Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Esmeralda Inn, Hickory Nut Gap, N.C.

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-3968.jp2
  • This photograph was taken by Ignatius Watsworth Brock (1866-1950) who won the 1903 award of the Photographer’s Association of Virginia and the Carolinas for best landscape photographs. Brock later shortened his name to “Nace” and eventually to “N. Brock”—the signature by which he was widely known and which appears on this photograph as well. The photograph is part of a collection documenting the activities of the Appalachian National Park Association. The Association, founded in 1899, played a key role in the movement for the establishment of a national park in the Southern Appalachians. George S. Powell was the Association’s first president and Asheville physician Dr. Chase P. Ambler (1865-1932) was the secretary. Ambler deposited this collection in 1929 to the State Archives of North Carolina at Raleigh from where they were moved in 2012 to the Western Regional Archives located in Asheville, North Carolina.