New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard The cultural awareness of Daniel Boone begins with John Filson’s 1784 publication, The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke (sic), which included, in the first edition, a brief add-on in the appendix entitled the Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon (sic)…the irony…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard Early on, and ironically enough, an abundance of water made Butler, Tennessee a good location to build town. But a series of floods, culminating with the violent killer flood of 1940 that left six dead and many missing led the powerful Tennessee…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard There are so many wonderful plants, shrubs and trees that grace our mountains…notably ginseng, trillium, rhododendron, laurel and dogwoods…however the plants that don’t get much respect or even recognition might be best represented by lowly but hearty skunk cabbage. Like daffodils, its…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard The Appalachian Scenic Highway, what we know today as the Blue Ridge Parkway, was meant to be as functional as it was aesthetic…both getting travelers from the Shenandoah National Park to the Smoky Mountain National Park, but also reflecting that the landscape…
New Appalachian Moments blog post by Scott Ballard Many people can recall various floods or high water, but very few residents remember two earlier events of epic proportions that devastated our region. That’s because the flooding that truly overwhelmed many of our ancestors occurred in 1916 and 1940. By the…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post! By Scott Ballard When the early scotch-irish pioneers came up into these rugged mountains, they brought with them sturdy individualism, their own brand of religion and music, AND the art and mystery of distilling! People would actually be pretty shocked to find out how much…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post! By Scott Ballard The Junaluska neighborhood, in the NW North Carolina mountain county of Watauga, could very well be one of the oldest, if not THE oldest continuously inhabited black communities in Western North Carolina. Junaluska has a unique history dating back to the mid-1800’s,…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post! By Scott Ballard While she might have beat the heat and vacationed at the Green Park Inn, Annie Oakley’s main connection to Blowing Rock really comes from her operating a shooting range at Mayview Manor in 1924. Born in Ohio, Annie began hunting and shooting…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post! By Scott Ballard What do the US Senate, movie star Jean Harlow, a bull walrus and the Hope Diamond all have in common: A connection to Robert Rice Reynolds…it didn’t matter that he claimed no kinship to the Reynolds tobacco fortune…because he made his own…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post! By Scott Ballard Just below the crest of the Blue Ridge…over on Three Mile Creek in what is now Avery County, North Carolina, Uncle Jake Carpenter lived for eighty-seven years. Born in 1833, he became very acquainted with every one of the scattered families in…
