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WCU - Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

Early Explorers in the Great Smokies

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Item 1 - Early Explorers in the Great Smokies
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Early Explorers in the Great Smokies

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Item’s are ‘child’ level descriptions to ‘parent’ objects, (e.g. one page of a whole book).

  • Early Explorers in the Great Smokies 59 Various accounts in histories and elsewhere have stated that John Sevier crossed over the tops of the Smokies in his warfare against the Indians, but the evidence does not seem to bear this out. In telling of the 1781 campaign against the Erati, Edmund Kirke recounts in abundant detail what purports to be the first ascent of Clingman's Dome by a white man. That there might be no mistake as to the peak meant, it is described as being "higher than any peak but one among the Appalachians".15 From its summit Sevier's party was able to "trace the courses of the Holston, the Watauga and his own Nolichucky, and nearer the silvery windings of the Tennessee as it rushed past the strongholds of the Chickamaugas".16 Though such a range of vision is seldom granted ordinary eyes, the account might be accepted did Kirke not state that "the summit was carpeted with a deep, green sward sprinkled with heather and rhododendron".17 When one has visited the top of Clingman's Dome and rested in the dim twilight that filters through the dense tops of as thick a stand of balsam as Smoky can present, one comes to the conclusion that Kirke was romancing, and knew not whereof he spoke. Regarding the same campaign, Ramsey's account indicates that Sevier's forces crossed the Balsam Mountains at Balsam Gap and followed the course of the headwaters of the Tuckasegee River to the Indian towns, skirting the eastern boundaries of the Smokies rather than actually penetrating these mountains.18 For some decades following the Revolution the records of Smoky exploration are the records of various surveys, which, interesting enough in their own sphere, do not offer much detail of the mountains themselves. But in order that this account be as complete as may be, reference should be made to them. When Tennessee was admitted into the Union as a state in 1796, its eastern border corresponded with the line of the territory ceded to the United States by North Carolina, and the boundary was described in the same terms. Commissioners were appointed immediately by both states to settle the exact location of the state line, but their labors ceased just as they reached the eastern end of the Smokies, the terminus of their survey being designated by a large marked stone set by the side of the Cataloochee Turnpike.19 More than twenty years were to pass before the state line survey "Edmund Kirke, The Rear-Guard of the Revolution (New York, 1887),295. ™lbid., 297. vibid., 298. 18 J. M. G. Ramsey, Annuals of Tennessee (Philadelphia, 1853), 269. 19 State of North Carolina vs State of Tennessee. Report of the U. S. Supreme Court, October term, 1914, p. 6.
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Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

This digital collection was created to contribute to the public's understanding of the forces and ideas that led to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934. The most vi...

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