John E. “Jack” Coburn

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Jack Coburn

Jack Coburn was a pivotal figure in regional affairs at the onset of the Great Depression.

Relatively few folks living in today’s Smokies will recognize the name Jack Coburn. When the Great Smoky Mountains National Park recently recognized the 100 most important individuals in its history, his name was absent. At best, you will find passing reference to this remarkable man in other published sources, though he merits far more attention.

Coburn figures in the 1988 Swain County Heritage history solely in entries about others. Margaret Brown’s carefully researched history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, The Wild East, makes no mention of him. The same holds true for Dan Pierce’s fine study, The Great Smokies, and Coburn is barely mentioned in Michael Frome’s delightful work, Strangers in High Places.

Yet Jack Coburn was a pivotal figure in regional affairs at the onset of the Great Depression, and arguably of greater significance in the Park’s creation than anyone on the North Carolina side of the Smokies. Those who recognize his name likely do so because Coburn Knob, located on land he donated to the Park, is named for him. Occasionally someone has sufficient familiarity with local history to know he and his wife provided the cemetery plots where writer Horace Kephart and Fiswoode Tarleton—the author of a book about mountain life titled Bloody Ground—were buried after they died together in an April 1931 vehicle accident. For the         most part though, Coburn is forgotten, his achievements blown away by the winds of time like a milkweed spore caught in an autumn breeze.

During his life, citizens of Swain and Macon counties held him in great esteem. Throughout western North Carolina he was heralded as an entrepreneur, land broker, real estate agent, timber man, surveyor, investor, financier, and civic leader—a true regional mover and shaker. From the conclusion of World War I until his untimely death in 1934, Coburn was likely the wealthiest man in far western North Carolina. He was for a number of years a member of the board of trustees for Western Carolina Teachers College and a member of the State Board of Equalization. A September 22, 1929, Asheville Sunday Citizen newspaper article styled him “the Good Samaritan of W. N. C.” He signed the first deed for land in North Carolina made over to the Park to set an example, and served, thanks to earning the trust of local residents and timber barons, as a key facilitator in land acquisition for the Park. 

Born in Michigan in 1866, Coburn came to the Smokies on a timber-connected job as a young man of 21. Upon the work’s completion others in his party returned home, but Jack had fallen in love with the Smokies and stayed. Through dint of hard work and a winning personality he became, according to a visiting writer, “king of this mountain region.” A powerfully built man, Coburn was “bright, combative, [and] red-headed.” For an outlander, he became immensely popular. “The moonshiner confides in him and the revenue agent accepts his hospitality. Quarreling mountaineers come to him as a judge, and lumber barons and mining speculators give much for his opinion and his influence.” In short, Coburn was a man almost everyone held in esteem. 

Locals took to him in part because, not long after settling in the region, Jack flattened a notorious bully who was abusing property he had leased from Coburn. He had done some professional boxing, and this incident, along with a couple other bouts of fisticuffs initiated by locals eager to test Coburn’s mettle, endeared the normally genial outlander to boisterous mountaineers. 

Jack developed a coterie of friends ranging from notorious moonshiner Quill Rose to humble folks along Hazel Creek; from Horace Kephart to bastions of local society. When Rose was arrested by federal agents, he asked Coburn to “go his bail.” Jack did more than post bond; he brought together an impressive cadre of leading citizens to address the judge on Quill’s behalf. It apparently worked, because Rose never served a day of the prison time he assuredly deserved. 

Coburn was delightfully eccentric. My father, who knew him fairly well, delighted in describing Jack as a rotund man “big in body and even larger in personality.” A natty dresser, he invariably had a cigar in his mouth; however, the only times he actually lit the stogie was once a year on Christmas Day.

In his early Smokies’ years he rode Button, his beloved horse, almost everywhere he went. So enamored was Coburn of his equine companion that when Button died he had the faithful mount ceremoniously buried at his home at the juncture of Bone Valley Creek and Hazel Creek. Long after Button’s demise, Jack would return to the grave to ponder the “good old days” of riding his faithful horse across the rugged mountains.  With Button’s death and increasing use of the automobile in the mountains, Jack turned to that mode of transportation, although he personally never learned to drive.

Coburn may well have been Horace Kephart’s closest friend. Unquestionably the two were boon companions, although seemingly sharing little in common other than being outlanders with a devotion to creating a national park. Coburn was outgoing, gregarious, the quintessential businessman, happily married to a local woman (nee Bland Wiggins), active in local affairs, and a genteel philanthropist. Kephart - a noted author of articles and books about Appalachian lifestyles and culture - was basically the opposite. Perhaps the most striking difference between the friends, however, is the manner in which Coburn melded into mountain culture and became accepted to a degree Kephart never attained.

Differences aside, they were close throughout Kephart’s Smokies’ years. It was Coburn who arranged for Kephart to stay at the cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork when he first came to the high country. They did some camping together, and local legend maintains that Coburn periodically supported the chronically impoverished Kephart. Certainly he did so at Kephart’s death, with the burial taking place in a plot belonging to Coburn’s wife.    He likely underwrote funeral expenses and served as executor of Kephart’s estate. 

 With the Park’s creation the Coburns left Hazel Creek and moved to Bryson City. They lived for a time in the Cooper House, then, a few years before their deaths, built their own home. It is today part of a motel complex at the west end of Main Street. Coburn also had an office in town and was seemingly at the peak of his career. His dream of a national park had just become reality; he was enough of a visionary to not only weather but prosper during the Depression; and with the passage of three years since Kephart’s death, he was close to resolving complicated matters connected with his friend’s estate. Then tragedy struck. Jack, Bland, and sister-in-law Bette died in a Thanksgiving Day 1934 wreck in Nantahala Gorge.

Jack and Bland were buried in Bryson City Cemetery. When leaves drop from the cemetery’s towering white oaks, it is possible on a clear day to stand at the graves, looking northward, and view 4,773-foot Coburn Knob. Or better still, hike to the knob, which is accessible off Noland Divide Trail. Either provides a mighty fine place to pause, ponder, and look back with fond wonder on this forgotten mountain icon’s life.

Did Activism Lead to Jack Coburn’s Death? 

The wreck which killed the Coburns and Bland’s sister occurred when the trio was traveling to Andrews for a wedding. Its location was on the straightest stretch of road in the entire gorge, with the vehicle ended up in a deep pool just above the bridge at today’s Ferebee Memorial Park. According to their death certificates they drowned rather than being killed by the force of the accident.

Apparently a large truck was involved in what contemporary news accounts described as a hit-and-run accident. Subsequent reports and lingering local lore suggest it may not have been an accident. Prior to his death, Coburn played a leading role in a heated controversy which had embroiled the whole region. A dam on the Little Tennessee River was being planned, and local folks wanted the federal government to allow Nantahala Power & Light, a subsidiary of Alcoa, to build and operate it rather than leaving matters to the Tennessee Valley Authority. There was widespread distrust of TVA, something which proved all too prescient when TVA later instituted decidedly heavy-handed “takings” in connection with construction of Fontana Dam. By way of contrast, NPL was a known and trusted entity.

Coburn took the lead role in petitioning the federal government to give the dam project to NPL. Well over 2,000 local residents, my father among them, signed the petition. There were similar drives, likewise drawing strong support, in adjacent Macon and Graham counties. As a result, TVA’s scions were irate with Coburn, and to this day rumors persist that the wreck in the Nantahala Gorge was no accident.

A number of factors are suggestive in this regard: The timing (the petition drive was concluding when the wreck occurred), the location (there is no place in the entire gorge where a wreck was less likely to happen), the nature of the wreck (the Coburn car was in the lane away from the river), and disappearance of the truck (one has to wonder how multiple accounts from the time specify it was a truck though the driver was never identified and the vehicle never found) are striking. Although this amounts to little more than conjecture, collectively the circumstances raise questions. Certainly TVA had a checkered record, in Swain County and elsewhere, of being hard-fisted when local citizens dared challenge its bureaucratic might.