North Shore Towns and Communitie

NORTH SHORE TOWNS & COMMUNITIES

BRYSON CITY & VICINITY - The principal settlement in the 1930s and 1940s was Bryson City, situated on an expanse of Tuckaseigee River bottoms and adjacent uplands near the mouth of Deep Creek. Bryson City has it's origins in the village of Charleston which was established in 1871. Charleston developed out of a small settlement known as Bear Springs which had acquired its name from Yonah (Big Bear) a Cherokee who was granted a 640-acre tract surrounding his homestead in 1819.

For more than 60-years, Bryson City has continued to market itself as a vacation destination and has lived with an often strained relationship with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

EPPS SPRINGS - The community of Epps Springs was located at the mouth of Canebreak Branch, about 6-river miles downstream from Bryson City. A post office was situated here from 1880-1890 and then again from 1908-1918 before being discontinued. The community is said to have developed in the late 1880s around a "chalybeate" (iron-impregnated) spring and a couple of cabins. It has been reported there could possibly have been a hotel. By the 1930s the community consisted of the Epps Springs School and a number of small residences distributed up the branch.

NOLAND CREEK - The mouth of Noland Creek is about 2-river miles downstream from Epps Springs and about 8-river miles downstream from Bryson City. Logging apparently began on Noland Creek as early as the 1880s by the Eversole Lumber Company and then later in the early 1900s by the Harris-Woodbury Lumber Company. The Noland Post Office was established in 1900 and was active until 1925. The community had 2-schools; Noland Creek School on Bearpen Branch about 2 1/2 miles up the creek and the Mill Creek School another 3-miles up the creek.

FORNEY CREEK - (or Forney's Creek) is a large stream that joined the Tuckaseigee about 3-river miles downstream from Noland Creek. The creek is reportedly named for Jacob Forney. A Post Office was first established (as Gee) at Forney Creek in 1902. It's name was changed to Forney in 1908 and postal service to the location was discontinued in 1937. A CCC Camp (NP-9) was established at Forney Creek in 1933 and operated until 1936. The camp was located in a large hollow at the mouth of Bee Gum Branch.

BUSHNELL - The town of Bushnell was situated on the north bank of the Little Tennessee River. The town developed shortly after 1879 when the Western North Carolina Railroad reached the area. The town apparently received its name from the Bushnell family of Ohio, who reportedly conducted logging operations in the area for a time in the 1880s. A Post Office was established in May 1886 and the town was incorporated in 1901. Bushnell lost its importance with the demise of the local lumber industry and as a result by 1939 its population had shrunk to about 75. The Bushnell School was located near the mouth of a stream and the Bushnell Baptist Church was just a short distance to the north. A suspension bridge and railroad bridge extended south across the Tuckaseigee River providing access to Judson and other settlements.

CHAMBERS CREEK - Chambers Creek was about 2 1/2 river (and road) miles downstream from Bushnell. Although no town was ever organized at this location it was a distinct settlement. A Post Office operated in the vicinity under the name of Forney's Creek from 1873 to 1906 when the name was changed to Chambers Post Office and continued to operate until 1931 when it was closed.

COLLINWOOD and ECOLA - These communities were located at the mouth of Chambers Creek and a few miles downstream between Kirkland and Pilkey Creek. Both communities were rail stops but never had post offices and were never apparently significant communities. These two tiny settlements composed chiefly of relatives in the Bushnell area.

PILKEY CREEK (HUBBARD & DORSEY) - Pilkey Creek is located downstream from Kirkland Branch and is separated from Hazel Creek to the west by Welch Ridge. Hubbard (formerly known as Hubbard Mill Creek) is located at the mouth of Pilkey Creek and Dorsey is located at the mouth of a small creek less than 1/2 mile down river. A Post Office was located at Dorsey from 1890 to 1940 when it was discontinued. Pilkey Creek included a store with gas pumps and the Dorsey School.

WAYSIDE / MARCUS - The community of Wayside was located near the mouth of Calhoun Branch a little more than a mile downstream from Dorsey and about 3-miles upriver from the mouth of Hazel Creek. The area was known as Wayside while the Post Office operated from 1880 to 1922 but was later designated as Marcus (after Alfonzo Marcus). Marcus was a small community including a store on either side of Storehouse Branch.

HAZEL CREEK - The largest creek on the North Shore and the site of several distinct communities including Ritter, Proctor and Medlin. The settlement of Hazel Creek began around 1830 and eventually progressed. The southern most community on Hazel Creek was Ritter, which was a railroad stop established by W. M. Ritter Lumber Company. By 1910 the Ritter Railroad (a common carrier called the Smoky Mountain Railway Company) extended up the creek past Proctor and Medlin to the active timber cutting areas. Although the Ritter Lumber Company and the Smoky Mountain Railway were gone by the late 1920s the Ritter stop made a key transit point and the place where Hazel Creek residents would catch the train east.

CABLE BRANCH - This community was located a little more than a mile upstream from the mouth of Cable Branch. The Cable family had settled here around 1835 and by the 1940s the community contained the Cable Branch Church as well as several homes and other buildings. About 1/2 mile above Cable Branch was a bridge where NC Highway 288 crossed the creek; which was the site of a store and other buildings on property owned in 1943 by L. C. Calhoun.

PROCTOR - The town of Proctor was located about 2-miles north, a short distance above the mouth of Sheehan Branch and Possum Hollow. The settlement and later town of Proctor was developed in the vicinity of the homestead of Moses Proctor, who had moved to Hazel Creek from Cades Cove and settled on a hillside overlooking Sheehan Branch around 1830. Settlement gradually increased and a Post Office was opened in Proctor in 1886. In 1906 the town had a mill and schoolhouse as well as dispersed homes belong to members of the Welch, Bradshaw and other families up Sheehan Branch.

Small scale commercial logging began as early as 1892 by the Taylor and Crate Company. Large scale logging began with the arrival of the W. M. Ritter Lumber Company in the early 1900s and began full scale logging at its earnest by 1910. A railroad was constructed up stream and a large band mill and associated facilities were built in a large bend on Hazel Creek above Sheehan Branch. This became the center of the logging town of Proctor, which thrived until logging operations ceased in 1928. In it's heyday in the 1920s, Proctor was a bustling town of over 1,000 including a depot, community building, theatre, store, commissary, cake & ice cream shop, church, school, club house, boarding house and a photo shop in addition to lumber company offices and numerous houses located on Calico and Struttin' Streets. Electric power was provided by a steam generator at the band mill. There was a ball field at the Proctor Campground. Other structures were located at Franklintown, near the mouth of Possom Hollow. Upstream, the mill complex included dry kilns and numerous ancillary structures to the band mill. Further upstream was North Proctor, a small community largely occupied by African-Americans.

Logging operations began to slow by the mid-1920s. The "Hardwood Bark" magazine reported that the Ritter band mill was "sawed out" by March 1926, although the planning mill continued operations until August. By December 1926 the magazine reported that "all but six piles of lumber are gone from the yard at Hazel Creek. The dimension and lath stock is also almost gone. Most of the pile bottoms and docks are about torn down to furnish wood for the boiler house". The company removed the railroad and many of its building before leaving town. The town of Proctor survived until 1944 as a shadow of its former self.

MEDLIN - This town was located several miles northeast of Proctor on Sugar Fork (or Haw Creek) and the main stem of Hazel Creek. The settlement acquired its name from Marion Medlin, who established a store there in the late 1800s. A Post Office was opened at Medlin (under the name Bone) in 1885. Its name was changed to Medlin in 1887. In the early 1900s, Medlin was the site of the residence and store of Granville Calhoun, as well as a handful of other buildings. To the northwest of Medlin, up the Little Fork of Sugar Fork, was the Adams Mine which was operated from the 1880s until the 1940s. The Medlin Post Office was discontinued in 1920, but a small community serving as the offices of the Hazel Creek Mine was still there in 1942. There was a school house (also serving as a church) as well as several small tub mills for grinding corn.

Medlin and Hazel Creek were to acquire a degree of literary fame due to their association with Horace Kephart, who came to the Smokies in 1904. Kephart's home on the Little Fork served as his base of operation during over two years of rambling over Hazel Creek and adjacent mountains. Kephart moved to the Medlin area at the end of October 1904 and soon settled into an unoccupied home at the former Adams Mine on the Little Fork of Sugar Creek about 2-miles north west of Medlin. Kephart died in an automobile accident in 1931.

BONE VALLEY - A short distance up Hazel Creek from Medlin is Bone Valley, which received its name from the large quantity of cattle who died nearby in a major blizzard sometime in the 1880s. As of around 1906 the valley was occupied by members of the Hall, Proctor, Cable and other families. Bone Valley School was located on Hazel Creek near Bone Valley Creek and served members of the local community as well as those located further up Hazel Creek, including the Hall, Calhoun and Cook families.

By the 1940s the upper reaches of Hazel Creek were owned by J. G. "Jim" Strikeleather, and others, with most other sizeable tracts in the possession of the Hazel Creek Land Company and the heirs of J. E. Coburn. Strikeleather was an "Asheville Developer." He had purchased several thousand acres of Ritter land and formed the Strikeleather Lumber Company with the intent of logging, but would come to realize the recreational potential of the area and joined forces with Judge Smathers of Waynesville and formed the Hazel Creek Fishing and Outing Club. He built two lodges or clubhouses as well as cabins and attracted anglers from across the east. Accounts described the area as a fisherman's paradise that was patrolled by rangers and only occasionally invaded by local children.

A similar hunting lodge was established in 1940 further up Bone Valley by the Kress family and incorporated a log cabin built by Crate Hall in 1892. Along with the Calhoun House at Proctor, the Hall Cabin is one of two surviving domestic structures remaining in the North Shore area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

EAGLE CREEK AND FONTANA - The Eagle Creek drainage meets the Little Tennessee River about 2-miles west of Hazel Creek. Eagle Creek was sparsely populated at the turn of the twentieth century, having only about 7-families living there. The situation would rapidly change when the Montvale Lumber Company began operating in the area a few years later. The principal settlement on Eagle Creek was the original village of Fontana, a tent camp established along lower Eagle Creek in 1906 by Montvale. The initial camp was soon replaced by what has been termed "The Second Fontana" which was located at the confluence of the creek and the river. Fontana was a typical lumber town, and included a band mill, commissary, hotel and houses. This version of Fontana thrived until the late 1920s when Montvale ceased operations. Unlike other areas nearby, industry did not leave Eagle Creek along with the lumber industry. In 1931 Montvale sold the town of Fontana to the North Carolina Exploration Company, which had succeeded the Fontana Mining Company as operators of the Fontana Mine. The mine was serviced by a small village located on either side of Ecoah Branch, which included bunkhouses, boarding houses, a doctor's office, machine shop and other buildings.

Fontana appears as a settlement of only 10-12 structures in 1935. The town of Fontana would met it's end in 1943 when it was bought for $50 by a local resident who dismantled the structures and shipped the lumber to Hazelwood (in Haywood County) by rail.

One noted twentieth century resident of Eagle Creek was Quill Rose, who lived and made whiskey above Camp Ten Branch. He acquired his notoriety as early as the 1880s and in his later years was an acquaintance of Horace Kephart and appeared by name in Kepharts' book "Our Southern Highlanders."

FAIRFAX - The community of Fairfax was located at the mouth of a small cove on the north side of the Little Tennessee River about four-miles downstream from Eagle Creek. A post office was present from 1878 to 1912. By the 1930s only a single structure was located at the mouth of the cove, although the new Fairfax School was about 1 1/2 -miles further east along NC 288.

KITCHENVILLE - The Kitchen Lumber Company built the town of Kitchenville in the Fairfax area around 1921 in order to facilitate logging on Twenty-Mile Creek downriver. Since the construction of Cheoah Lake in 1919 had eliminated road access to Twenty-Mile Creek, the lumber company built a town and band mill at Kitchenville and connected it to the railroad terminus at Fontana with a standard gauge railroad. A sternwheeler steamboat named Vivian was used to transport logs from Twenty-Mile Creek to Kitchenville, where they were sawn into lumber that was shipped out to the east via railroad. No trace of Kitchenville was evident by 1935, and apparently the company had ceased timber cutting in the area by 1926.

TIPTON CAMP - A small community named Tipton Camp was located below the Fontana Dam site in the early 1940s, apparently on property leased (possibly from the Carolina Aluminum Company) by a man named Tipton, possibly along NC 288 above Fairfax. When acquired by the TVA, this and nearby Coburn properties contained "extensive shack developments" including over 70-structures. It was the first instances where TVA owned and leased for occupancy substandard housing of this character. An adequate potable water supply, sanitary privies, and means of fire protection were made available, but the camp lacked other community facilities and the erection of additional shacks was not permitted.

SOUTH SHORE TOWNS & COMMUNITIES

JUDSON - The town of Judson was situated on either side of the Little Tennessee River, about 2 1/2-miles southeast of Bushnell and about 2-miles north of Almond. Most buildings in Judson were on the east bank of the river, which was connected by a bridge to the Southern Railway, which ran along the west bank. Judson was a small farming community that flourished briefly during the 1910s and 1920s when the Whiting Manufacturing Company built a band mill and facilities nearby. A post office had been opened in 1886 and operated until it was discontinued in 1944. Earlier operations in the area by the Buchanan Lumber Company had been centered on Panther Creek some distance to the west.

A 1929 map was made shortly after Whiting left the area and shows about 25-residences in the area (primarily on the east side of the river) along with Baptist, Methodist and Episcopal Churches, a school, a post office, 4-stores, and both freight and passenger depots. A former resident described Judson in 1943 as having 4-stores and a sawmill on the east side of the river, with a post office, garage, mill, store and barbershop on the west side of the river. The Judson Elementary School was on a hill above the depot (west of the river) in a former hotel building dating to the Whiting era. The town retained a "sense of community" of about 600-people in 1943.

WHITING - The rail stop of Whiting was located a few hundred yards north of Judson along the Murphy Branch of the Southern Railway. Although described by the Southern Railway in 1912 as a place of great promise, Whiting is not depicted on any of the TVA or NP&L land acquisition maps.

ALMOND - The town of Almond was on the east bank of the Nantahala River, about 2-miles south of Judson and immediately south of the confluence of the Nantahala and Little Tennessee Rivers. Like Judson, Almond was primarily an agricultural community. A post office was established (as Sophia) in 1886, it was renamed Nantehala (sic) in 1889, before becoming Almond in 1892. Almond was incorporated in 1905, and in 1912 the Southern Railway described it as the "location of what, in the future, promises to be really important lumbering and mining operations." The towns population reached 146 in 1920, but dwindled thereafter as many residents sold their properties to NP&L and moved away. The 1940 Census reported a population of 613 for Almond, which likely included residents of nearby Judson and outlying communities.

The 1943 land acquisition map shows many vacant lots owned by NP&L, but depicts the post office, and Almond Baptist Church along with 3-school buildings. A concrete bridged carried NC Highway 10 across the Little Tennessee River to the north, while highway and railroad bridges crossed the Nantahala River to the west.

SWAIN - The community of Swain appears in the 1906 map on the northeast bank of the Little Tennessee River, almost due east of Almond near the present day US 19 river crossing. Little is known about this community, but a post office was first established in the area (under the name Nantahala) in 1873. The named was changed to Swain in 1889, and the post office was discontinued in 1915. By 1943 most of the land in the area was owned by NP&L.

JAPAN - The small community of Japan (pronounced Jay-pan) was situated at the confluence of Wolf Creek and Panther Branch from its confluence with the Little Tennessee River. The community first acquired a post office in 1881 under the name of Welch, which was changed to Homestead in 1892 and then to Japan in 1903. It is believed the name Japan derived from a variety of wild clover that grew in the vicinity. By the early 1900s the community contained a post office, school, store, church and several houses and served as a "supply source for the surrounding countryside which included a lumbering business."

With the advent of World War II, Japan gained a degree of notoriety due to its name and there was considerable discussion about renaming the community "McArthur". The name was never changed however, and the community eventually died as Japan.

BROCK and SAWYER CREEK AREA - Brock was a small community along Sawyer Creek south of its confluence with Stecoah Creek, near where present day NC 28 crosses Sawyer Creek. A post office was established at Brock in 1903, but was discontinued in 1931. The 1936 USGS map depicts scattered houses and 2-mills in the vicinity. Brock laid outside the reservoir pool and acquisition limits for Fontana Reservoir, and most of the community site today remains in private ownership.