Wildfire burns along I-40 at Harmon Den

An aerial shot shows the Hurricane Ridge Fire on Thursday, Nov. 24. USFS photo

Awildfire reported Wednesday, Nov. 23, in the Harmon Den area of Haywood County was still burning with no containment as of Monday, Nov. 28, estimated at 150 acres.

The Hurricane Ridge Fire is located east of Interstate 40 off Cold Springs Road in the Pisgah National Forest. Because it’s so close to the highway, smoke may impact visibility on the road, particularly in the mornings and evenings through Wednesday, Nov. 30. Flames may be visible along the east side of the road, and drivers should use caution, but the highway is expected to remain open. However, the U.S. Forest Service has issued an emergency closure for Brady Road, Forest Service Road 3526.

Firefighters worked from the evening of Nov. 23 through Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24, to identify and construct containment lines. Fueled by dry, windy, unseasonably warm conditions, the fire flanked around Interstate 40 before spreading upslope to Hurricane Ridge. After topping out on the ridge, the fire started to back down into the remote Hurricane Creek Drainage. Due to the steep terrain and limited access to the fire edge, fire managers identified a contingency plan using primarily area roads, including Cold Springs Road to the north and Hurricane Creek Road to the south. Helicopters were used for water drops to reduce the intensity of the fire near these fire lines.

Aided by rain on Sunday, firefighters worked Monday, Nov. 28, to further identify and improve contingency fire lines around the perimeter of the Hurricane Creek drainage. Several cabins are within the larger contingency area and are being assessed for fire risk and protection needs. The fire is expected to increase in size as accurate mapping is completed.

Dry conditions have prevailed in the mountain region since early October, and the most recent drought map based on Nov. 22 data lists Haywood County as experiencing severe drought. All the seven westernmost counties are in moderate or severe drought. However, until now the far western region has been devoid of large wildfires this fall. A widespread rain Wednesday and significant moisture in the forecast over the next 10 days could roll back current drought designations.

As of Monday evening, 70 firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service and North Carolina Forest Service were responding to the Hurricane Ridge Fire. The response effort is supported by Haywood County Emergency Management and the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

The public should avoid the area so as not to interfere with firefighting operations, and exercise caution as long as conditions remain dry and windy. Drone activity endangers firefighters and firefighting efforts

The fire’s cause is not yet known and is under investigation.

Dr. Carl Schenck is shown here (front row, right) posing with his students at the Boomer Inn cabin. Note that in the left background is the stable where their horses were sheltered. Donated photo

BY CARROLL C. JONES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Readers are now likely to be searching their own minds for the meaning of the term “boomer inn.” Could it be a hotel or boarding house? Maybe the name is associated with the generation of people known as baby boomers following World War II. Then again, it might only be a clever label for the nesting place of the rare red mountain squirrels known as boomers.

The author recently found himself questioning this “boomer inn” handle while studying two old United States Geological Survey maps and tracing a “trail” above Haywood County’s Sunburst Campground. This is the same region known as Three Forks more than a century ago, long before the modern Sunburst Campground era. It is the location where the Middle Prong and Right Hand Prong streams come together and join the West Fork of the Pigeon River. Over the years, Three Forks has hosted an early 1900s logging community with supporting railroad infrastructure, a U.S. Army encampment during World War I, and the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

A broken line on the 1935 maps depicts the trail with its meandering westward route from a CCC camp at Three Forks all the way up to the crest of Lickstone Ridge, at an altitude of 5,600 feet above sea level. The trail climbs along the lower reaches of the Right Hand Prong stream to the point where the waters of a smaller tributary named Boomer Inn Branch empty into it. From there, it generally follows Boomer Inn Branch up the mountain to Double Spring Gap at the top of Lickstone Ridge.

Interestingly, less than a mile below Double Spring Gap, the early map indicates an existing structure beside the trail with the label “Boomer Inn.” To a keen reader of maps, this structure located at such a high elevation in the middle of an unpopulated wilderness area and with such an unusual place name begs the questions, what is Boomer Inn and is it still there?

That is what the search for Boomer Inn is all about. Those of you whose interest might be aroused are invited to read further into the matter and learn more about this Boomer Inn conundrum.

BILTMORE FOREST SCHOOL

Most Western North Carolinians have heard of George Vanderbilt and his Biltmore Estate in Asheville, but they may not be familiar with Carl A. Schenck. A German by birth and training, Schenck earned a Ph.D. in forestry sciences in early 1895. That same year, he was hired by Vanderbilt to take on the forestry management responsibilities for Vanderbilt’s Biltmore and Pisgah Forests, covering more than 100,000 acres.

Three years later, in 1898, Dr. Schenck opened a school of forestry named the Biltmore Forest School. It was the first of its kind in the United States, with daily morning lectures and afternoon horseback trips into the forests to instruct students in the basics of forestry sciences.

Unfortunately, Dr. Schenck’s services at Biltmore were terminated by Vanderbilt in 1909, and he, along with his wife and forestry school, were forced to move off the property. Reuben B. Robertson, who was the manager of Champion Fibre Company’s new pulp mill at Canton, soon became aware that Dr. Schenck had no place to take his Biltmore Forest School students. Consequently, Robertson invited Dr. Schenck to bring his forestry school over to Champion’s new logging village named Sunburst, in Haywood County. The village was woefully underutilized at the time, pending the start of logging operations in the company’s vast forest lands surrounding Sunburst, on the headwaters of the Pigeon River. Financial issues had thus far delayed completion of Champion’s railroad, Pigeon River Railway, linking Canton to Sunburst, leaving no cost-effective means to transport harvested timber to the pulp mill in Canton.

A grateful Dr. Schenck gladly took Robertson up on the offer, and for a few months of each year, from 1910-1913, Sunburst’s new schoolhouse/church building boasting a wonderful belfry hosted the Biltmore Forest School. Dr. Schenck and his wife were provided a comfortable home to live in and his students were lodged in available houses and tents.

As it happened at the time, on the other side of Lickstone Ridge, a few miles west of Sunburst and beyond Double Spring Gap, Champion had recently purchased the Quinlan-Monroe Lumber Company. Included in the acquisition were a circular sawmill and extensive forests on the headwaters of Allen’s Creek, embracing several large bodies of spruce timber.

This situation offered a unique opportunity for the Biltmore Forest School students to travel over the mountain and study Champion’s methods for accessing and removing the spruce timber from mile-high elevations. These logging efforts would eventually include the construction of railroads, log chutes and flumes, splash dams, and even a Roebling Engineering Company incline railway system.