Inside the area that legendary author Horace Kephart once described as “a country of ill fame”
In 1904 Horace Kephart, a librarian/outdoorsman who tended the stacks at the Yale University Library and for a while worked for an American rare book collector in Italy, separated from his family and made his way to the Mountains of North Carolina.
Kephart was 42, and he spent the rest of his life living amongst and writing about the people of the Smokies and beyond. His work “Our Southern Highlanders” was published in 1913. It helped shape a national obsession with – and misunderstanding of – the people of the region.
Kephart became one of the leading voices for the creation of the national park. According to his critics, he sculpted a version of reality a little like one of those Hollywood “based on a true story” narratives. The overall flow and tone of the book were accurate. But Kephart wasn’t about the truth getting in the way of a good story. He was fascinated by a certain type of mountain character. And so, he focused his writing on those who fit his fancy. However, he under-represented the parts of the culture of the mountains that he found less interesting.
Kephart helped create stereotypes that remain to this day
“I became more absorbed in the study of my human associates in the backwoods. They were like figures from the old frontier histories that I had been so fond of, only they were living flesh and blood instead of mere characters in a book … They interested me more than the ultra-civilized folk of cities,” Kephart wrote.
It’s not that the people and places he wrote about were fictionalized. It’s that he only offered one picture of the mountains to the outside world. And that one picture became the dominant popular version of life in the mountains.
But Kephart’s literary freedom wasn’t limited to the people. He applied it to the mountain communities themselves. And so, when Kephart wrote about a remote, hard-to-reach and sparsely populated area of the mountains just above Gatlinburg, he was drawn to its less savory elements.
…a country of ill fame, hidden deep in remote gorges, difficult of access, tenanted by a sparse population who preferred to be a law unto themselves. For many a year it had been known on our side as Blockaders’ Glory, which is the same as saying Moonshiners’ Paradise, and we all believed it to be fitly named.”
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sugarlands.
What are the Sugarlands?
Well, if you’ve been to the Smokies and Gatlinburg, you’ve probably heard of the Sugarlands Visitors Center. It is located, appropriately enough in the Sugarlands Valley, one of the most used and popular entrances to the natural park. The Valley stretches from the Roaring Fork to the East to Sugarland Mountain in the West. Mt. LeConte sits to the valley’s south.
The area was named for the sugar maples that were abundant at the time. The sap was used by settlers to make syrup in the 1800s. As the Ogles and others arrived in Gatlinburg – known as White Oak Flats – in the early 1800s, they spread out into the nearby valleys, settling into regions like the Sugarland. There was a trio of communities in the Sugarlands region. The Forks-of-the River and Fighting Creek communities were near what is now the popular entrance to the park. The third community, the Sugarlands, grew further to the South. That’s the area to which Kephart referred when he called it a moonshiner’s paradise.
The history of moonshine in the Sugarlands
The Smoky Mountains in which Kephart arrived in the decades after the Civil War were changing mightily. Sure, there was a pervasive moonshiner culture as the area grew corn readily – no matter what the song says. Other ingredients were also close at hand, including a lot of fresh mountain water streams.
The Sugarlands – a remote mountain valley – was a particularly good spot for moonshiners to ply their craft. Kephart wrote an account of a North Carolina deputy who made his way to the Sugarlands in search of three fugitives. According to the librarian, the deputy was met by a polite but suspicious populace who did not take easily to strangers. In Kephart’s account, the steep mountain slopes were covered in rows of corn. The deputy eventually found a place to stay the night. But he returned home without the wanted fugitives.
Were the Sugarlands any more dense with the moonshine trade than other remote mountain communities? Probably not. But that narrative fit Kephart’s interests and so he focused on them.
Life in the mountains was much like other communities in the country
The truth is life in the rural mountains in the 1900s wasn’t significantly different than rural life in other parts of the country at the time. Certainly, you still had people living remotely in one-room cabins, making their living with small subsistence gardens and hunting game. However, the rural mountain farms were growing into larger compounds with multiple buildings, more modern houses and more. The more successful farms would open general stores on the property. Or sometimes in their home. Grist mills and sawmills were also more frequent. Still, poverty was rampant and education remained scattershot. Many of the people were exceedingly religious. They looked down upon frivolities like music, dancing, games and even Christmas. Those people would only have welcomed moonshine for medicinal purposes.
While there is little doubt the deeper recesses and hollers of the Sugarlands were popular with moonshiners, there’s nothing to indicate the Sugarlands the moonshining Mecca that Kephart made them out to be. Though in true print the legend fashion, one of the many Gatlinburg distilling companies took its name from the Sugarlands.
Sugarlands today
The Sugarlands Visitor Center – which offers free admission and parking – sees about 4,000 to 5,000 visitors every day from May through October. It is among the park’s most visited regions. Destinations within the Sugarlands area include Laurel Falls to the West and the Chimneys Picnic Area to the South. The Chimneys Picnic area is one of the best places for picnicking in all of the Smokies. The Roaring Fork Nature Trail with its series of hiking trails, waterfalls and old homesteads is located within the Sugarlands as well. The Mt. Mingus Overlook on Newfound Gap Road and the Alum Cave Bluffs are within its borders.
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