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Monday

08Mar2010

Whitetop Mountain Maple Festival

Monday, March 8, 2010 at 08:36AM

Whitetop Mountain, 1875. Click on image for larger view.Yesterday I spotted the first crocus flowers of the season poking their yellow blooms out of the leaf litter and snow remnants. Spring will arrive. One of the sure signs of spring in these parts is the Whitetop Mountain Maple Festival in Grayson County, Virginia, which is held annually on the last full weekend of March -- this year, March 27 and 28, 2010. Sponsored by the Mount Rogers Fire Department & Rescue Squad, the festival festures a "tapping tour" demonstrating how maple sap is harvested. Details at Whitetop Mountain Maple Festival.

Jay Henderson |

Yawn!

Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 09:47AM

Same old stuff. Infusion yesterday, foggy yesterday evening, semi-foggy and logy this morning. No real news. I'll post something more interesting eventually.

Jay Henderson |

Backup Yer Dern Blog!

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 12:02AM

I forgot to backup, and now I feel like . . . uh . . .Amid complaints that things are disappearing from Facebook -- of course they are; Facebook is again in the process of "improving" the site -- there have been admissions that some of you-all don't back up your blogs. Mercy forfend! Back up NOW and regularly thereafter!

I don't know the procedure for all blogs, but here are a couple I do know, and the other services probably have something similar:

BLOGGER: Go to Settings/basic, blog tools and click on “export blog,” then click on the “download blog” button.

WORDPRESS: Go to Tools (lefthand column in dashboard), click on “export,” then click on the “download export file” button.

Right now -- backup yer dern blog!

Jay Henderson |

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Tuesday

02Mar2010

Log Cabins & Buildings of the Tennessee Smokies

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 03:33PM

Tennesseans are proud of their frontier heritage and have preserved quite a few vintage log cabins and farm buildings. After the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in the 1930s, mountain communities were displaced but some of their habitations were preserved. This article presents an archive of monochrome photographs which documented these historic structures.

{To continue click HERE}

Jay Henderson | Comments Off |

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Sunday

28Feb2010

Kentucky Mountain Folk

Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 05:02PM

Mountain woman of Frozen Creek, Kentucky. Library of Congress.Life in the mountains of East Kentucky has been demanding since the early days of European (mostly Scotch-Irish and English) settlement. In the many isolated valleys and hollows, it is a hardscrabble life, even today. Yet many of the mountain folk wouldn't trade that life for the city, even when they could -- isolation and self-sufficiency being primary reasons why the first settlers came here to put down roots.

Note: Click on any image for a larger view.

Farmstead near Hyden, Kentucky. Library of Congress.

{To continue click HERE}

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Saturday

27Feb2010

Tennessee Backcountry: Log Cabins and Buildings of Cades Cove

Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 11:16AM

Cades Cove is a community frozen in time. When the U. S. Park Service took over this area of the Great Smokies, there were a number of well-kept cabins and buildings, and an old mill in restorable condition. Some of the structures in Cades Cove were preserved and restored; others were moved from elsewhere. These log and timber buildings now make Cades Cove a major draw in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

{To continue click HERE}

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Friday

26Feb2010

Help Needed -- Where Is This Scene?

Friday, February 26, 2010 at 10:41AM

While perusing the Library of Congress archives, I ran across a beautiful old panoramic shot of a dirt road and stone wall viewed against a range of mountains (click on image below for a larger view). The scene is very reminiscent of the Valley of Virginia or the Cumberland Valley in Maryland-Pennsylvania, but evidently the attribution information has been lost. Perhaps the profile of the mountains in the background can provide the location -- if anyone out yonder recognizes this place, please let me know.

Update on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 02:07PM by

Jay Henderson

Correspondent higgmeister's suggestion: "I think it is a seventy five year old photo of Rockfish Gap from the Shenandoah Valley near where the Skyline Drive meets the Blue Ridge Parkway. I graduated from Waynesboro High School and haven't been back there in almost forty years, but it was the first thought in my mind when I saw the photo."

At this point I'm 90% confident that higgmeister is correct and the mystery photo was taken in the Shenandoah Valley near Waynesboro, Virginia. If you look to the right of the separation line near the middle of the picture, there is a low V-notch in the mountains; that looks like Rockfish Gap. To the left of the separation line, about center-frame from top to bottom, there appear to be buildings; they are located about where U.S. 250 runs coming down from Rockfish Gap. Continuing to the left, there is a shaded cluster of objects (houses and buildings, I think) where Waynesboro would be located. The profile of the mountains compares well to some other panoramic views of Rockfish Gap/Waynesboro which I have located on line.

Thanks to all for their comments and suggestions. If somebody runs across information which will confirm or refute, please let me know.

Jay Henderson |

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Saturday

20Feb2010

Riding The Blue Ridge Railroad

Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 09:03AM

Northeast portal of the Blue Ridge Tunnel under Rockfish Gap. Library of Congress.The Blue Ridge Railroad was chartered and funded by the Virginia General Assembly in 1849 in order to build a rail link between the Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley. After surveying a route across Swift Run Gap, where U.S. 33 the Blue Ridge Mountains today, the engineers determined that construction costs were prohibitive. The state turned to French-born engineer Claudius Crozet, one of the founders and the first Commandant of the Virginia Military Institute. Crozet looked around and determined that a series of four tunnels could be built at reasonable expense at Rockfish Gap.

{To continue click HERE}

Jay Henderson | Comments Off |

Friday

19Feb2010

Backcountry Culture: Blue Ridge Folk Before The Shenandoah National Park

Friday, February 19, 2010 at 08:13AM

William A. Brown, Postmaster of Old Rag, Virginia. Library of Congress.The Shenandoah National Park displaced some 450 families from the northern reach of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. The Park meant the end of a generations-old way of life for the mountain folk, many of whom didn't want to leave. One of the most populated, and well-studied, areas of displacement was the Old Rag-Nethers vicinity, which included Nicholson Hollow and Corbin Hollow.

Note: Click on any image for a larger view.

Below: This picture of the Old Rag area was taken by George Freeman Pollock, owner of the Skyland Lodge and a promoter of the SNP. Pollock was complicit in painting an unflattering picture of the local mountain folk.

NW View from Old Rag Mountain. NPS.

Both local interests and Federal agents seemed to share a common interest in misrepresenting the Blue Ridge folk as ignorant, isolated, ne'er-do-well hillbillies. Fortunately, Federal resettlement agency photographers created a small archive of pictures which, perhaps inadvertently, helps to frame a truer picture of the mountain culture.

{To continue click HERE}

Jay Henderson |