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586 Search Results for "george ellison"
WNC was once home to marble mines
Published: 2019-05-29 15:31:33( Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News in June 2004) The destiny of a given region is largely determined by its geology, topography, flora, and climate. That’s certainly been the instance here in the southern mountain...
Read MoreThe story behind the man: First-ever Horace Kephart biography explores a complex man and momentous life
Published: 2019-05-29 15:19:14Horace Kephart has been dead for 88 years, but his name and his story still pull an undercurrent through Western North Carolina. Kephart is acclaimed as the father of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an outdoorsman gifted with an adventurous soul...
Read MorePain was the norm with old-time dentistry
Published: 2019-05-15 15:36:51Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News on May 14, 2003. Old-time dentistry as practiced here in the Smokies region wasn’t pretty. All of the descriptions I have found make it seem just about barbaric, but, then again, w...
Read MoreThe first truly showy woodland flower
Published: 2019-05-01 14:58:53Editor’s note: This column first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News in May 2005. Hepatica doesn’t display the earliest flowers that bloom each year. Those of bitter cress, henbit, purple dead nettle, bird’s-eye speedwell, and others appear in open...
Read MoreThis must be the place: Home is where we wanna grow
Published: 2019-05-01 14:28:14Crossing the threshold of Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack in West Asheville recently, I scanned the space looking for my old friend, Heather. And there she was, sitting on the patio, sipping a beer and looking over the menu deciding how hot she was willing t...
Read MoreCherokee planting method was ‘agronomically sound’
Published: 2019-04-17 14:34:28Editor’s note: This column first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News in April 2004. These days my wife, Elizabeth, and I just play around at gardening in several raised beds situated beside the front deck of our home. This year, she has already put out...
Read MoreBlackgum tree trunks have many uses
Published: 2019-03-20 16:26:59Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News in March 2002. Some months ago I wrote about how the early white settlers here in the Blue Ridge utilized the natural bends in sourwood tree trunks as runners for sleds. Lately I’v...
Read MoreJunaluska’s story as told through historians
Published: 2019-02-06 15:39:06Editor’s note: This column first appeared in a February 2002 edition of The Smoky Mountain News. Every reader of this column has heard of the person known as Junaluska. But what do you really know about him? What is his true significance? I decided to ...
Read MoreMountain lion lore
Published: 2019-01-09 15:21:40Editor’s note: This article first appeared in a March 2006 edition of The Smoky Mountain News. I frequently hear from people who have spotted a mountain lion in Western North Carolina. Or at least they think that’s what they saw. I’d guess that abo...
Read MoreLimestone ‘sink’ is just over the mountain
Published: 2018-12-26 15:57:23Editor’s note: This article first appeared in a January 2005 edition of The Smoky Mountain News. “If it form the one landscape that we … Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water … What I hear is the murmur of u...
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