'One of the Most Beautiful Places on Earth'

There are those who scoff at our mountains. It’s true. None of you reading now, of course, but we’ve heard the snickers and the disbelief. “You call those mountains?” they say, ‘they’ being those who know taller mountains, jagged peaks that jut into a clear blue sky and stand like sentinels, daring anyone who goes near to try and cross.

They don’t know that our softer, blue-hazed peaks once formed a seemingly impossible barrier, too, or at least a difficult one. Beneath their cloud-capped crests and tree-covered slopes lie secrets known only to those who grew up there, or took the time to see beyond the deceptively rolling summits to the deep and often narrow valleys, the rough ridge lines, and the grassy, wind-swept balds.

These are our mountains, our Appalachians—the southern Appalachians, the Blue Ridge, the Unakas. The only places where the Appalachian Trail tops 6,000 feet south of New Hampshire. Three of those spots, including one of the highest balds in the entire mountain range, are peaks of Roan Mountain, the centerpiece of the 20-mile massif known as the Highlands of Roan.

Or, to those who know and love it, just the Roan.

Overmountain

The Roan was the first obstacle faced by the Overmountain Men, hardscrabble pioneers who set out on September 26, 1780, heading for South Carolina and British forces who were threatening to swarm into the mountains, “hang their leaders and lay waste to the country with fire and sword.” That’s what Major Patrick “Mad Dog” Ferguson told them, anyway, calling them “mongrels” for good measure. The mountaineers mustered at Sycamore Shoals (now Elizabethton) on the Watauga River before starting their 330 mile trek.

These mounted infantrymen followed the Doe River toward Roan Mountain, marching in the rain until they found a flat area large enough for an encampment alongside the river. And just above the river on its opposite bank, a large, overhanging rock perfect for keeping the gunpowder dry. Shelving Rock, sometimes known as Sheltering Rock, no longer looks as it did when John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, and William Campbell led their men there: It was partially filled in when State Highway 143 was built. But in 1780 it was plenty large enough to stash the 500 pounds of powder they were carrying.

They spent the night there on that bend of the Doe, got up the next morning and began the difficult march up the mountain, soon leaving the river to follow the Yellow Mountain Road up the rugged slopes. Steep as it was—and still is—the Yellow Mountain trail was 700 feet lower than the Roan Mountain trail, but not enough of a difference to prevent the rain from the day before becoming a steady snowfall.

By the time the backwoodsmen reached the bald at the top of Yellow Mountain Gap, the snow was said to be “shoe mouth deep”—about 2 to 4 inches. The commanders ordered a halt to give the men a rest after the long climb. It was afternoon before they began the march down the Yellow Mountain Road along what’s now Roaring Creek—then sometimes called Roan Creek—and it didn’t take long until the light began to fade. They camped for the night by a spring.

After roll call the next morning, they started again, and every day until they found Ferguson at King’s Mountain in South Carolina, which turned out to be a bad place to defend against 1,000 mountaineers, who took just over an hour to rout the British and put down the Mad Dog.

‘Why, fellers …’

It was another 81 years before anyone lived in that narrow valley on the south side of Yellow Mountain. That man was Jeremiah “Jerry” Hughes, who crossed a ridge from Cane Creek in 1861. The Hughes land came down through several generations until part of it reached Chris Hughes, now a hospice chaplain and adjunct professor at Northeast State Community College in Blountville, Tennessee.

“I loved my home place,” Chris says. “It was kind of an old ramshackle house. Most of it had settled and fallen right down on the ground. The property itself was amazing, right on the banks of the creek.”

And steep. Chris tells the tale of the time property taxes went up a bit more than his dad, George, and other Creekers cared for, so the lot of ‘em headed over to the county courthouse to see about having the property assessments lowered.

“Why, fellers,” George told the commissioners, “that ol’ hill is so steep a chicken’d have to hook its beak under a root to keep from fallin’.”

Decades later, when it became obvious that Chris wouldn’t be moving back to the creek, he started looking around for something to do with his property that would fall in line with his “sense of place”—the title of a book he’s written about growing up on the Roan. What he found was the Southern Appalachian Highland Conservancy.

“I knew about the conservancy,” he said, “and knew they owned some property in Roaring Creek valley ... I contacted them and the rest just fell into place.”

Not just fell into place—while the process took a while, Chris talked his brother and sister, who also owned property along the creek, into joining him. In the end, the conservancy bought 120 acres deep in the valley.

Chris sold his land “because he wants it to never be developed,” says Marquette Crockett, the conservancy’s Roan stewardship director and a native East Tennesseean. And that’s just what the conservancy is looking for.

Crockett says the organization works only with willing sellers and has a variety of conservation options available, from helping transfer valuable land to Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee, or another public agency to outright buying property and managing it.

That includes buying conservation easements, particularly on mountain farms, and helping farmers maintain both the beauty of their property and its value as local agriculture.

“Farms are usually the most beautiful and exactly those places that people would love to put a development,” Crockett said.

With a conservation easement in place, “When (property owners) go to bed at night, they know that farm is always gonna be a farm.”

Sustainable recreation

Since its incorporation in 1974, the conservancy has permanently protected more than 75,000 highlands acres throughout the ‘focus areas’: from the Highlands of Roan, to North Carolina’s Black and Balsam Mountains, to the French Broad River Valley and lands adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachian Trail.

The SAHC currently manages about 4,000 acres on the Roan—with an additional 7,500 acres about to be added in 2022, thanks to a generous donation from a conservation philanthropist. It’s the largest single gift in SAHC’s history, says CEO Carl Silverstein, and it’s “an ecological wonderland.”

“This an example of a donor who really picked our organization to receive this because, I think, he feels we are the best custodian of this treasured place,” Silverstein said.

The new acreage won’t be freely open to the public, however—although views into the land promise to be spectacular. The new South Yellow Mountain Preserve will be a little more controlled, with guided hikes and camping trips.

“It’s gonna take balancing,” Silverstein said, “finding that balance where people can have some access in certain controlled ways to enjoy it, but that we are sure that it’s conserved and not overused.”

The conservancy’s latest acquisition—150 acres directly adjacent to Tennessee’s Roan Mountain State Park—is going in a different direction. The Sugar Hollow property in the Doe River watershed will eventually be added to the park, with new trails and camping spots—and possibly some backcountry camping. The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail passes the lower edge of the property, where the Revolutionary War backwoodsmen left the Doe River after spending the night at Shelving Rock and started the arduous trek up Yellow Mountain.

“When we have an opportunity to acquire a tract of land and use it for a public purpose, that’s what the organization was founded to do back in the ‘60s,” Silverstein said. “When we’re able to do that, it’s our highest purpose.”

The southern Appalachians have become increasingly popular over recent years, as anyone who’s tried to drive over the Smokies’ Newfound Gap on just about any given weekend can attest. The Roan’s popularity is on the rise, too, driven at least partly by social media and hash-tagging. Where once the roads over the mountain saw their greatest traffic only during the summer’s rhododendron bloom at the Roan’s 200-acre Rhododendron Gardens, or during the vibrant explosion of color in the fall, visitors are pouring into the area at many other times, as well.

Take Carver’s Gap, for example—the vehicular gateway to so much on the Roan. Twenty years ago, the area was considered remote.

“Now it’s so hard to find parking up there,” Silverstein said. “And the Appalachian Trail itself—so many people hike on that, there’s erosion issues at the top of the mountain.”

The conservancy says the increase in tourism is good—it’s certainly an economic boon to towns like Bakersville in North Carolina, and Roan Mountain in Tennessee. But the conservancy also needs to “spread the love across the Roan,” as Crockett says.

“We’re looking at how do you make sustainable recreation,” she said. “We want people to go, we want people to enjoy it. We want people to take those beautiful pictures home.”

Sky islands

People have been coming to see the highlands for a very long time. In the 18th Century, a former Civil War Union General—John T. Wilder—built a hotel at Tollhouse Gap. It was wildly popular, but ultimately unsustainable because of the difficulty of the terrain to keep it supplied, and the wind, which made the hotel “rock like a ship on at sea,” as essayist Charles Dudley Warner wrote.

Before Wilder’s hotel, botanists came to the Roan because of its unique landscape. Roan Mountain itself is a stretch of five peaks: The westernmost Roan High Bluff (6,267 feet) and Roan High Knob (6,285 feet) are covered with thick, coniferous forests of red spruce and Fraser fir usually found only in the far northeastern United States or Canada. Three more peaks create a seven-mile stretch of grassy highland bald, the longest in the Appalachians: Round Bald (5,823 feet), Jane Bald (5,810 feet, and Grassy Ridge Bald (6,184 feet) make up the great expanse of Grassy Ridge, in all 1,000 acres of highland bald.

Crockett calls the peaks “sky islands.” “It’s just so different from the forests you’re used to around your house,” she said.

The origin of the spruce-fir forests are well known—they’re the leftovers from the last glaciation, when such forests grew as far south as Florida. The balds, though—they’re another matter. The secrets of the balds, great stretches of grasses where you’d expect a forest to grow, have defied some of the world’s greatest botanical minds. They just don’t grow trees. Or rather, as Dr. D.M. Brown of the Tennessee State Teacher’s College (now East Tennessee State University) learned, the balds don’t grow trees that reproduce.

Brown planted a group of Fraser fir seedlings on Round Bald in the 1930s. The trees grew to maturity—but never produced viable seeds. Brown’s stand of trees is still there, slowly dying of old age.

Change

The spectacular beauty of the Roan has not always been appreciated. Logging and mining threatened both the stunning views and the serenity of these highlands for decades, but slowly, with the steady help of the conservancy, that’s changing, and vast stretches have been and are being protected. But while the conservancy and its partner organizations join forces to ensure the area’s rising popularity and its breathtaking scenery work hand-in-hand for the enjoyment of all, there’s one area where the Roan’s stewards can do little more than wait and watch: Climate.

“That’s an interesting piece on the Roan,” Crockett said. “Some of the ecosystems on the Roan are so endangered because they’re high elevation already. As things get warmer, they can’t go any further. They’re already at the top.”

But those ecosystems have already proven to be resilient, she said. “It’s gonna be able to adapt somehow, really well. But what that picture will be in 50 or 100 years, we don’t really know.”

Whatever it is, though, the Roan will remain, as Crockett says, “one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

Time Has A Way of Changing Everything

Chris Hughes’ daughter read his book, A Sense of Place: My Life and Times on Roaring Creek, and told him it seemed kinda sad. With chapter titles like “Gravy Is My Favorite Beverage,” Hughes wasn’t wholly sure what she meant, but there is a melancholic air, not just in the book, but over nearly the whole of the southern Appalachians. It’s a little hard to see when you’re in it, but perspective makes it a little sharper.

I suppose it comes from the challenging lives we lead, how difficult it is to bring the resources into our communities that would lift us enough above poverty that we could more clearly see the lines. The small city in the valley nearest where I’m from chose to cultivate industry, which still is eating up the rural farm lands and forests that make our area unique—and that brings its own melancholia, not to mention nostalgia.

Roaring Creek, the narrow valley on the Roan where Hughes grew up, faces a different kind of development—the one where people with money dot the mountainsides with lavish homes, clinging to the slopes to give their owners the spectacular vistas they crave while despoiling the views of those who still live down below, those who have always looked up and down, as well as out for their views of the world around them.

I knew A Sense of Place was a special book when one chapter opened with a pop quiz—True or false: “Hillbilly, Redneck, and Southern Appalachian Highlanders are all equivalent terms, describing the same people group.” I looked around, as if Chris Hughes himself might be watching, and wondered aloud if this was a trick question. Of course it’s false. Even if there is some overlap.

Part memoir and part history, Hughes’ book tells his story, the story of a Southern Appalachian Highlander hunting crayfish in the creek tumbling by the house, heading off to college in South Carolina with trepidation, tracking down the family tales that made the valley—and the people—what and who they are. It’s sad, and funny, and real, the human part of the Roan that almost never gets told outside family gatherings.

Hughes lives on the Tennessee side of the mountain now, but Roaring Creek is as much a part of him as, well, his family, because in the Appalachians, our places are as much family as the people.

But as A Sense of Place points out, time has a way of changing everything, even those places in our hearts that are seemingly more constant. In the book, Hughes writes that his “upbringing was simple, plain, and pretty barebones basic,” and that he’s “blessed to have been nurtured in a place where the hazy peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains kiss the face of the sky.”

And then that melancholia returns, as Hughes learns that, like so many of us, he couldn’t return to the Roaring Creek of his youth. The stories, and the place, though, are still right where he left them.

— By KC Wildmoon