Defying the Odds

In the winter of 1875, Polly Maples had an ominous feeling as her husband prepared to leave her, their children, and the warmth of the hearth in their humble mountain cabin. The previous night, a traveling salesman had boarded in the Maples family home just north of Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Polly’s husband had agreed to guide him across the rugged mountains to Cherokee, N.C. 

Perhaps Polly had observed the rhododendron leaves curling into tight pencil shaped rolls, unusual squirrel and bird activity, or one of numerous other folk signs pioneers relied on to predict the weather. Or possibly she had an unexplainable gut feeling she could not shake. Despite his wife’s misgivings David Crockett Maples had promised the salesman he would lead him to North Carolina and a mountain man’s word was his bond. 

Born Oct. 20, 1838, David Crockett Maples grew up in the Banner community about two miles from the Gatlinburg Post Office. As a boy he learned to trap, hunt, and fish throughout the Smokies, and to tame the rugged terrain into productive farmland. He was a skilled outdoorsman and confident in his ability to survive in the harsh, uncertain times in which he lived. 

Known as Crockett, the 6’3” tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired young man was 21 years old when he married 25-year-old Mary “Polly” Ogle on March 17, 1860. Polly was expecting their second child when Crockett enlisted in Company H, 9th Tennessee Cavalry on Oct. 18, 1863.

As a Union soldier, Crockett served under the command of Colonel Joseph H. Parsons. Inadequately equipped, the ragged regiment was assigned to small communities across East Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, and Southwest Virginia. The soldiers were hungry, cold and sometimes barefoot throughout the Civil War. By the time Maples was discharged in 1865, he was no different than most mountaineers: independent, stubborn and a born fighter. If the war had done anything, it had strengthened his belief that he could face any adversity. 

In the dozen years following the Civil War, Crockett and Polly had six more children. In addition to their farm, the couple supported their growing family with a small supply store at the foot of Mt. LeConte. They earned additional income offering room and board for hungry, tired travelers who wandered into the mountains, and providing stables and feed for their horses. They were widely known for the hearty breakfast they served their boarders.

Occasionally, a sojourner would ask Maples to provide guide services to various locations throughout the Smoky Mountains. Since he was familiar with the mountain trails, Maples was more than willing in order to earn a little extra money. 

Such was the case on that fateful day in 1875 when Maples, then 38, started out with the traveling salesman to show him the way to Cherokee. Even if the weather changed before he returned, Maples was confident enough in his well-earned survival skills to make it back home unharmed. Poor Polly, pregnant with her eighth child at the time, remained behind with the children, ages 1 to 15. 

The two men left the Maples’ place on horseback before dawn and traveled south through Gatlinburg and the Sugarlands community heading up to the crest of the Smokies. Before they had gotten to Newfound Gap, nature had ambushed them. Snow fell steadily, and visibility had decreased. Heavy winds had created massive snowdrifts and the temperature had dropped drastically.

When at last they had reached Newfound Gap, Maples had decided to head back toward home. To his companion, he pointed out the path to Cherokee and started down the mountain. The storm was relentless, and Maples could no longer see the trail. Having concluded that he could not continue, he found a hollow log, crawled inside, and doubted he would see the light of another day. 

At home, Polly had watched as conditions had deteriorated. With no means of communication with neighbors, she had prayed and worried, hoped for the best and feared the worst. 

Maples awoke the next morning amazed he had not frozen to death in the night—but both his legs were numb. He mustered the will and strength to mount his horse, which had survived the night by having continued to stomp and move around, and rode several miles down the mountain to the nearest house, David Brackins’ homestead, located just above the present-day Chimney’s picnic grounds. 

Suffering from exposure and severely frostbitten, Maples collapsed onto the Brackins’ porch. They brought Maples into the warm cabin, and the family sent word to Polly, who sent some of her relatives to the Brackins’ home.

Maples was strapped to a homemade litter and carried home. The family summoned a doctor—gangrene had set in to Maples’ severely frostbitten feet. The doctor observed the gravity of the damage and told the family he had no choice but to amputate both feet.

At the time, surgery killed as many as it cured, mostly due to sepsis. But with no other option to save his life, Maples was carried out to the woodshed. They poured enough moonshine down his throat to knock him out before the dreaded procedure began, and with a crude hand saw, the doctor sawed off the bottom third of Maples’ legs. 

Maples survived the ordeal. By spring he had sufficiently recovered and had enough strength and pluck to design a pair of wooden feet to fill his boots. He strapped the homemade feet to his legs, and, with the help of two canes, he was once again mobile. Within a short time he was attending to many of the tasks he had done before the incident.

For the next ten years, he and Polly raised their family together and operated their store and boarding house. Travelers unfamiliar with the story were amazed when they met Maples and duly impressed with his dogged determination. 

It was Polly who died first, on April 17, 1885 at age 51.

The following year Maples married Lucinda King, who was 20 years his junior. Together they had eight children, making Maples progenitor of a large, widespread mountain family of 16 children, the last of which was born in 1902 when Maples was almost 64. It seemed his fortitude knew no bounds. Later in his life a doctor removed one of Maples’ eyes, again without anesthesia. One oral tradition maintains that when Maples was well into his 60s and unable to carry a rifle, he killed a bear while armed only with a knife.

His large brood of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren greatly admired Maples. They rallied around him in his old age, and he became quite a fixture in Gatlinburg—an aging man walking around on wooden feet and supported on two canes. He died at the ripe old age of 90 on December 30, 1928; 53 years after that fateful snowstorm that almost ended his life. 

Maples in modern day

As the years passed, David Crockett Maples’ family, friends, and neighbors perpetuated his legend. Several family members were instrumental in Gatlinburg’s development, and often cited him as their inspiration. One of his grandsons, Rel Maples, named Crockett Mountain, on which he built the Gatlinburg Sky Lift, in honor of his beloved grandfather.

Hattie Ogle McGiffin, one of Crockett Maples’ grandchildren, was a leading businesswoman in Gatlinburg throughout her 104-year-long life. She loved to tell the story of her grandfather’s survival and often credited her grandfather as a major influence in her life.

Hattie had begun working in her father Squire Isaac’s general store when she was 14. After she married Charlie Ogle and raised her children, Hattie had entered the business world by opening a craft shop. Once she had realized visitors needed a place to stay; she had opened and operated a tourist home. She then had added two motels and an RV park to her growing business empire. She rented her apartment for $35 a night and slept on a cot in the laundry room to bring in additional income for her investments. 

Pledging to deliver quality food and service and to honor the legacy of Crockett Maples, a group of investors that includes some of his descendents, recently opened Crockett’s Breakfast Camp on the Parkway in Gatlinburg. A life-size wooden statue of the remarkable Crockett Maples stands in front of the business. Kirby Smith, great-great-great grandson of Crockett Maples and an owner of the Breakfast Camp said, “Growing up hearing the stories of my ancestor Crockett Maples, I’ve always admired his fortitude. I have a tremendous respect for him and other mountaineers like him who faced unimaginable obstacles to scratch out an existence in the rugged mountains.”

Mistaken identity

In the fall of 1940, Pulitzer Prize winner Ernie Pyle—a journalist who was known for his columns as a roving correspondent for Scripts-Howard newspaper chain—visited Gatlinburg. During that time he wrote 11 columns about Gatlinburg, the native people, and the trip he took to Mount LeConte. In one of those columns he wrote about the Maples family:

“Maples—There are two brothers of the older Maples generation. One is Squire I. L. Maples, who once owned a store (I don’t know how the Ogles allowed that) and was once postmaster. The other brother is David Crockett Maples. They are direct descendants of the famous Davy Crockett, who died at the Texas Alamo.”

No doubt he made the statement about the Ogles because the family had operated a store in the settlement for several generations. 

Whether Pyle was told the story or he assumed the Maples brothers were descended from Davy Crockett is debatable. Regardless, the story is erroneous. The mail carrier Pyle wrote about was David Crockett Maples, Jr., a son of Crockett Maples who survived the snowstorm ordeal. The senior was named after his uncle David Crockett McMahan, one of his mother’s brothers who was born in Virginia in 1796 when the famous Davy Crockett was only 10 and living in obscurity in Tennessee. Because of the sensational survival story and the coincidental name, many have assumed or repeated the tale that he was related to the famous frontiersman.

A blizzard to remember

The Storm of the Century, also known as the Great Blizzard of 1993, dumped more than nine feet of snow in the higher elevations of the Smoky Mountains, and threatened a school group’s lives. 

Although the National Weather Service meteorologists predicted a significant snowstorm, some people were taken by surprise. Such was the case for a group of more than 100 students and faculty members from Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School—an exclusive prep school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.—that became stranded as the result of the enormous accumulation. 

The deadly storm struck on Friday, March 12, and continued to pound the Smokies with relentless force on Saturday. According to the Weather Channel, the astounding snowstorm buried Mount LeConte, elevation 6,593 feet, underneath 60 inches of frozen white powder. Compounding the problem were enormous snowdrifts that added in some places as much as 10 additional feet to the already staggering numbers.

According to newspaper accounts, the group of hikers from Michigan was in the rugged Smoky Mountains near the Tennessee-North Carolina border as part of a school-sponsored Wilderness Expedition. The 10-day backpacking and camping trip was to develop students’ outdoor skills, positive attitudes towards challenging situations, and ability to meet the physical demands the environment brought.

When the hikers arrived by bus on Saturday, March 6, they divided into groups of eight and 10 and set off for hiking and survival training. Despite the rugged ridges, all was going well, and the weather was unseasonably warm for early March. The group had no warning of the impending blizzard—an event the Nation­al Snow and Ice Data Center defines as a violent winter storm lasting at least three hours and combining below freezing temperatures and very strong wind laden with blowing snow that reduces visibility to less than a mile. Some even had braved frigid mountain waters for a swim before the snow began to fall. 

As the snow came down, Danielle Swank, age 15 of Libertyville, Ill., suffered her second asthma attack of the trip, forcing a hockey player to take on the added weight of her backpack as onward they trudged. In order to gain the true wilderness experience, the students had come without tents and instead used tarpaulins that they spread over a rope to create shelter. When the ferocity of the storm hit around three o’clock the next morning, the snow’s massive weight caused their tarpaulin cover to collapse.

At daybreak, the half-frozen hikers decided to go for help and headed down the mountain. By afternoon, Danielle and an instructor, James Woodruff, had fallen behind and snowfall had covered the footprints of those ahead of them. They soon found themselves lost and alone. 

Cold, wet and exhausted, the two pitched their tarp. Swank couldn’t get one of her boots off and Woodruff, showing signs of hypothermia, didn’t even try. The next morning, Danielle couldn’t get that boot back on, so Woodruff decided to strike out alone hoping to find the others. He left Danielle with the tarp, food and his sleeping bag.

Nearly four days passed as Danielle faced unbearable cold and an unsure future. There were crazed moments during which she railed at the bitter weather and the vastness of the white landscape. On Monday, March 15, around 2 p.m., a National Guard medical helicopter located her, and another chopper picked up the rest of her group about 45 minutes later. Eventually, doctors had to amputate all five toes from Danielle’s right foot, which had been frozen inside her boot. Woodruff and all the others made full recoveries.

Successful rescue

Eric Johnson and Randy Laws, both Eagle Scouts, went into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Thanksgiving weekend 1974 to hike a stretch of the Appalachian Trail. A winter storm blew in, dumped several feet of snow and whipped up drifts approaching five feet. Johnson and Laws thus were stranded at the Tricorner Knob Shelter along the trail. 

When the boys’ parents discovered the storm had closed Newfound Gap Road, which prevented them from meeting the boys at the predetermined trailhead, they turned to park rangers to help find their sons.

Deep snows hampered searchers. On December 2, 1974, three days after the boys headed down the Appalachian Trail, a Chinook helicopter crew from Ft. Campbell Airbase spotted them. The crew, along with park rangers, hoisted the boys into the hovering chopper and whisked them to safety.

Every Dec. 3 since the boys were rescued, Eric’s mom, Wanetta Johnson of Johnson City, Tenn., has had a poinsettia delivered to park headquarters near Gatlinburg, in appreciation of her son’s rescue. As for Eric, the ordeal 40 years ago did not scare him away from the outdoors. Now a retired special agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration, he went on to climb Mt. Rainer as well as peaks in South America.

Unfortunate event

Not all stories of people caught in snowstorms in the Smoky Mountains have a happy ending. In an article published in the Upland Chronicles column of Sevierville, Tenn.’s, Mountain Press on March 3, 2013, writer Butch McDade said that on April 2, 1915, two men, Jim and Joe Cole were returning home from a hunting trip on the North Carolina side of the mountains when they found a young boy frozen to death. 

The brothers found the body under an overhanging rock, beneath which the boy had sought protection from a snowstorm. They rigged up a stretcher and dragged the corpse over the mountains to their Sugarlands community just south of Gatlinburg. Along the way, the men passed one resident who said the boy had gone by his cabin several days earlier and had refused to heed his warning to turn back despite the bad weather.

For several days the entire Sugarlands community was abuzz about the unfortunate victim’s fate, but no one in the community knew him or who his relatives might be. Furthermore, they were not aware of anyone who was missing that fit the boy’s description. Reluctantly, members of the community dressed the boy in new clothes and gave him a decent Christian burial. 

Sixty years passed before the mystery was solved. In May 1975, Virgie F. Smith of Knoxville, Tenn., walked into the Sugarlands Visitor’s Center two miles south of Gatlinburg and told Ranger Glen Cardwell she was looking for information about her long-lost brother who had reportedly vanished somewhere in the Smoky Mountains six decades earlier. She was attempting to bring closure to a family tragedy that had haunted her for so many years.

Smith said that at the time of her brother’s disappearance her family lived in Blount County, Tenn. She had always heard that in the spring of 1915 her brother Edward McKinley, who his family called Edd, had gotten into an argument with their father. As a result of the altercation and with the idea of living with relatives in North Carolina, Edd took off into the mountains alone. That was the last the family ever saw of him.

Luckily, Cardwell remembered a letter telling the story of the body of an unidentified boy being found in the Smokies many years earlier. He found the letter and reviewed its contents with Smith, then located Earnest Ogle, who had been about 10 years old when the tragedy occurred and had helped dig the unidentified boy’s grave. After several meetings and comparisons of facts, individuals involved concluded that the mystery had been solved. Several months later Virgie Smith and other members of her family gathered with park officials at the gravesite and erected a gravestone.