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Highlights from Western Carolina University Back to search results
WCU - Highlights from Western Carolina University

Historic Webster Vol. 7 No. 2 (1)

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  • Historic Webster is a newsletter of the Webster Historical Society, Inc., created at the Society’s founding in 1974. The publication helped to serve the Society's mission of collecting and preserving the history of Webster, North Carolina. Webster, established in 1851, was the original county seat for Jackson County.
  • newsletter of the Webster Historical Society, Inc. VOLUME VII, NUMBER 2 WEBSTER, NORTH CAROLINA SPRING, 1981 1940 Flood Brings Disbelief, Disaster By Dale Coward Tuckasegee was named for the Cherokee Indian town which stood beside the river, Tsiksitsi, which means "crawling terrapin," named after the sluggish movement of the water. "Tuckasegee" is a lso a poem by Kathryn Strip­ling Byer and I am sure there is river water still flowing in the blood streams of all of us who grew up at Webster in those days so long ago. About the same time that war clouds were gathering over Europe and the mysterious Far East, storm clouds were moving over the Western Carolina mountains, that were to bring disbelief and disaster that would go down in mountain history as the worst flood to ever hit Western North Carolina. "There is no school today. You might as well go on back home. Everything is washed away." These were the words that Edna Rogers spoke to me as I met her coming down Cemetery Road that August morning forty years ago. The power had been off for some time and Tanyard Branch was roaring louder than usual in heavy rains, but we were unaware of the disasterous ... .. ... > <(_ -<' --·~ ~ • • .:r ~ 1..-; ·' ;...!r, \1:~ 11- . . '~--~~ ~~~·'4:1l~~'ii;::~"' » _ ,., conditions that prevailed just over the ridge that separated us from the river. This was great news to a six-year-old boy, a few days into the first grade and still skeptical about school. I turned and ran back down the gravel road, almost dropping my tin lunch box, grinning all the way. After telling the news to my folks, my father grabbed the Kodak camera and we climb­ed into our 1927 Buick sedan and started out to see wha i was going on. Our first stop was near the school at the top of Town Hill. We could see the water up near the Cowan houses on the opposite side of the river. People were observ­ing the water from several dif­ferent points up and down the river. There was a large group down where the bridge had been standing only a few hours before. Years later, parts of the steel from the bridge could be seen in the Hall Turn where it had come to rest in a watery grave. We then made pictures of the scene before us , and flooded river's t•dge. Page 2. HISTORICAL WEBSTER, Spring, 1981 Webster Remembers 1940 Fh The Tuckasegee River rages out of its banks and isolates the Webster Baptist Church. Photo taken from School House I-I ill. (All photographs were taken by Roger Coward and the cutlines are the information written by Coward on the back of th£' photographs. l (Continued from page I) then roae out to Sylva and on to Dillsboro. Only two weeks before, there had been a much smaller flood that had caused only minor damage, and my father and I had driven down to check on our good friend, Aunt Samantha Bumgarner, who lived just above the river at the mouth of Big Savannah Creek. The damage to her place was minor this time. The morning of August 29, was a different story; we could not get to Aunt Samantha's because every bridge from Glenville to Bryson City was gone. Aunt Samantha's house had been washed off its foun­dation and the churning waters had carried it down stream to disappear from sight, forever. When the water starting ris­ing, it rose six feet in fifty minutes. Seven lives were lost. Hundreds of livestock were carried to their death in the strong current. Property damage was astronomical. But with the true mountain spirit and a willingness to get things going again, our county was soon back in business with our eyes to the future, even if that future was going to bring us into World War II fifteen months later. The following quotations are the results of interviews with persons who lived along the river at that time: MILDRED COWAN I can't imagine sleeping through that, but we did! About four in the morning someone came and woke us up. We went out on the porch and there was the most eerie glow of light on the water that you have ever seen. I don 't know what a feeling that it did give us. There was so many people; there was a highway patrolman watching the bridge just down from our house. We were on the porch watching various things go down, and one thing that im­pressed me was this four­room house floating down with a lamp still burning on the table. Mama and I thought there was someone crying. Papa said, "Wait a minute, girls, that is a cat on the roof." Whether he told us that to ease our minds or not I don't know, but probably it was. Then when the bridge finally went out after being hit with box­cars and debris, this man hollered, " It's gone! That's it!" This happened on the night of my father's birthday , August 29, and I could never forget it for that reason for it was his birthday. The water Tuckasegee River floo Will Wooten house ;.md b came up to the edge of our yard. I was working in Sylva at the time for Dr. Chapman, and of course I couldn 't get to work the next day or the next. They came over to the other side of the river and hollered across to me. On Sunday I drove my little Plymouth seventy-two miles to get it on the other side of the river. Roy Cowan went with me and we drove through Franklin and down by Alarka and up through Bryson City and drove a Bridge and 1 other side of t from the house brought us a t the tern porar built. The Wil< Dan>floated up and I it ruined all of l furniture. I thing that kept 1g were the chimneys on each end. There was a lot of debris backed up against it. That was a bad ex­perience for people to go through. LILLIE ALLMAN The water came up to the trees in our yard and left logs. The corn fields were all under water between us and the river. The water was up in our barn , and our cows stall was all planked up, and the water got so high that she floated out over the top between the loft and the stall. She had to swim up past the house and she went all the way to Webster. JOE RHINEHART I was driving a Trailways bus at the time, and I had been driving in hard rain all day. As I was coming down the Franklin highway past Cabe Hill I could see that the river was rising fast. As I passed the Leatherwood cabins just above the river, I could see people carrying things out of the cabins to safer ground. As I crossed the Dillsboro bridge and drove down into Dillsboro, there were two men standing there. I stopped and one of the men was Lenore Wilson. He said, "Boy, we've had it around here tonight! " The water was up to the door of the bus. I went on up to Veil's Cafe to get me some coffee and something to eat before going on home. I was probably the last one to cross the bridge before she went out. CLAUDE QUEEN (Manager of the Dillsboro and Sylva Electric Light Company) In August of 1940 there was nine inches of rain, and it real­ly washed everything away at the power house except where that new little machine was. Dill Jones was staying in the power house at the time. He lived in there and even died there a few years later. The water came up to my lot. It came within one hundred feet of Charlie Snyder's store. It got in the Snyder house below me and in the cabins across the street. My son, Tommy, and Chunk Morgan's two boys were swimming through the cabins in all that muddy water and all. After the water went down, me and Lenore Wilson went up the river to look at the damage. There wasn 't any power in Webster for two weeks. We walked up through there and the old Aunt Zedie Wells house was still standing. This man was running up and down the road in his under­wear drinking and cussing. The law finally had to take him to jail. That flood was really something. They had just started the Thorpe development and was pouring the footings for the power house and were work­ing on the power dam and tun­nel. After the flood, it took about a year to get it all started again. We switched over to Nantahala. They had a line into the papermill. We switched over that morning about daylight and got power back down to here. Everything toward Barkers Creek and Webster was out, but Scotts Creek wasn 't bothered. The line to Cullowhee was out, but Nan­tahala furnished Cullowhee at the time. It went out about the Ashe Bridge. We had one big line truck and and pickup at the time. The new bridge here at Dillsboro had been started about six months before ; they had the steel on it. After the flood, they put lumber on the lower section and made a walkway so you could walk across. They done that in about a day. The Cullowhee bridge was right new and of course it was destroyed. That flood caused a lot of damage. BOYD BROWN The water destroyed my silage field right here in front of my house between the highway and the river. When the Leatherwood cabins wash­ed away, they passed the house here like a convoy of ships and when they washed over the power dam, the side ditches were full of fish. You could just go out there and dip them up. The water come up to the edge of my yard, and all of the highway was under water. POLK ALLMAN It had rained for about three days and nights. The night that the flood came it was a constant roar , just like so many jets coming. Maude was canning pears that night, and me and Jimmy had made us a bed on the kitchen floor and went to sleep. Maude got through canning the pears about midnight and got us up and we went and looked out. In the East and South we could hear this racket. We figured it was a cloudburst coming from (Continued on page 4) Dillsboro Power Plant and Ice Plant destroyed by flood. Iron Bridge swept orr pilla•·s and straightened with river. Water receded nine or trn f<"et when takt·n. August :10. 1940. PAGE 4, HISTORIC WEBSTER Spring, 1981 Recollections by Janice Monteith Blanton Periodically, as I act or think in certain ways or remember how I learned to do a particular thing, I am reminded of one or more of my former Webster neighbors who may have influenced or taught me. Recently , as I was trying to teach my six year old son to "tell time," I thought of the time I had learned and who had · ~nfluenced " the learning. I'm afraid I was older than my son- eight years old, in fact. I'll never forget: I was in the third grade at Webster School. Mrs. Mary Cowan, my teacher, sent me to the principal's office after school to see what time it was. I entered the office and asked the principal the time; he said, "You tell me," and I replied, " I can't." That was the beginning of my first lesson in time because I was sent back to Mrs. Cowan to learn to tell time be lore I left school that very same afternoon! Well, needless to say, I wanted to go home and eat and natural­ly, Mrs. Cowan wasn't excited about staying into the night, so we cooperated in a very positive way and, as a result, I did learn to " tell time" that day! That principal was Mr. Ernest Penland who remained principal at the school through my graduation and until consolidation in 1961. As I reminisced about Mr. Penland and the time-telling experience, it was easy to recol1ect many other situations, where he influenced, contributed to, and supported my and other Webster youths' personal development. Come to think of it, there is a whole passel of Penlands whose memory I retain fondly for a variety of reasons . There were, and are, Penlands here, there, and everywhere- in the store, in the church, in the school, in the neighborhood , and all around. When I was growing up, Mr. Ernest Penland, Sr., was one of two local store proprietors, a competent tiller of the soil, a good family man, and a respected Christian. He and his son, George, were responsible for several of Webster's finest gardens and gave me my first insight into "farm­ing." I do believe the care and apparent pleasure they ex­hibited in tending God's " little Webster acres" must have had some influence on my appreciation of nature and love for getting my hands dirty . I don't think that either Mr. Penland or George would be too unhappy with us for ap­plying this love to flowers rather than vegetables. In fact, maybe Mrs. Margie Penland is responsible for this since she could always boast some of Webster 's most beautiful flowers. Mrs. Penland always seemed to be either " put­ting up" the harvest of the male Penlands' efforts in the vegetable gardens or diligently caring for the lovely flowers. Ah, that reminds me of Aunt Dess Allison, Mrs. Penland's sister who lived with the Penlands for as long as I can remember. Both she and Mrs. Penland were, and Mrs. Penland still is, strikingly beautiful ladies with love­ly white hair. Aunt Dess is one of the Webster ladies I have to thank for "aJlowing" me to learn to roll hair and give permanents. She was willing to be a "guinea pig" permit· ling me to be her beautician, by rolling her hair each week and periodically giving her permanents. It was enjoyable to visit and chat with these devoted sisters; they influenc­ed the community in a very positive way through both their home and church. When my son, Samuel, begs me, "Read some more, Mom," I am reminded of Mrs. Pauline Cowan, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Penland, Sr. Mrs. Cowan was my sixth grade teacher; she devoted a portion of the after­noons to reading to her classes. The usual resounding, "Please, Mrs. Cowan, read another chapter!" was testimony to her ability to make books "come alive" for her students. I thank her for the many hours she devoted to this important aspect of learning and my resulting love of reading. Yes, it was a fortunate day for Webster when Mr. and Mrs. Penland moved into the "old jail." Their contribu­tions to Webster's fine heritage both personally and through the admirable family will be felt in the lives of Webster folks for many years to come. We're all thankful that Penl ands were, and are, here, there, and everywhere. I have tremendous respect for the Penland family; "time will tell" just how important the several Penlands are to Webster 's history. "Blow The Tannery W~istle" By Gary Neil Carden Remember the tannery whistle? If you're over thirty-five and a Jackson County native, it probably affected your life in some way. That long, mourn­ful wail carried a long way: to Beta, Dillsboro, and Webster. It blew for morning shifts at the plant, proclaimed 12 o'clock, and announc.ed " quit­tin' time." Housewives syn­chronized clocks and prepared meals by that whistle; it clos­ed the stores on Main Street and awaked the "graveyard shift." Sometimes it announced special events: New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. It blew for Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and it blew for V -J Day. And once, in a best-forgotten, late-night inci­dent , when a psychedelic nor­thern lights display frightened the tarrery 's graveyard shift, it blew to announce the end of the world. Some anxious husbands forded Scott's Creek in an attempt to beat Gabriel 's horn. That whistle even influenc­ed language in Jackson Coun­ty. If you wanted to express extreme awe, disbelief, or ad­miration, you simply said, " Well , blow the tannery whistle.! " When the local drunk went up to the mourner's bench, when a wor­thless relative showed up look­ing prosperous, when the spinster aunt got married , you always reverently muttered, " Well , blow the tannery whistle." I was raised by a grand­father who worried about his ·"quare" grandson. I showed definite signs of being worth­less. I was left-handed, read " funny-books," and hung out at the Ritz Theatre on Satur-day. Nevertheless, he invested in my dubious future, and I at­tended Western Carolina University. Il took me five years to graduate. But , on my belated graduation day, despite the fact that he had a malignant cancer that had reduced him to the weight and stature of a small boy, my grandfather came. While I was standing in front or Hoey auditorium , complete with mortar-board, gown , and diploma, and spoke in a barely audible whisper. " Well, blow the tannery whistle! " he said. A native or Jackson County, Gary Carden has returned to a home high on the Sylva side or King's Mountain where he could hear the tannery whistle i£ it still blew. He works with Southwestern North Carolina Planning and Economic Development Commission in Bryson City. Flood Brings Disaster <Continued £rom page :n up the river. We had never seen rain like this. I had bought a new Dodge truck on Monday and it wasn't raining that day. I went to Sam Buchanan's and got the timbers to build the bed with that I was fixing up for my rolling store business. I back­ed it under the barn shed and I worked all of the day that the flood come that night. The rain never let up through the day. It was almost solid water. The next morning we slept late and didn't know anything was goin on till Howard Allman, Uncle Frank's boy, came around the hill above their big house and come out to our house. He said, " Polk, get up and look out." I got up and looked out the window. I had a big hog pen right below the bridge setting on locust posts . It was three stalls and had five or six hogs in it, and the horse lot going down !rom the barn was plank about five feet high. My hog pen was down at our bridge there in that little bottom floa ting around like a ship. I didn 't know where the hogs were ; they wasn't in it. They had floated out to safety. The hog pen floated upright where we crossed the branch and floated around for awhile that morn­ing. When the water started down, it went right on down and crossed both fences and went back to almost its foun ­dation. I looked over there toward the barn shed, and there was the goat hood ornament on my pickup sticking out of the water looking at me. The rest ol the truck was under water. That evening we got out and started walking to see the damage. We got with Eva Mae Davis and her children. You see, Don was night watching up at the Glenville Dam and they hadn 't heard !rom him and didn't know if he got wash­ed away or not. We were across from the Lawrence Cowan place and I know Eva Mae said to her younguns, "Now look in these puddles along up through here and see if you can see Don." Now that flood was something else. I'll never forget that. Spring, UIKI \'t'h:-.tt·r . ,ur·th ( ";1 rolina ~:-\71-IX 1-:ditor .lo t' 1' . HhirH'hart Contributors: Janice Monteith Blanton , Da le Coward. Jenny Hunter , Gary Carden Puhlis iH·<I tjll<tl"lt· rl y h , tht· \' t'h:-. tt·r Hi:-.toril-al ~ocit • t .v and print ed h _, tht· ll t•ra ld Puhli:-.hing Com pan .'. Sy lva. :\orth Caro lina .

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Highlights from Western Carolina University

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