Economics
Working In The Mines ~ Mitchell County to Vance County
This article features recollections of Gary Forbes of Mocksville, NC, the son of Paul and Elsie Burleson Forbes. He was born in 1948 in Spruce Pine at Williams Clinic. My earliest memories are of living in the Hamme Tungsten Queen Mine Camp in Vance County, NC,...
1955 – The Museum of North Carolina Minerals is Opened With Great Fanfare at Gillespie Gap
On June 17, 1955, the Museum of NC Minerals was officially opened at Gillespie Gap with North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges presenting the museum to United States National Park Service Director Conrad L. Wirth. The museum was a joint project between the state of...
Spruce Pine Esso on the Corner of Greenwood and Highland
The building in the photograph was on the corner of Greenwood Road and Highland Avenue, just across from Town Hall, according to Max L. Gouge (1926-2015), who made notes and drew a map on the reverse of the photo. His notes state that the original Esso Station in...
The “Burleson” of “Burleson Hill”
J.E. Burleson operated this mica house atop Burleson Hill, the location of the current Spruce Pine Town Cemetery. Burleson began opening mica mines in 1894 and ground mica beginning in the 1900s. He was the largest individual mica operator in the region. His...
The Little Boxes before the Big Boxes
Before the days of the “big box” chain stores, Spruce Pine had many “mom and pop” grocery stores that served the area. There were also many smaller stores in almost every community. There was even a branch of the Dixie Home Store on Lower Street for several years that...
Little Switzerland
This exotic European name was penned by Judge Heriot Clarkson of Charlotte who established this resort community near the Blue Ridge Parkway in 1910. The resemblance of the area to the mountains of Switzerland gave rise to the name. At an altitude of 3,500 feet above...
Railroad coming to Bakersville??
According to some local traditions, the railroad was to have come through Bakersville instead of Spruce Pine, but certain town leaders did not want that to happen. A variety of explanations has been suggested over the years; however, perhaps the truth lies in the...
Catching The Train
Catching the Clinchfield as it wound its way northbound up the mountains, or southbound to the piedmont was an easy task when passenger service was common. The railroad, which ran from coalfields of Elkhorn City, Kentucky to the textile mills of upstate South...
Celebrating 106 years of the Bakersville Barber Shop Building
The earliest photograph of Bakersville that shows the property on which the Barber Shop building sits today was taken after the 1901 May Flood. It’s shown here beside the first Post Office and the J W Bailey Store which was sold in 1912 to George Young. At this time,...
The Roan may become Sun Valley of the South
Don’t go looking for your skis just yet; however, this idea has an interesting history going back at least to 1920. It is well known that General John Wilder had a smaller retreat constructed on the Roan in 1877 and then in 1885 built the iconic Cloudland Hotel, which...