Lucy Armstrong Moltz

Toxaway Visionary

You can visit and stay at the home of Lucy Armstrong Moltz – known today as The Greystone Inn. This visionary woman ensured that Toxaway remained a vibrant community in the wake of the catastrophic dam break of 1916.

Lucy Armstrong Moltz

This portion of Western North Carolina has been blessed with dreamers who were as unshakable in their convictions as the granite mountains that shaped their settlement.

Of course there’s the case of Messrs. Kelsey and Hutchinson who slapped a couple of yardsticks down on a map and willed Highlands into existence.

And the Zachary’s who opened their boarding house/general store in the 1830s. The business also doubled as a bank, allowing locals to barter, and exchange gold for cash.

Which brings us to Lucy Armstong, a young woman who was a free-spirited, fearless socialite in Savannah, Georgia.

She came to Western North Carolina in 1910 with her husband George to stay at the deliciously sybaritic Toxaway Inn (alongside most of the luminaries of the Gilded Age).

Like so many then and now, Lucy was easily enraptured by the beauty and tranquility of Lake Toxaway and in 1913, she told George that she wanted to build a home on its shores.

In a bit of remarkable gamesmanship that suggests George truly understood his wife and her impulses, he suggested that she select an ideal spot and camp out all summer before making a final decision.

“In the summer of 1913, Lucy chose a rocky knoll on a short peninsula on the Western shoreline of Lake Toxaway for her home site and proceeded to ‘camp’ in true style,” according to the archives of The Greystone Inn. “She started by having a hardwood floor built, then covered it with a 2,000-square foot tent, and completed her camp by setting up a smaller tent next door to house 11 servants.”

That’s right, true to her reputation as a progressive thinker, Lucy invented the concept of glamping 100 years before it would enter the public consciousness.

And, true to his word, George built a lake home on that very spot, which was completed in 1915 and called Hillmont.

In 1916 a tremendous flood caused the Toxaway dam to burst. The lake emptied and so did the steady stream of vacationers. Although the Toxaway Inn never reopened, the Armstrong’s did not desert their retreat. Undeterred, Lucy continued to visit her mountain home, and after her husband’s death in 1924 made Lake Toxaway her permanent residence.

In the early 1930’s, Lucy remarried local businessman Carl Moltz. The two entertained frequently and expanded the home.

Lucy was a big supporter of the local community. Teaching women skills that included cooking, canning and homemaking and during the difficult days of the depression, Lucy created jobs on her estate for people. She loved children, often hosting picnics and paid for over two dozen young people to attend college.

You can see the fruits of her passion and her generosity of spirit when you visit her home, which is now known as The Greystone Inn.

by Luke Osteen

The Hurricane of 1916

In 1916, a season of floods and a hurricane spelled disaster for the getaway destination of Lake Toxaway.

Though they imagined they were roughing it, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and Mr. Unknown Figure were 100 yards from the comforts of the opulent Toxaway Inn.

In last month’s issue of The Laurel, I laid out the mystery of a string of elderly former Toxaway residents dying in remote parts of Oregon in the 1980s and 90s and ending up back in the mountains for burial.

I noted that Toxaway in the early 20th century had all the makings of a thriving, growing community. That was predicated upon the building of the opulent Toxaway Inn and the construction of a railroad from Brevard to Toxaway Station. The railroad opened this corner of western Transylvania to exploitation of its mineral resources and its vast stands of the magnificent American Chestnut.

The inn brought America’s gentry to an untrammeled wilderness where they could enjoy all the amenities and comforts of modern 20th century life. It was spa living before people knew what that was.

It also brought a small army of workers needed to keep the entire enterprise going, and the railroad brought battalions of lumberjacks to harvest the deep forests that carpeted the surrounding mountains.

But a pair of catastrophes decimated this tiny community and left residents impoverished, some scattered to the far western forests of Oregon and Washington.

In July of 1916, heavy rains settled onto this corner of the Southern Appalchians. The soil became saturated and mudslides were frequent.

Piling on, in August a hurricane came ashore in Mississippi and turned northeast, arriving in Western North Carolina on August 13. That’s when the earthen dam holding back Lake Toxaway’s swollen waters gave way.

When you travel on US 64 over Toxaway Falls, you can see a vast slope of bare rock that’s nearly 100 yards wide. That stretch was carved by the escaping torrent of Lake Toxaway’s five billion gallons of water draining in the span of 18 minutes.

If you were to follow the course of Toxaway River from that devastated landscape, you’d find an enormous 60-foot-long boulder carried down the flood. About a half mile further down Toxaway River there’s a 60-foot long boulder weighing nearly 900 tons that was moved there by the flood. Instead of a picture-postcard vision of beauty and tranquility, Lake Toxaway was transformed into 540 acres of drying mud, interspersed with shallow pools clogged with dying fish.

That ended the idea of Toxaway serving as a glamorous getaway and in 1947 the Toxaway Inn was sold and dismantled.

Well, I’ve used up my word count. Join me next month when I finally solve the Mystery of Uncle Mac.

by Luke Osteen

Toxaway Panthers

Does a Ghost Cat still prowl the isolated corners of Western North Carolina?

Last month, when I began writing about the mystery of former Toxaway residents ending up in the far corners of the Pacific Northwest, I drew upon the recollections of my grandfather, John Luke Osteen, who spent his 20s serving as the teacher at Toxaway School.

He told me heaps of stories about his time as Mr. Luke, as he was known to his students and their parents.

One that resonated with me as a kid that I’ve carried with me over the decades was his recollection that a panther roamed through the deep American Chestnut forest that ringed Toxaway.

This was in the early 1920s and it electrified the community. Conventional wisdom held that painters had vanished from the landscape at the turn of the century. This creature had been spotted by experienced woodsmen and my grandfather’s friend, a farmer named Thomas Card. Footprints were spotted and a strange creature was heard yowling in the night.

Painters, as they were called by the first white settlers here, and also known as Eastern Cougars and Mountain Lions, were once scattered throughout the area (witness all the creeks and ridges and mountains that bear the name – and, of course, the Carolina Panthers).

The Cherokee considered them powerful spirits that were to be treated with respect. The whites who moved into the mountains of Western North Carolina attributed to them a sinister nature and their presence was considered an ill-omen.

Painters were powerful hunters in all types of weather and navigates the forest with ghostly majesty.

But here’s the thing – though this Mystery Cat electrified the Toxaway community in the 1920s, and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the US Forest Service maintain that there haven’t been panthers here for 120 years, there have been sightings reported throughout the ensuing decades, all the way to the present day.

If you’ve seen a large cat gliding through the forest or spotted unusually large tracks, contact us here at The Laurel. It’s a mystery that’s shadowed my family for 100 years.

by Luke Osteen

HISTORY

Pages 170-180

photo by Susan Renfro

Love of Place

Geneva Zachary and Julia Zachary circa 1920

John Zachary’s peripatetic daughters always managed to make it home to the Cashiers Valley.

In circa 1900, after graduating from Teacher’s Normal, forerunner of Western Carolina University, John Alexander Zachary (1881-1919,) accepted a one-room schoolhouse teaching job in a small Georgia town near Atlanta.

He was named after his great-grandfather, Col. John A. Zachary, one of the first settlers in Cashiers Valley.

By 1910, young John Zachary had met and married a Georgia girl; moved to Atlanta; changed professions from teacher to railway mail clerk; and became the father of two girls, Geneva and Julia.

He was not a well man and by the fall of 1919, at the age of 38 years, he succumbed to the then-deadly tuberculosis – a slow, painful death.

While John’s widow, Viola, struggled to make a living by taking in boarders and making hats, daughters Geneva and Julia were students at Atlanta’s Fulton High School as well as taking after-school jobs to help make ends meet.

Geneva worked for Western Union, riding her bicycle all around downtown delivering telegrams. Julia worked for Norris Candy Company where she was befriended by the wealthy Lowensteins, owners of the candy company. They taught her how to dress and walk and fix her hair as well as teaching her how to run a very successful candy company. (She eventually became vice-president of the company.)

Starting even before their father died, Geneva and Julia would take every opportunity to spend time with their Zachary grandparents in Cashiers. They would board the train in Atlanta and get off the train in Hendersonville, North Carolina. There they would transfer to a little train that terminated at Toxaway, North Carolina.

There, their grandfather, T. R. Zachary (1850-1921), would meet them with a mule-drawn wagon. It would take them a large part of a day to make it up to Cashiers. They would frequently have to stop to remove big rocks out of the dirt road. But, oh, how happy they were when they finally got to the house that T. R. had built in circa 1882. Cashiers Valley was their favorite place in the whole world.

That strong love of place would be passed on to future generations.

by Jane Gibson Nardy, Historian, Cashiers Historical Society

When times are tough – pandemics, worldwide catastrophes, talk of the Apocalypse – Hollywood reflects those disasters in horror movies.

We Pandemicans were stuck at home last year, and the movie industry cranked out horror movie videos to an anxious, yet willing audience.

The public’s collective fear taps into the themes of scary movies or vice versa.

And when it’s make-believe fear, we can superimpose our real fear onto the movie.

It’s a release.

But before Hollywood and group therapy, how did ancient civilizations anthropomorphize fear?

Through word-of-mouth myths like the Cherokee ogress legend, U’tlun’ta (Spear-Finger). The forefinger on her right hand was a spear or obsidian knife, a handy utensil for extracting livers and kabobbing them while she slurped and gobbled.

She walked the borders of western Tennessee and North Carolina. Her favorite home was the Thunder Mountain, our own Whiteside. Think about her next time you’re hiking Old Whitey, and a chilly wind snaps your neck hair to attention.

If you do have a Spear-Finger encounter, U’tlun’ta, like all villains, has a weak spot: her heart was in her right palm. All you have to do is get past that Swiss-Army Finger.

She was a chunky babe. Made of stone, she thundered, crushing rocks as she rumbled across a mountainside. Her voice echoed through the passes and scared birds away. When the birds were silent/gone, it was a sign U’tlun’ta was nearby.

Running away from a lumbering rock doesn’t sound that hard, but U’tlun’ta could shape-shift into one of your children or a seemingly harmless old lady.

One time she picked up a huge boulder bridge and carried it in the air to Whiteside. Higher Beings thought U’tlun’ta was getting too uppity and too close to the Upper World, so they smashed it. You can see the bridge remains today in Whiteside Cove.

Ran Shaffner’s Heart of the Blue Ridge is rife with interesting tales, some tall, some true. Visit highlandshistory.com or email hhs@ highlandshistory.com for more info.

The Cherokee Ogress

The Highlands-Cashiers Plateau was a dangerous place when U’tlun’ta ruled from her throne on Whiteside Mountain.

by Donna Rhodes

Mountain Heritage Lecture Series

A pair of lectures, set for July 8 and August 5, will illuminate the adventures of two tireless travelers. For more information, contact the Cashiers Historical Society at (828) 743-7710.

Cashiers Historical Society invites you to join them for their annual Mountain Heritage Lecture Series, held this year on July 8 and August 5 from 11:00 until 12:30 at the Dowden Pavilion on the grounds of the Zachary-Tolbert House.

Admission to each lecture is free but donations are always appreciated.

The July 8 lecture features actress and storyteller Anne Van Curen, who transforms herself into Grandma Gatewood, the first woman to solo hike the Appalachian Trail in 1955. Grandma Gatewood was 67 years old and escaping a life of domestic violence when she made her first journey, wearing cloth sneakers and carrying only a walking stick and a sack of supplies over her shoulder. Her hike was a far cry from today’s thorough hikers who often have state-of-the-art hiking equipment. So realistic is Ms. Van Curen’s portrayal that you will find yourself reliving every step and adventure of this brave pioneer’s journey. National interest in her journey is credited in part with saving the Appalachian Trail.

On August 8 Tom Robertson will speak on his work Ellicott’s Rock: Surveyors’ Footsteps on the 35th Parallel. Ellicott Rock Wilderness Area is the only wilderness area that straddles three states: Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina; and spans three national forests: Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina, and Sumter National Forest in South Carolina. This wild and scenic recreation area is enjoyed by outdoor enthusiasts each year, but a lesser-known fact is that the original surveys of the area resulted in a boundary dispute between North Carolina and Georgia that became known as the Walton War. Major Andrew Ellicott, a well-respected surveyor, was tasked in 1811 to determine the correct border between North Carolina and Georgia and end the dispute. Subsequently the area was named in his honor.

by Mary Jane McCall

Whodunnit Highlands Style

Our little mountain town looks so tranquil, but there’re plenty of shady characters lurking in the pages of Death on the Mountain.

Whodunnit? It’s a July morning in 1925, and Nicholas Padgett, in mauve silk pajamas, lies on his lawn above the gorge—strangled. A buzzard sits next to the corpse, about to breakfast. Who murdered the most unpopular man in Thunder Falls, N.C., who the evening before—at the wedding of Margaret Irving and Thomas Tallis—audaciously kissed the bride and then whispered in her ear in a knowing way? The war-hero groom? Padgett’s brother in law, who accused him of business fraud as he left the church? Or was it the lunatic son of the bride’s housekeeper, kept chained to a ceiling beam at his mother’s cottage?

You won’t find “Thunder Falls” on a map, but it’s located between Dillard, Ga., and Cashiers, N.C., and the road down to the Mayberry County seat goes behind Angel Wing Falls. The foul deed is chronicled in the atmospheric 1931 novel by Dorothy Ogburn, Death on the Mountain. Ogburn (1890-1981) was from Atlanta, and spent summers in Highlands with her husband and son, both named Charlton. Ogburn wrote two other mysteries: The first, Ra-Ta-Plan-! is set on the Georgia Sea Islands; The Will and the Deed takes place in the Hudson River valley.

In its 1930 review of Ra-Ta-Plan-! the New York Times said “the author has succeeded in making each of her characters a distinct personality, an achievement so rare in mystery fiction as to be worthy of special notice.” The same is true of her Highlands-set tale, whose plot the Raleigh News and Observer commended as “refreshingly novel.” Ogburn reminds me of writer Louise Penny.

Our sleuth is teenaged ornithologist Stephen Latimer, clearly based on Ogburn’s son, who became a talented writer himself (see his 1975 natural history, The Southern Appalachians: A Wilderness Quest). But Charleton Jr.’s first paid job was catching flies to feed the salamanders at the Highlands Museum (now the Biological Station).

Next month: A *real* literary mystery that featured all three Ogburns.

by Stuart Ferguson, Local Historian, Co-Owner Shakespeare & Company

Where Earth Itself Rebels

Light Fracture by our own Deena Bouknight casts an unflinching spotlight upon a disaster of Biblical proportions and the people who struggled to rebuild.

So here we are, in the midst of the busy summer season with an imminently readable summer novel, one that’s written by my friend and co-worker Deena Bouknight.

Before we dive into Light Fracture, Deena’s third work of fiction and a tale that unspools with a ferocious inevitability, let’s talk about me.

I’ve lived here on the Plateau for 34 years.

I’ll run into you and have to defend my opinion and back up my words. And when I screw up (1,437 times and counting, folks) I have to live with the consequences far into my accelerating senescence.

So what I’m trying to tell you is that, like Balzac, I write with “clean hands and composure.”

Which brings us to Deena’s Light Fracture and the reasons it resonates so deeply as a tale set in the grim days leading up to and through Charleston’s devastating earthquake of 1886. These are people who’d lost so much during the Civil War and the hardscrabble days that followed. True to their era, they bore their miseries with stoic acceptance and passions were kept under rigid control.

This calm resignation is all the more striking as we tumble out at the far end of a global pandemic, when arguments, fist fights and, God help us, shootings were judged to be adequate responses to mask regulations.

Ladies and gentlemen, you need to become acquainted with the inhabitants of Deena’s meticulously researched Southern Historical Literary Fiction. That’s her term for it, but I think it shades into Southern Gothic territory – poor, tragic Agnes refuses to lie in peace and her presence plays counterpoint to the earthquake that equalizes everything. (Just how powerful was that earthquake? We need look no further than the estimable Jane Nardy’s Cashiers History entry in the March 2021 issue of Laurel. That thing shivered across the landscape for 300 miles and cracked the face of Rock Mountain!)

And the sturdy Morris Island Lighthouse is a character as formidable as any courthouse anchoring a Faulkner tale. Deena plays it for all its worth.

This is a tale of secrets buried deep and the revelations that’ll be brought to the surface when the earth itself rebels.

If you’re looking for a respite from the disaster that was the last 16 months, well, the catastrophe that tumbled Charleston may be the tonic you’re seeking.

Deena’s book is available at Shakespeare and Company in Highlands, and a well-known online retailer of books.

by Luke Osteen