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Kephart memorial: From St. Louis to Hazel Creek

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  • This 1979 article is a memorial to Horace Kephart (1862-1931), a noted naturalist, woodsman, journalist, and author. In 1904, he left his work as a librarian in St. Louis and permanently moved to western North Carolina. His popular book, “Camping and Woodcraft” was first published 1906; the 1916/1917 edition is considered a standard manual for campers after almost a century of use. Living and working in a cabin on Hazel Creek in Swain County, Kephart began to document life in the Great Smoky Mountains, producing “Our Southern Highlanders” in 1913. Throughout his life, Kephart wrote many articles supporting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
  • FROM ST. LOUIS TO HAZEL CREEK In 1904 a man who had recently forsaken his family and a prominent position with the Mercantile Library in St. Louis arrived in the Smokies. He had been educated at Boston and i and had trav eled widely in Europe. A loner, on intimate terms with the land. Horace Kephart was destined to spend the rest of his life getting to know the creeks and coves of the Southern Appalachians. In later years, because of his interest in preserving the wild- ness of the mountains, he was referred to as the father of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was a strange and unusual adventure; the life story of Mr. Horace Kephart. From a childhood in the frontier town of Jefferson, Iowa, Kephart's fascination with things wild and untamed grew more intense as he became a man. After marriage, five children, and serving as head librarian of a nationally famous library, Kephart felt he was "in a blessed rut." He began solitary excursions into the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, eventually to lose his job as his trips became more frequent. He became withdrawn and turned to the bottle as solace for his yearning for a freer life. After surviving a St. Louis hurricane by clinging to a lamppost in 1916, a shattered Kephart came to the Smokies. While a librarian, Kephart had discovered few journals, books, or maps on the human or natural history of the southern mountains. He chose this isolated region "to enjoy a free life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of the chase, and man's game of matching my woodcraft against the forces of He obtained permission to live in a deserted mining cabin in Sugar Fork, a tributary of Hazel Creek. Here, Horace Kephart found his "frontier." For in the wildness of the Smokies, Kephart "discovered" a culture essentially as it existed in the country more than 100 years earlier. Kephart arrived one step ahead of the lumber companies which were soon to bring industrialization to the Southern mountains. Being a keen observer, Kephart was able to record a way of life "in one of the finest primeval forests in the world." He came as a "furriner," won the trust and friendship of the mountain people, to become the chronicler of their soon-to-disappear way of life. In this new world, Kephart immersed himself in the intimate study of the wilderness, stopping only to write articles for outdoor magazines to support himself. His interest soon turned from learning to survive in the woods to the mountain people themselves. He was fascinated by their independence and sufficiency. To Kephart the real southern highlanders were "the great multitude of little farmers living up the branches and on steep hillsides, back from the main highways, and generally far from the railroads." It was an agricultural way of life. Crops were mostly limited to 'taters' and corn, with game in the surround- by Duncan Hollar ing forest supplying them meat. Little gardens were grubbed out on the hillsides so steep that, as a woman related to Kephart, "I've hoed corn many a time on my knees, yes I have." Kephart recorded the mountaineers' way of life, their customs, economics and speech ways. Normally very wary and suspicious of strangers, Kephart reported that dour looks were all that befell him as he constantly scribbled in his notebooks while sitting at the combination store/ post office on Hazel Creek, or with families beside their fireplaces. Kephart found that the terms 'mountaineer' and 'highlander* were "furrin words" to the mountain people, who considered them insulting. Kephart lived alone in the Hazel Creek watershed from 1904 until 1907. He camped often in the herders' cabins along the crest of the Smokies at Silers Bald, Spence and Russell Fields and the Hall cabin on the ridge crest above Bone Valley. Absent from the Smokies from 1907 to 1910, Kephart returned to find that major lumbering operations had begun on Hazel Creek, so he chose to live in the Cooper Boarding House in Bryson City. His summers were spent on camping trips into the hills, Deep Creek being a favorite retreat. He was now a nationally known writer through his many articles in the sporting magazines of the day, and visitors often came calling. As often as not, as they came through the front door of the Cooper House, Kephart disappeared out the back. The Bryson Place on Deep Creek (at present day campsite #57) was a favorite getaway. On Hazel Creek, Kephart learned the'ways of the moonshiners, and at the Cooper House he met revenue agents out to search for illegal stills. Kephart on many occasions went on expeditions with the "Revenuers," once walkingfrom the lumber camp at Smokemont, across the mountains, down into Sugarlands Valley on a Kephart lived a life of quiet renown during his remaining years in Bryson City. He campaigned vigorously and eloquently, in articles to newspapers and to elected officials, for the creation of a national park. He saw it as the only way the Smokies could be saved from the destruction of lumbering operations. In 1931, Kephart was killed in an automobile crash at the age of sixty- eight. The full reasons behind his abandonment of family and career, to live alone in the wilderness of the Smokies, will never be known. Once here, he was able to observe and chronicle for us a tucked-away portion of American culture on the brink of unalterable change. His book, Our Southern Highlanders, is a window through which we can view life in the Smokies before the lumber companies, "progress," and a national park. Of his efforts for the protection offered by national park status. Kephart said, "I owe my life to these mountains, and I want them preserved that others may profit by them as I have."