning, as children, that the Easter Bunny and
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The “Bad Ol’ Days” of Smokies Air
Santa Claus are, in fact, mythical constructs. The parks were not, as many believed, havens of pure air and water capable of restoring—rather than threatening—human health. “People care about clean air and clean water,” says Renfro. “They come to this park for good views and clean mountain air, and when they find out that the air is not clean—and may actually be worse than where they came from—they want to understand why, and it’s my job to explain that to them.” The late-1990s and early years of the 21st century marked the park’s highest pollution levels as well as a critical turning point. Levels for all major pollutants have steadily improved in the years since, owing to a convergence of several key factors: the persuasive power of Jim Renfro’s nearly 30-year aggregation of air-quality data, the unrelenting action on the part of conservation groups, regional cooperation to explore the causes and effects of pollution, regulatory action on state and local levels, the enforcement muscle of the EPA, efforts on the part of the region’s largest power producers to drastically reduce emissions, and the prescriptive reach of what many regard as one of the most ambitious pieces of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress.
In the summer of 1999, the park’s air exceeded the EPA’s ground-level ozone standard—established to protect public health—a record 52 days, with the potential for harming human lung tissue, triggering asthma attacks, and even contributing to premature death among vulnerable populations. Had the EPA’s current, more stringent ozone standard, promulgated in 2008, been in place, the park’s air would have exceeded EPA safe levels for ozone on 81 days, or more than half of the days between May and September, the hottest months of the year and those most likely to see increased ozone levels.1
At left, a hazy day in the Smokies, caused primarily by tiny sulfate particles. The image on the right shows the same view with good visibility.
Ground-level ozone is a toxic blend that results when sunlight causes volatile organic compounds (some of them from natural sources) to combine with the NOx released from highway vehicles, coal-fired power plants, and industrial boilers. (For more information on groundlevel ozone and the other major air pollutants, see “Park Air Pollutants—A Field Guide,” on page 37.) The park’s visitors were not the only species at risk. Many of the park’s flora—among one of the richest and most diverse collections on Earth—suffered damaged leaves and slowed growth. Ozone pollution also caused changes to the composition of the park’s forests. And ground-level ozone was but one of several harmful substances carried on the wind. Rain and the wispy clouds for which the Smokies are named often carried sufficient nitrate and sulfate levels to render them as acidic as vinegar, and much of that acid had found its way into the park’s soils and streams—harming aquatic life, including the native brook trout—and overloading soils with nitrogen. And visible regional haze not only obscured the distant peaks; it also contained small particles measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter (PM2.5)—30 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair—which can embed in lung tissue and enter the blood stream, causing serious human health effects.
THE CLEAN AIR ACT For nearly two centuries following the Industrial Revolution, most U.S. urban residents abided the acrid fumes issuing from smokestacks and the toxic wastes flowing into streams as the cost of progress. But in the mid-20th century, it became clear that industrial prosperity—and the attendant increase in standard of living for most Americans—was exacting an excessive toll, not only on the nation’s air and water quality, but on human health as well. Early efforts to establish air-quality standards resulted in part from lethal clouds of industrial pollutants that, between 1948 and 1952, killed 20 Pennsylvanians and 200 New Yorkers and sickened thousands of others. The U.S. Congress responded by passing the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. This, the first piece of federal legislation to directly address air quality, provided funding for research but did little to regulate polluters. The Clean Air Act of 1963 also largely sidestepped enforcement but continued funding for research and development of techniques for monitoring and controlling emissions.
1 Kingston, commissioned in 1955; John Sevier, commissioned in 1957; Widows Creek, commissioned in 1965; and Bull Run, commissioned in 1967.
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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ARCHIVES
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Rght: Senator Edmund Muskie addresses a crowd at The University of Pennsylvania on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. Left: President Richard Nixon. Both, along with Senator Howard Baker, were instrumental in the bipartisan effort to pass the Clean Air Act in 1970.
Many trace the birth of the U.S. environmental movement to the year of the Clean Air Act’s passage, which also saw the first Earth Day and the creation of the U.S. EPA.
President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Air Quality Act of 1967, which began to shape enforcement measures, particularly for airborne pollutants transported across state lines, but it left enforcement up to the states—none of which complied in establishing or enforcing pollution standards. All that changed in 1970, when U.S. air quality legislation began to sprout a sturdy set of teeth. In that year, Senators Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, and Edmund Muskie, a Democrat from Maine, collaborated— through a seemingly bygone bipartisan process Muskie termed “comity”—in drafting the Clean Air Act (subsequently referenced through this document as the Act), which unanimously passed both houses of Congress. The act was signed into law by Republican president Richard Nixon. Many trace the birth of the U.S. environmental movement to the year of the act’s passage, which also saw the first Earth Day (April 22) and the creation of the U.S. EPA, the agency charged with enforcing the act. The Clean Water Act, which Baker also helped draft, followed two years later. At a 2005 conference at the University of Tennessee focused on the Act, Senator Baker reflected on the act’s landmark features: First, the Act declared a direct and overarching federal interest in protecting the health of all Americans from air pollution. Second, we incorporated into the law the concept of technology-forcing—that is, pushing the pace of technological
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Baker also noted the essential role of science in establishing the act’s regulations: “Senator Muskie insisted that airquality standards be based on science, and not on economics or politics,” Baker said. “He wanted the public to understand the science of air pollution.” The 1970 Act authorized the federal government and the states to regulate power plants and other industrial polluters—known as stationary sources—as well as highway vehicles and other mobile sources of pollution. Among its other provisions, reflective of Muskie’s insistence on a prominent role for science, the law called for creation of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), which established limits on criteria pollutants aimed at protecting human health (primary standards) and the environment (secondary standards). Further, the Act required State Implementation Plans, which would, at least in theory, force individual states to draft plans for meeting federal air-quality standards.
THE CLEAN AIR ACT AND THE PARK The Act has, in fact, continued to evolve for 43 years, though its evolution has often been as contentious as its enforcement has been forgiving. “The Clean Air Act was intended as a work in progress,” says Don Barger,
Park Air Pollutants—A Field Guide The air in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP), like air everywhere, is a complex blend of compounds and constituents, including those that derive from natural as well as anthropogenic sources. The naturally occurring constituents in the air we breathe are generally benign (with the notable exception of pollen). Not so with some of the contaminants from human activities—chiefly the combustion of hydrocarbons, including coal and petroleum products— which can damage lung tissue, trigger asthma attacks, and, in some cases, cause premature death. The 1970 Clean Air Act required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for the following six pollutants (the “Criteria Pollutants”) known to be harmful to human health or the environment. (They are presented in alphabetical order rather than the order of the greatest threat to GSMNP.) • Carbon monoxide (CO): Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas that is emitted by the incomplete combustion of the carbon in fuels. Motor vehicles are the leading source of CO emissions, but industrial processes, woodstoves, and forest fires also produce the pollutant. CO is currently not a pollutant of major concern in GSMNP. • Lead (Pb): Lead was removed from gasoline in the United States, beginning in the 1970s. Concentrations of airborne lead in the United States have decreased by nearly 90 percent since the mid-1980s. Exposure to lead can damage the brain and nervous system; children are particularly vulnerable. Lead is not currently a pollutant of major concern in GSMNP. • Ozone (O3): The phrase “good up high, bad nearby,” distinguishes between the upper atmosphere’s ozone layer (beneficial), which helps filter the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays, from ground-level ozone (harmful), a toxic chemical mix caused by a reaction between nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight.
Ozone is particularly harmful to the human respiratory system and can also damage plant life in GSMNP. Groundlevel ozone is the main component of smog and typically forms during hot, humid days. • Nitrogen Oxides (NOx): Exhaust from highway vehicles is the leading source of NOx in GSMNP. Combustion of coal also releases NOx, which contributes to acid deposition in GSMNP streams and excess nitrogen in park soils. In the presence of sunlight, NOx combines with volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere to form ozone. NOx can damage lungs and cause respiratory problems. • Particulate matter (PM): Particle pollution contains sulfates and nitrates, from combustion of fossil fuels, along with dirt, dust, and soot. The particles’ potential for harm relates to their size. Coarse particulate matter larger than 10 microns in diameter (PM10) is less harmful than the fine particles that measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5). These smaller particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the
PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL LEA
development to support the Act’s goals of reducing harmful air-borne pollutants. Third, we established deadlines for government action. Fourth, we made many of those government actions mandatory rather than permissive. Fifth, we empowered the public—individual citizens—with the authority to use the federal courts to achieve the objectives we set forth, in the event that the bureaucracy or politicians failed to do so.
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bloodstream, trigger asthma and heart attacks, and cause premature death in individuals with pre-existing heart and lung disease. • Sulfur Dioxide (SO2): Combustion of coal—particularly high-sulfur coal mined in the Eastern United States—is the primary source of SO2 emissions, which contribute to visible haze and cause deposition of acids into GSMNP streams and soils. Like NOx, SO2 can cause lung damage and respiratory problems. For more information on the criteria pollutants, visit the EPA website: http://www.epa.gov/air/urbanair
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Southeast regional director of National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an organization devoted to protecting the natural and cultural resources of the U.S. National Park System. “It was designed to tighten standards over time as emission-control technologies have improved and as our understanding of the negative health effects of air pollution has increased.” The National Ambient Air Quality Standard for groundlevel ozone, for instance, has tightened from 125 parts per billion (ppb) in 1979 to 85 ppb in 1997 and to 75 ppb in 2008, as medical research indicated that the higher thresholds were not adequate to protect human health. The EPA is currently considering further tightening the health standard to between 60 and 70 ppb. The Act’s evolution has resulted, in large part, from a series of amendments, some of which directly addressed declining air quality in the national parks. The 1977 amendments designated national parks of more than 6,000 acres (GSMNP comprises more than 500,000 acres) and created on or prior to 1977 (GSMNP was established in 1934) as Class 1 areas, with the goal of preventing and remedying impaired air quality and protecting these areas’ air quality related values, including visibility. As for preventing, the amendments established the New Source Review Program, which sought to protect air quality in these Class 1 areas by ensuring that new pollution sources
Despite the 1977 amendments designed to help the park, it would be at least 20 more years before the Smokies would see significant improvements in air quality.
built after 1977, including power plants, were outfitted with the best available control technology to limit emissions of SO2, NOx, and particulate matter. Under the amendments, all new pollution sources had to be reviewed and approved by state air pollution control boards before they could begin operation, and federal land managers, including national park superintendents, were to be involved in the review process and afforded the opportunity to comment, particularly if they determined that a new source could contribute to deteriorating air quality in a Class 1 area. In terms of remedying, the amendments required pollution sources built between 1962 and 1977—chiefly coal-fired power plants—to install the best available retrofit emissioncontrol technologies on their smokestacks. Despite the 1977 amendments designed to help the park, it would be at least 20 more years before the Smokies would see significant improvements in air quality. The Act’s amendments of 1990, for the first time, introduced market-based measures (carrots) to reduce harmful emissions, in addition to the existing command-and-control regulations (sticks). Title IV of the amendments created the Acid Rain Program, which sought to reduce national SO2 emissions from power plants through the creation of a cap (the total amount of pollutants that can be released into the atmosphere nationwide) and issuing allowances to individual power plants, authorizing them to emit a fixed amount of these pollutants. Plants that reduced SO2 emissions below their allowed limit could sell their credits to other power producers that exceeded their allowances. Individual power producers that reduced emissions below allowable limits at some of their facilities were able to use those credits to increase emissions at their other facilities. In 1992, TVA—one of the nation’s largest power providers, serving Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia—was among the first customers in the national SO2 emissionstrading market, purchasing from Wisconsin Power and Light allowances to emit 10,000 additional tons of SO2. TVA and other utilities in the southeastern United States took advantage of this market program to delay installation of pollution control systems on some of their older plants. This pay-to-pollute scheme reduced national average aggregate SO2 emissions from power plants by 60 percent from 1990 to 2009, and at a lower cost than many predicted. In 1999, EPA created the Regional Haze Rule to improve visibility in 156 Class 1 areas, including GSMNP, and to restore natural visibility levels by 2064. The rule, like other Act provisions, assigned a primary role to the states, requiring them “to develop and implement air quality protection plans to reduce the pollution that causes visibility impairment.”
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Nearly all of the air pollutants entering Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) originate outside the park, and the primary sources include coal-fired power plants in the Tennessee, Mississippi, and Ohio River valleys as well as highway vehicles. Though Jim Renfro, GSMNP’s air resource specialist, can do little to directly control the emissions entering the park—that’s a challenge for state and national policymakers and regulators—he maintains a range of air-monitoring tools that produce the evidence—via the accumulation of monitoring data—of how airborne pollutants are affecting park resources and how levels of these pollutants change over time. Park sensors have been measuring pollutants since the 1980s, though the park’s air-quality monitoring program has greatly expanded in the years since and involved partnerships with TVA, EPA, the states of Tennessee and North Carolina, and the University of Tennessee, among others. Renfro’s monitoring tools are located at the following sites: Cades Cove (elevation, 1,850 feet) and Cove Mountain (4,150): Monitors measure ozone levels and weather conditions. Clingmans Dome (elevation 6,670 feet): Monitors for dry deposition of sulfur and nitrogen and cloud-water chemistry as part of the Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNet), ozone and meteorology, and mercury as part of the Mercury Deposition Network (MDN). Elkmont (elevation, 2,100 feet): As part of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), measures wet deposition of nitrogen and sulfur, the primary causes of acid deposition into park soils and waterways. The station also monitors levels of airborne mercury as part of MDN. Look Rock (elevation, 2,700 feet): As part of CASTNet, measures atmospheric nitrogen, sulfur, and ozone concentrations; weather conditions; and dry deposition of sulfur and nitrogen. A web camera, part of the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) program, assesses visible haze. As part of EPA’s National Core Monitoring (NCore) program, additional measurements of continuous sulfate, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide are taken. As part of the NADP’s Ammonia Monitoring Network (AMoN), the site also measures ammonia concentrations. Noland Divide (elevation 5,700 feet): measures wet deposition of nitrogen and sulfur. Purchase Knob (elev. 4,900 ft): Monitors for ozone and meteorology; web camera assesses visible haze as part of IMPROVE. Access information on GSMNP’s air-quality monitoring resources, including compiled data, at www.nature.nps.gov/air/ Permits/ARIS/grsm/studiesMonitoring.cfm?tab=1
By working closely with the states and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Great Smoky Mountains National Park has established itself as a highly-regarded site for monitoring air pollution and weather in the Southeast. Much of the carefully maintained scientific equipment takes readings every minute of the day, 365 days a year, monitoring everything from visibility to mercury to ozone. The EPA and the states check, calibrate, and certify the equipment every few months. The data is available to the public online and at Sugarlands and Oconaluftee visitor centers.
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY NPS
Reading the Wind
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF TVA; MAP BY LISA HORSTMAN
Kingston
TVA Power Plant Locations Bull Run
John Sevier
TVA is a massive public/private agency charged with providing reliable, affordable electricity to nine million people. Its ambitious mission also includes flood control, outdoor recreation, promoting a clean environment, and economic development.
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A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
THE ELEPHANT IN THE TROPOSPHERE
In accordance with the Act’s 1977 amendments, the federal land managers, in this case the assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks of the Department of the Interior and the GSMNP superintendent, dutifully commented on proposed large new pollution sources in Tennessee, but in several cases in the early 1990s, the Tennessee air pollution control board issued new source permits, despite the federal land managers’ determination that the new sources would cause measurable deterioration of the park’s air quality. By the early 1990s, it became increasingly clear that the Act, while it may have adequately served the nation, had failed GSMNP and other Class 1 areas. Meanwhile, many of those involved in the issue determined that it was time to try a new, integrated regional approach to resolving air quality issues in the park. So in June of 1992, a diverse and inclusive group of stakeholders—from power producers to national park resource managers—formed the Southern Appalachian Mountains Initiative (SAMI). SAMI, a voluntary and consensus-based organization, sought “to develop a better understanding of the complex air quality situation in the Southeast and to recommend ways to remedy existing and to prevent future adverse effects on… Class 1 areas.” The initiative’s participants included, among others, representatives from Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia; federal government entities; educational institutions; TVA and other power producers; and conservation groups. To succeed, the participants reasoned, the collaborative venture would have to create a body of scientific data that was beyond dispute and produced by methods agreeable to all. Chief among the requisite data-producing tools were newly devised computer models capable of tracking the atmospheric transport of pollutants from point sources proximate to the park as well as those located upwind, in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. Over the next decade, SAMI’s team of computer modelers, atmospheric scientists, and biologists quietly worked behind the scenes, seeking to resolve, among other issues, “the sources of [air] emissions that cause environmental effects in Class 1 ecosystems.” As SAMI partners advanced their collaborative research, on other fronts, efforts to reverse—or at least stem—declining air quality in GSMNP grew increasingly contentious.
In the Southeast, according to Renfro, coal-fired power plants contribute three-fourths of the region’s SO2 emissions and nearly a third of NOx emissions. In East Tennessee, a search for the region’s leading sources of these pollutants, along with particulate matter, inevitably leads to TVA. It’s important to note, however, that through the early to mid-1990s, air quality in the East Tennessee Counties of Loudon, Sevier, Anderson, and Blount, was in full compliance with EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards for all criteria pollutants. In fact, Knox County logged the only violations, exceeding the 1-hour ozone standard in 1992 and 1993.2 And exhaust from motor vehicles—the leading source of ozone-forming NOx—was more to blame for the violations than TVA’s flue gases. While TVA smoke stacks clearly contributed to problems in the park, over many years, departments within the agency had also contributed significantly to the science of air-quality monitoring in the Tennessee Valley. In fact, TVA environmental scientists, with funding from EPA and the cooperation of the National Park Service, established one of the first visibility monitoring programs in the southeastern United States at Look Rock in GSMNP. TVA also maintained monitoring equipment at many of its coal-fired power plants and later adopted a more regional approach to air-quality monitoring. With passage of the Clean Air Act, TVA and other power producers in the Southeast faced the difficult challenge of balancing increasingly strict air-quality regulations with customer demand for inexpensive electricity—demand that was increasing year by year. With passage of the 1977 amendments, Congress was convinced that utilities would soon retire their aging coalfired power plants and was also aware of the enormous financial burden installation of the best available retrofit technologies would place on power providers, including TVA, if it were forced to install state-of-the-art emission controls on its 11 coal-fired plants commissioned prior to 1977. As a result, lawmakers “grandfathered in” these existing plants, allowing them to continue operation without installation of flue-gas desulfurization systems (i.e., scrubbers) to reduce SO2 emissions and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems to reduce emissions of NOx. Through the 1990s, many of these power plants continued to burn coal with a high-sulfur content, further contributing to increased SO2 emissions. Meanwhile, the SO2 pollution allowances TVA had purchased from Wisconsin Power and Light through provisions
2 The Clean Air Act: An Archetype for Dynamic and Comprehensive Environmental Policy, a report by Paul Augustine published by the Joint Institute for Energy and Environment in 2003, provided much of the information presented in this section. “The History of the Clean Air Act,” posted on the EPA website, also served as a resource for this section (http://epa.gov/air/caa/caa_history.html).
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TVA is responsible for providing uninterrupted power to seven evergrowing southeastern states. One way of avoiding brown outs during peak summer power periods is with combustion turbines, designed to start quickly and run for short periods. They are normally run with relatively cleanburning natural gas, though low-sulfur fuel oil can also be used. The turbines operate like a jet engine—they draw in air at the front, compress it, mix it with fuel, and ignite it. The hot combustion gases then expand through turbine blades connected to a generator.
By 2011, TVA, by its own account, had spent $5.3 billion on air-pollution controls, and, since airquality regulation began, “reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 91 percent and annual nitrogen oxide emissions by 87 percent.”
of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments—along with allowances TVA was able to bank and use based on installation of emission-control devices on its Cumberland plant3—permitted the utility to increase its emissions of SO2. In fact, between 1985 and 1998, according to Renfro, TVA’s SO2 emissions from the four plants closest to the park4 increased by 107,000 tons. “While those increases were legal, they had a measurable negative impact on air quality in the park in terms of visibility, acid deposition, and particulate pollution,” says Renfro. Lawmakers determined, however, that, when power companies made “modifications” to these existing coal fired plants, they would be required to apply for new source preconstruction permits—which would effectively require them to install the best available retrofit emission-reduction technologies. The EPA applied two criteria in defining a modification: first, it must result in a physical change at a power plant, and, second, it must result in increased emissions from the plant. Power companies, including TVA, interpreted the law’s “routine maintenance, repair, and replacement exception” as permission to make changes to these plants without undergoing the review required of all new pollution sources. Beginning in the late 1990s, the widely varying interpretation of the word “modification” took the issue of GSMNP’s air quality to the courts. In November 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the EPA, filed lawsuits against seven utility companies, including TVA, charging, according to the justice department press release, that the utilities had “violated the Clean Air Act by making major modifications to many of their plants without installing the equipment required to control smog, acid rain and soot” in an effort to extend the power plants’ lives and “avoid the cost of building new plants.” In October 2000, the National Parks Conservation Association filed a lawsuit against TVA’s John Sevier and 3 In 1995, TVA retrofitted the Cumberland Plant, its largest coal-fired facility, with scrubbers and significantly reduced the plant’s SO2 emissions. 4 This information is included in “Historical Whole or Part County Nonattainment Status by Year Since 1978 for Tennessee,” featured on the EPA website: http://www.epa.gov/airquality/greenbook/phistory_tn.html
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GRAPHIC COURTESY OF TVA
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Kingston plants, alleging that the emissions released from the plants’ smoke stacks violated opacity (i.e., visible plume) standards. In its Annual Environmental Report 2000, TVA contested NPCA’s charges, insisting that “both of these plants have fully complied with the permits issued them by the State of Tennessee and with applicable regulatory requirements.” In December 2000, the NPCA, this time joined by the Sierra Club, filed a second lawsuit against TVA, alleging that maintenance projects at TVA’s Bull Run and Colbert Unit 5 fossil plants violated the Act for the same reasons cited in the EPA/justice department suit. These cases would defy resolution for more than a decade, but as the lawyers advanced their arguments, SAMI was interpreting the data produced by its integrated model and preparing to release its findings.
FROM CONFLICT TO COMITY— AND CLEANER AIR In 2002, SAMI released its final report, which included several key findings. SAMI’s data indicated that pollutants entering GSMNP originated at multiple points across a wide
geographic region—including, but not limited to, power plants in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Kentucky—and contributed significantly to acid deposition, haze, and ozone in GSMNP. But the findings further demonstrated that the point pollution sources located nearest to Class 1 areas had greater impact on air quality in those areas than more remote sources. SAMI confirmed coal-combustion as the leading source of SO2 emissions and, thus, the leading cause of visible haze in Class 1 areas. SAMI’s research indicated further that the higher-elevation forests and streams (above 3,000 feet) in GSMNP were particularly vulnerable to the effects of sulfate and nitrate (acid) deposition. Over the next decade, prompted in part by SAMI’s findings, TVA began to dramatically reduce emissions through installation of emission-control devices on many of its coalfired boilers while making plans to retire others. Reflective of a new operating paradigm, in August 2010, TVA announced its board of directors’ adoption of “a renewed vision for TVA’s future,” focusing on cleaner air and greater energy efficiency and reduced reliance on coal. “TVA’s basic mission has not changed, but the times have changed and requirements are changing for the energy industry,” said then TVA CEO Tom Kilgore in an announcement posted on the TVA website. “TVA’s vision to
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lead our nation toward a cleaner energy future means relying more on nuclear power, continuing to improve air quality, relying less on coal and sharpening our focus on energy efficiency.” By 2011, TVA, by its own account, had spent $5.3 billion on air-pollution controls, and, since air-quality regulation began, “reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 91 percent and annual nitrogen oxide emissions by 87 percent.” Over recent years, utilities in neighboring states also have achieved significant emissions reductions. As TVA significantly reduced its emissions in East Tennessee, Renfro’s monitoring equipment in GSMNP began to tell an increasingly positive story. “Since TVA installed scrubbers on its Bull Run [2008] and Kingston [2010] plants, we’ve seen record low levels of SO2 emissions and acid deposition and the clearest views we’ve ever recorded,” says Renfro.
A warming climate will have numerous negative impacts on GSMNP resources, including the spread of invasive plant and animal species, increasing range for insects and other disease carrying organisms, and possible extirpation of the high elevation spruce-fir ecosystem.
TVA AGREES TO FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS In 2011, EPA announced a sweeping agreement that resolved the pending lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice and the environmental organizations. The agreement will achieve additional gains in improved air quality in GSMNP. NPCA, the Sierra Club, Our Children’s Earth Foundation, and the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina were signatories to the agreement. Among other provisions, according to the terms of the agreement, TVA agrees to: • invest $3 to $5 billion on new and upgraded stateof-the-art pollution controls on its coal-fired plants, • invest $240 million in energy-efficiency initiatives (including a program to retrofit low-income housing with energy-efficiency technologies), • spend $40 million to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions through renewable energy projects. TVA further agreed to provide $1 million to the National Park Service and the National Forest Service “to improve, protect, or rehabilitate forest and park lands that have been impacted by emissions from TVA’s plants,” including GSMNP. In 2012, TVA began operating a “combined-cycle” plant at its John Sevier facility. The plant burns natural gas, not coal, to turn three power-generating turbines. The heat from the combustion process is captured and used to create steam to spin an additional turbine. According to the EPA, “natural gas produces half as much carbon dioxide, less than a third as much nitrogen oxides, and 1 percent as much sulfur oxides” as combustion of coal. TVA has introduced combined-cycle systems at several of its other plants, and this may reflect a growing trend toward the transition from coal to natural gas for energy production. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a controversial process whose environmental consequences have not been fully explored, allows for production of natural gas from formerly inaccessible underground reserves. Between 2008 and 2012, as fracking began to boost production of natural gas, costs of the fuel have declined by more than half.
Renfro’s Next Goals The story of GSMNP’s increasingly improved air quality spans four decades and involves a remarkably diverse range of characters: crusading advocates for environmental-protection; national, state, and local regulators; atmospheric modelers and other scientists; park staff; and, notably, the board of directors of the region’s largest power producer. Elected officials have helped, too, including U.S. Senator from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander. “Senator Alexander’s national leadership on air quality has
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been critical to the results we’ve seen here at home,” says Barger. “He understands the issue like few do in Congress, and the park’s gateway communities have told him how important it is to them. Senator Alexander cares about park air quality because he cares about the park.” And there’s no question that the steady and persistent message conveyed by Jim Renfro’s data has consistently informed the discussion, alerted the public to conditions in their mostloved national park, and provided the undeniable evidence (particularly through the 1980s and ’90s) that the park and its visitors were suffering. More recently, Renfro’s data have demonstrated clearly that TVA’s and other utilities’ efforts to reduce emissions are achieving measurable—and significant—results. After Renfro’s nearly three decades of reading the wind, compiling mountains of data, and firing up his PowerPoint® projector for audiences large and small, no one involved would question his right to throttle back for a time, bask in the success of his efforts, and savor the park’s ever-expanding views. But if you happen upon Renfro on Clingmans Dome or Look Rock or at any of the park’s other air-monitoring stations, chances are good that he’ll insist that there’s still plenty of work to be done. The air in the park is cleaner, yes, but, by Renfro’s reckoning, not yet clean enough. Barger agrees. “We’ve made significant progress, but we still have a long way to go,” he says. “And, while we’ve addressed many of the large utility sources, there are many more, and we’ve just begun to work on large industrial sources and mobile sources.” Indeed, air quality problems in GSMNP continue. EPA has designated several East Tennessee counties as nonattainment areas because of violations of the public health standards for ozone and particulate matter, and visibility in the park has yet to be restored to natural conditions, as required by the EPA’s Regional Haze Rule. Renfro also currently has his eye on a few additional airpollution issues that have been linked to human health effects or declining natural resource values.Carbon dioxide (CO2), which is produced through the combustion of fossil fuels, is the leading greenhouse gas, and scientists have linked humancaused CO2 emissions to climate change. According to the EPA, power production accounts for 40 percent of national CO2 emissions (transportation accounts for 31 percent). A warming climate will have numerous negative impacts on GSMNP resources, including the spread of invasive plant and animal species, increasing range for insects and other disease carrying organisms, and possible extirpation of the high elevation spruce-fir ecosystem. Also troubling is the atmospheric deposition of ammonium into park streams and soils, primarily from feed lots and other agricultural practices that emit the precursor gas ammonia. While nitrate and sulfate deposition in the park has declined since 1981, ammonium deposition has increased by 8 percent. “Ammonium can get into rain, snow, clouds, and particulate matter and contributes to acid deposition and regional haze,” says Renfro.
The Economics of Air The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires the EPA to regularly assess the benefits and costs of the act’s implementation, in terms of public health, economic growth, the environment, employment, and productivity. In 1999, EPA released a report (which underwent peer review) that projected the costs and benefits of the CAA’s 1990 amendments, from 1990 to 2010. The report, based on “an array of computer models and the latest emissions and cost data,” shows that by 2010, the CAA amendments will have prevented 23,000 premature deaths, 1.7 million asthma attacks, 67,000 incidences of chronic and acute bronchitis, 22,000 respiratory-related hospital admissions, 42,000 cardiovascular hospital admissions, and 4.1 million lost work days. The EPA estimates the value of these benefits at $110 billion, while the cost of achieving them (through, among other measures, emission controls) at about a quarter of that amount. In a press release issued by the EPA announcing the 2011 settlement of its pending lawsuit with the Tennessee Valley Authority, the EPA estimated that the settlement “will prevent approximately 1,200 to 3,000 premature deaths, 2,000 heart attacks and 21,000 cases of asthma attacks each year, resulting in up to $27 billion in annual health benefits.”
Also of concern to Renfro is mercury, a toxin that has yet to make its way onto EPA’s list of criteria pollutants, though in 2011, the EPA finalized its mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. The scrubbers and selective catalytic reduction systems TVA and other power producers have installed to reduce SO2 and NOx emissions at its plants also remove mercury. Wet deposition of the inorganic, less-harmful form of mercury at the park has declined by 37 percent since 2002. But Renfro points to concerns about inorganic mercury’s ability to convert into the more harmful form (methylmercury) and bioaccumulate in the food chain, as lower-order organisms (e.g., spiders) ingest the toxin and are, in turn, consumed by high-order species (e.g., birds). While a more cynical man might look at mercury and all the other pollutants intruding on the park’s air space and see job security, Renfro regards them, collectively, as part of an ongoing challenge and one that’s engaged him for nearly half his life. In the future, as in the past, whenever nefarious particles ride in on the wind and enter his park, you can bet that Renfro and his bank of monitoring equipment will be watching. v David Brill is the author of Desire & Ice, As Far as the Eye Can See, and myriad magazine stories for publications such as National Geographic Traveler and Men’s Health. He lives in a rustic cabin on the Cumberland Plateau. His last story for Smokies Life was on the Benton McKaye Trail.
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M
Mountain people used to say Will Messer had fifty cents and an old mule when he moved to Little Cataloochee. But Messer’s economic fortunes would change radically as he began to acquire land, build a home and prosperous farm, and engage in various and sundry enterprises. As families in neighboring Big Cataloochee grew, a few began to move across Noland Mountain in the 1850s to the small valley of Little Cataloochee. Others like Will Messer followed them to this idyllic spot on the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky Mountains. William G. B. Messer (the initials stood for Green
Berry) was born to Elija and Christine Messer in 1870. At age 24, he married Rachel Cook, daughter of Little Cataloochee pioneer Dan Cook. That year, 1894, Will moved with his new wife to the valley where he would raise a family and make his mark. Will’s brother-in-law sold him a nice piece of land in Little Cataloochee where he and Rachel first set up housekeeping. Most people today call it the “upper place.” The couple purchased more land, and by 1905, with eleven children in the family, they’d outgrown that small house. So they chose another site just down the road from Dan Cook’s log cabin.
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ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF GSMNP ARCHIVES
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Above: Three of William G.B and Rachel Cook Messer’s ten daughters: Ollie, Verda, and Viola. The Messer’s Ola Store, serving Little Cataloochee. Right: William G.B. and Rachel Cook Messer.
The one many people called “the big house”
was a showplace. It exemplified Will Messer’s master craftsmanship as carpenter and furniture maker, fed by his indefatigable energy and penchant for innovation.
Will and Rachel visited Hiram Caldwell back over in Big Cataloochee, who had just built one of the fancier homes in the area—a frame house of white weatherboard with blue trim. Will took that idea back to Little Cataloochee, and by 1910 he’d completed a house modeled after Caldwell’s—only bigger. The one many people called “the big house” was a showplace. It exemplified Will Messer’s master craftsmanship as carpenter and furniture maker, fed by his indefatigable energy and penchant for innovation.
The exterior of the three-story house was covered with weatherboarding, wood siding laid horizontally with each board overlapping the one below. The interior was paneled in straight-grain tuliptree. Messer had his own sawmill and may have milled all the wood himself, or at least a good part of it. His grandson, Harold Hannah, wasn’t sure though that Will could have turned out that much lumber. Lillian Hannah Stokes, Will and Rachel’s granddaughter, remembered the big house from the 1930s, when she, her
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brother Harold, and the rest of the Hannah family lived there. Long years later, sitting in her living room in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, Lillian sketched from clear memory the floor plan of the Messer home. Going up “quite a good number of steps,” you came onto the porch that wrapped around three sides of the house, enclosed with an ornate wood railing. Inside, two large front rooms were separated by a long hallway. One was a living room, the other a parlor where guests were entertained. Lillian distinctly recalled two rolltop desks flanking each side of the chimney, desks her grandfather made by hand. There were two more rooms on the ground floor, including the dining room with a long plank table that could seat fourteen. Everyone who partook of Rachel’s feasts would have pushed back from that table groaning with their fill of chicken and dumplings, country ham, cornbread, beans, and blackberry cobbler. The kitchen, located behind the dining room, was small considering the time Rachel spent there every day turning out those memorable meals. The second story of the house had four bedrooms, and a balcony porch that repeated the motif of the one downstairs. By all counts, Will Messer was an innovator who excelled in nearly anything he did. “Grandpa was an uneducated man,” Lillian observed, “but he was considered a genius. Whatever he decided to do, he’d do it.” And there were many, many endeavors. He didn’t stop with building the finest home in Little Cataloochee. Cataloochians
Members of the Messer family pose here in front of their grand home in Little Cataloochee. Will and Rachel had 11 children, so the space was not wasted. The three-story home featured rural luxuries such as gravity-fed running water and interior gas lighting. When the Messers were forced to leave their home for the establishment of the national park, they purchased over 1,200 acres near Lenoir, North Carolina.
sought him out when they needed a casket for a departed loved one. He kept a few on hand up on the third floor of the house, and sold them for seven dollars each. Rachel and daughter Flora stitched the silk or taffeta linings. Sadly, in 1920 Will and Rachel had to use the coffins when two of their own daughters died within one week of each other, caught in the deadly influenza epidemic that had swept the nation. Messer was always an early adopter of the latest technology. Water was gravity fed into the kitchen of the house, so they didn’t have to pump by hand. Of special note were the acetylene gas lamps on the walls of some rooms. Grandson Harold spoke of the carbide “plant,” a small building separate from the house where carbide was stored. When he was old enough to handle the potentially explosive material, Harold would add water to the carbide, which decomposed into the flammable gas, acetylene. His job also involved removing the leftover lime slurry, used as whitewash for fences.
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According to Hiram Wilburn, who has been called the park's "first historian," the Mingus house was “the finest dwelling in the park.” The house was located near the present-day Oconaluftee Job Corps Center and Park Service maintenance area 0.1 mile north of Oconaluftee Visitor Center. It was across the Oconaluftee River from where Newfound Gap Road (U.S. 441) runs today. After the residents moved away the house was used as a dormitory for park employees.
As the national park was being formed in the Smokies in the 1930s, technician Hiram Wilburn documented nearly all the structures that still existed. In his opinion, Dr. John Mingus’s home exemplified “the more opulent class.” “I think it may be said that the Mingus home (otherwise known as the Floyd Place) was the finest . . . dwelling in the park,” Wilburn wrote in his report subtitled “The More Pretentious Two-story House.” And despite the stereotypical view of mountain folk as backward and poverty ridden, some “families and communities enjoy a state of social and economic well-being.” Wilburn’s report gives the best detail we have on the outstanding architectural features of the Mingus house: decorative carpentry, full boxed eaves, arched window and door casements and entablature over the porch. Artistic mantels and beaded casement trim added interest inside the house. There were four large main rooms—two on the ground floor and two upstairs with “spacious halls between,” he noted. Although Wilburn did not mention them, four tall columns rose the height of the house, lending an antebellum feel. Three fine brick chimneys graced the structure, and a two-story stone
springhouse protected the home’s precious water source. All the framing timbers, exterior weatherboarding, and inside finish and trim material came from a local sash sawmill. The foundation timbers, corner posts, and braces were tight mortise-and-tenon. The wood planks for the interior trim were dried on site, then dressed, tongue-andgrooved, and beaded with a handplane. How much of this work was done by John Mingus himself we don’t know. He was already 79 years old in 1877, and his son Abraham did help build the house. Well-known ‘Luftee resident Aden Carver helped too. A master mechanic millwright, Carver reportedly did some of the foundation work in exchange for house calls “Dr.”John had made for him. The quotation marks around the title of “Dr.” are sometimes included because John Mingus was not a licensed medical doctor. Instead, most of his knowledge came from local Cherokees who were well versed in the medicinal properties of local herbs and plants. The Cherokee had long been living in villages and farms along the Oconaluftee River when the first land grants were made to white men. This river bottomland was among the best in the mountains and
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so was the first to be claimed. John Mingus’s forebears had settled there in the 1790s for that reason, gaining title from the Felix Walker land grant. After inheriting the land, John Mingus proceeded to clear, drain, and fence fields. Tradition holds that those fences were walnut rails hewed from timber growing on his land. Getting to the Mingus farm required crossing a ford on the river, before a footlog and then a rope bridge were installed. An old Indian trail crossed through “Indian Gap” from Tennessee into North Carolina, then down along the banks of the Oconaluftee. That route became the Oconaluftee Turnpike in the 1830s, a wagon road that for years saw the mass movement of cattle, hogs, turkeys, mules, and horses. Mingus’s neighbor Robert Collins was the turnpike’s first toll keeper. He charged 50 cents for horse and wagon, 6 ¼ cents for a horseback rider, 2 cents for one head of cattle, and a mere penny for a hog. Drovers and travelers who took the road found housing and food at ‘Luftee homes, bringing a measure of prosperity to some of the owners. During the Civil War years the turnpike was an important link for Dr. John Mingus. In those years he maintained his interest in the Epsom Salts Company at Alum Cave on the Tennessee side. Saltpeter deposits in the cave were mined for gunpowder, while other John and Mary Mingus’s daughter Sarah married into the Floyd family and their salts were extracted and used for medicine. progeny occupied the stately home long enough for it to be known as the Mingus-Floyd In 1865, Mingus received a letter from Will house. Pictured above, back row, from left: Frederick F. Floyd, Hattie F. Floyd (Hayes), Thomas, attorney and protector of the and Ed Floyd. Front row: John L. Floyd, Calgonia C. Floyd, and Lola F. Floyd (Lilard). Cherokee, asking the good doctor to procure “an ounce of asafetida and two gallons 1888. The Mingus Mill passed to his daughter, Sarah Floyd. of whiskey.” Thomas intended to use these items as a preHer family ran it for a time, and in the 1930s the Park Servventive against the feared scourge of smallpox. ice bought it. The Civilian Conservation Corps was brought It is known that John Mingus and some of his neighbors in to rehabilitate it in 1936; they called on millwright Aden did own slaves. Just above the Mingus Mill is a small cemeCarver, then in his 90s, to help with the restoration. The eftery with five mounds of dirt with small unmarked fieldfort proved worthwhile as the mill continues to operate with stones. Although the names of those people are unknown, it the original stones and many original parts to this day. is possible that one descendant was famous—jazz musician By that time, the Mingus house was referred to as the Charles Mingus, Jr., whose father claimed to be the off“John Jones place.” People like Fred Lambert, of Swain spring a Mingus slave. County, remembered as a boy hearing it called that, because In the postwar years, after building his grand house by John Jones lived in the house and leased the Mingus Mill. A the river, John Mingus then contracted to build a new gristman by the name of Major McGee was the miller there for a mill on Mingus Creek. He obtained a set of quartz milltime. Major’s nephew, Bill Rolen, Jr., recalled visiting his Unstones from France to grind wheat, then hired craftsman cle McGee in the home as well. Sion Thomas Early to construct the mill. Finished in 1886, Through the late 1930s, Hiram Wilburn and others perit had a water-powered metal turbine that could turn out a sisted in the call to save the Mingus home. But, Park Superlot more cornmeal and flour than mills with the classic intendent J.R. Eakin summarily stated in a 1940 letter that overshot wheel. the house had “no pioneering characteristics” and was not Dr. John Mingus died in his palatial home on April 26,
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Acknowledgments—Don Casada, Wendy Meyers, and Mike Knies added immeasurably to the research for this article. Kent Cave and Brad Free at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and former NPS ranger Tom Robbins, did the same. Thanks also to Lillian Stokes Hannah for her generous time and recollections, and to Steve Woody for a fascinating tour of Little Cataloochee. The author also extends special gratitude to the endless efforts of former park librarian, Annette Hartigan. University of Tennessee graduate Rose Houk is the author of Smoky Mountain Elk: Return of the Native and Storied Stitches: Quilts & Coverlets of the Smokies. In addition, she has written over 40 other books on national parks and cherished public lands. Her last piece for Smokies Life was on dogwood trees.
BOTH PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF GSMNP ARCHIVES
PHOTOGRAPH BY KENT CAVE
PHOTOGRAPH BY JERRY WHALEY
worth the money to keep it habitable. The house was gone by the mid 1950s. On a warm June day in 2013, Bill Rolen, Jr. paid a visit to the Mingus homesite. He stood quietly and looked around, seeing nothing to suggest that one of the finest homes in the Great Smokies had ever occupied this ground. But as he looked a little longer, Bill spotted a black willow and a tall green balsam tree. He was pretty sure those trees were growing beside the home nearly 75 years ago. Now, a lone tree, a clump of yellowbells, a rusted metal bucket, or a few bricks from a chimney are the only signs of an old homesite—those and many memories. v
Top left, clockwise: The Mingus house in 1940. The bridge now leads to a Job Corps Center and Park Service maintenance facility. A cemetery for the slaves of the Mingus family is located on a hill near Mingus Mill. Some speculate that Charles Mingus, the famous jazz musician, was a descendant of a Mingus family slave. The Floyd Cemetery, just off Newfound Gap Road, contains graves for members of the Mingus and Floyd families. The obelisk stands for the Mingus family; the three monoliths are for the Floyd family. Both John Mingus, Jr. and Abraham Mingus are buried here. Sketch plan from the Mingus building report, 1953-54.
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Compiled by Wingate Hannah, 1970
Before the national park was established in the early 1930s, as many as 1,200 people lived in Big and Little Cataloochee. The area was well known for its apple orchards and livestock, but it also had a budding tourist-based economy. Anglers were happy to come to the area for a week or two and pay for lodging and the right to catch stocked trout from the tumbling mountain streams.
The Cataloochees: Big and Little
The Cataloochee Turnpike allowed farmers to transport crops and livestock to markets as far away as Knoxville, Waynesville, Newport, and Asheville.
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Your purchases support important park projects like the elk reintroduction and a wide range of educational programs intended to head-off conflicts between people and bears.
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volume 7 #2
Missie King Oakley making apple butter. Louis Voorheis' German Shepherd sits nearby. Circa 1933.
SMO KIES LIFE MAG A ZIN E
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