Economics
“Crest of the Blue Ridge Highway” ~ The Parkway before the Parkway
In the early 1900’s, Americans were gaining great mobility with the invention of the automobile. In 1906, North Carolina’s State Geological and Economic Director, Joseph Hyde Pratt, had a vision of bringing visitors to the North Carolina mountains to experience views...
Cleaning Our Toes
According to the Cherokee, a river is referred to as the Long Man with his head in the mountains and his feet in the sea. The North Toe River’s head is at Sugar Gap in the mountains of Avery County and the South Toe’s head is in the Black Mountains near the Blue Ridge...
Tragedy at Berry Gap
The coming of the Clinchfield Railroad to the region in the early 1900s was a boon for the area and opened up the isolated mountain region to the outside world. The building of the railroad through the mountains was an arduous task and an engineering marvel that still...
Mitchell County’s Mica Mine Murders
Waightstill Avery Anderson was a Mitchell County revenue officer. Anderson married Nora Bowman, the daughter of J.W. Bowman and Mary Garland. Anderson had the reputation as a man who “possessed many enemies because he was active in running down the moonshiners who...
Thomas Greene: Soldier, Miner, Philanthropist
In 1870, the Mitchell County census listed three people as miners by profession or occupation. The 1880 census lists 81 people as being associated with mines and mining. At the center of this dramatic economic development, the heart of which was to become the...
Brad Ragan ~ Spruce Pine’s “hard-driving, cigar-chomping businessman.”
Bradley Eugene Ragan was born 14 May 1915 in Coleman, Georgia, the son of W.E. and Lillian Brown Ragan. Ragan was the founder and Chairman of the Board of Brad Ragan, Inc., (BRI) the “largest tire retreading company in the world” and “parent company of Carolina Tire,...
Toecane ~ The Commercial Center of Mitchell County
Indigenous people came through the area where Cane Creek meets the Toe River at least four thousand years ago on their way to their hunting camp up Cane Creek near Sandy Branch. In 1540, de Soto came close to the area on his way to his overnight camp at Webb then on...
“Can you hear me now?” Upgrading Spruce Pine’s Phone System
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company opened a new exchange building on Walnut Avenue in Spruce Pine in May 1953. This new, larger structure replaced the old telephone office shown above. Calvin Hall recalls that the old office also sat on Walnut, but closer...
Robert B. Phillips – Educational Giant and Farmer
Robert Blalock Phillips was born 10/30/1902 in the Snow Hill community of Mitchell County. He was the son of W.S. (Woodfin Squibb) Phillips (1874-1952) and Sophia Blalock Phillips (1876-1906). He had 4 older siblings, and his mother gave birth to another child prior...
The First Electric Lights for Bakersville and Toecane
Bill Masters is credited with bringing the first electric lights to Toecane and Bakersville from energy generated by his water wheel in a 3-story mill in Toecane. According to living relatives, Bill was a voracious reader with a table in his home piled with stacks of...