State

Story and Drawings by EVERETT N. K1VETTE Deep in the remote back country of the Unaka and Bald Mountains of west¬ ern North Carolina where that state borders with eastern Tennessee, nature reclaims the fields and pastures, the cabin and church yards of “Lost Cove.” Roads into the Cove cannot be found — for they were never there. But even trails and paths arc being scaled now by hemlock and pine, laurel and rhododendron, greenbrier and fern. The copperhead guards its rocky gates and most men arc forbid¬ den entrance, not only by nature but by its present owner, a North Carolina Piedmonter, whose wrath has been fired by the continued vandalism of those campers and hikers who will not honor the privilege of seeing this uniquely isolated village fade of its own into history. Epitaph lor Lost Cove Few outsiders ever saw' the fabled com¬ munity, and fewer ever will. Though never an Eden or a Shangri- La, Lost Cove was nevertheless once a thriving logging and farming village of sometimes forty or fifty persons, waiting, like so many other Ap¬ palachian communities, for its trails to be widened into roads. But, alas, a road never came to the Cove. The deep gorge of the Nolichucky River whose thundering rapids could be heard below the little settlement allowed scarcely enough space for the tracks of the "Old 3 -C," later the Clinchficld rail¬ road. to pass. Even if there were no tracks to crowd the pass there, neither the county nor the state could have matched cither the railroad's expendi¬ ture or its motivation for building a road in such a place. Hemmed In The expense alone of a bridge span¬ ning the river in this direction so to connect Lost Cove with Poplar, a little village with a post office, some five or six miles away, would have been probably hindrance enough. The half¬ bowl of rocky ridges behind, lowering quite steeply and at some places almost three thousand feet above the village, offered few alternative routes for a road. "Government land” (National Forests and Wildlife Reserves) even¬ tually hemmed in the little settlement and there were only about four hun¬ dred acres left finally to divide and re-divide among the families there. Normal expansion was thereby hin¬ dered and so unfortunately the number of persons represented by any petition for a road would remain pretty much the same. A mile or so up from the river by trail and at an elevation of about two thousand feet above sea level, the peo¬ ple of the Cove looked out on a lovely world — if at times a somewhat lonely one. Their fields and orchards, though rocky, were nevertheless responsive to their labors. There was and still is an air of highland Scotland about the place with its stone fences and rocky sum¬ mits. not too inhospitable to the sturdy Scotch-1 rish and Welsh stock that mostly took possession of it. Lumber and Brandy But unlike those of Scotland these highlands, at least at first, had great trees to be felled and rolled down to the railroad tracks. Hemlock, pine, and balsam could be found. Oak and ash, poplar and "cucumber" (mountain magnolia), hickory and chestnut were plentiful. A saw mill even was set up for a time and a mile-long spur from the Clinchficld reached in a bit closer to a nearby site and seemed to bring the world outside nearer. But the mill did not stay — when the big timber was cut. it moved on to more virgin territory, the tracks were torn up. and the Covians were again alone. The outside world seemed to have little reason to come to Lost Cove — at least as long as it was still popu¬ lated — except for an excellent brandy and whiskey once made there. But THE STATE. March 15. 1971 7