Final Stop on The Tour of The Upper Cumberlands

We’ve spent twelve weeks touring the Upper Cumberlands through 1940’s spectacles and from the perspective of Dr. Willis Baxter Boyd in his promotional booklet The March of Progress in the Upper Cumberlands of Tennessee. Today I’d like to wrap up the tour with stops in three towns and three additional topics. 

McMinnville, TN

If we drove this route today, it would be about fifty-seven miles up highway 56 and we would not pass any other towns on the tour.  But these three stops seem logical to group because The March booklet presented them in such a similar fashion.  Facts are presented about each location and they are certainly painted as appealing places to visit or even live.  And while the vast resources of the area are detailed, there doesn’t seem to be any real effort to recruit industry to these towns. 

Furthest north of this group is Carthage, Tennessee.  This is the first town in the booklet that wasn’t accompanied by a motto; it is simply presented as the county seat of Smith County.  Carthage does sit at the confluence of the Caney Fork and Cumberland Rivers.   It is the last point at which the Cumberland River makes a junction with a railroad since the Tennessee Central had a branch line into Carthage.

Farming of various stock and crops was the primary industry in Carthage with burley tobacco being the second highest means of cash in the county.  The highest ranking crop was not named.  The average size of farms was sixty-three acres.

No doubt due to the ease of transportation and the great supply of tobacco, five large warehouses were established by the Carthage Tobacco Board of Trade and bought tobacco from fifteen counties.

Just twenty-seven miles south you will find Smithville, “The City of Hospitality and Friendliness”.  The county seat for DeKalb County, Smithville was home to Consolidated Bus Lines, Seven Springs Health Resort and a “government owned and operated airport and [aviation] radio station.”

The Seven Springs Resort seemed to have all the same water that Red Boiling Springs had, as we discussed here a couple of weeks ago.  However, I found it very interesting that the resort was minimalized in the booklet’s article.  It made me wonder whether that resort was ever as large as Red Boiling Springs had been.  However, an internet search yielded no answers.  Neither The Smithville City Hall website nor Wikipedia makes any mention of the resort nor does it have a site of its own.  Perhaps one of you readers will know more about this; if so I sure hope you’ll leave a comment.

Our final stop is McMinnville, “The Southern Gateway to the Upper Cumberland.”  This county seat for Warren County lies on Highway 70-S which The March bills as “The Broadway of America”, the longest cross-country highway in America.  There were six other “important roadways” radiating to all points on the compass. 

The article lists advantages in locationand natural environment being service by the Sparta branch of the N.C. & St.L Railway.  Ten manufacturers and at least five nurseries were already located in Warren County. The nurseries had annual receipts exceeding one million dollars in 1940 – that’s more than $16 million in today’s money.

The booklet includes a map of areas served by Upper Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation within the Carthage article, however, there is no text accompanying the map, nor is there any detail given within the article.  Prior to the establishment of TVA, private electric companies like this one could be established and serve a given area.  While it’s certainly possible there were other companies serving the region, the immense white space on this map is startling to my 21st century eyes.  There is another map for McMinnville Electric system  which shows coverage in DeKalb, Cannon, Warren, Van Buren and White counties.  This map has even more white space than the Upper Cumberland Electric.

The March booklet also gives a two-page mention to the Tennessee Central Railway Company, noting it is “The Road of Personal Service”.  Unfortunately, very little information is given about the railway itself which struggled with financial difficulties for decades and finally terminated passenger service to the Eastern division in 1955 and ran its last train in 1968.  Still, this railway was a lifeline for the plateau for over sixty years.

Several previous articles in this series have well established that the booklet’s author was certainly an equestrian enthusiast.  Therefore, it’s not surprising that he promotes the Tennessee Walking Horse for mountainous and hill country.  In this article, he gives great detail to the blood lines for pure breds and I was particularly interested that he points out the value of Walkers for pleasure as well as farm utility.  Remember that this book was written when there were still few tractors on farms in the Upper Cumberlands so horses and mules were harnessed every day.  He also gives mention to the W.J. Evins Stables both in the Smithville article as well in an article of its own.

I’ve really enjoyed working my way through this old document and sharing it with you.  It stretched my understanding of “The Upper Cumberlands” because a lot of the places we’ve discussed are what we would consider “under the mountain”.  Certainly some of the towns were more dynamic and interesting, and after reading this book I want to spend more time in some of them and want to learn even more about others.  I’d sure love to go stay in one of those historic hotels in Red Boiling Springs and I’m ever more fascinated by the history of Monterey.  I intend to finish reading Mark Twain’s The Gilded Age and see if Jamestown shines forth from the pages; and I certainly want to learn more about The Free Hill Community near Celina and Virginia Hill who freed slaves and left her children in our mountains.  I hope you enjoyed the series and that it’s given you a bit fresher perspective on some of our neighboring towns.

Domain of Cumberland County

We are nearing the end of our Tour of the Upper Cumberlands and this stop in Crossville is a very familiar one to me and to all of my regular blog readers.  I’ll link some past articles where I can in this week’s story.

For most of my life, Crossville was "town", it was THE PLACE to go if you needed anything.  Going ‘off the mountain’ was not something we routinely did, therefore Cookeville wasn’t a regular destination and we certainly didn’t go to Knoxville, Chattanooga or Nashville unless someone was very sick or coming in on an airplane – and the two were equally rare. 

Crossville has changed so much in my lifetime that it’s really hard for me to imagine what people who well-remember the town in 1940 must think.  The March of Progress booklet notes that it has a population of 2,000 people in town.  Compare that to the 2013 population of 11,246 and we can already see the immense change.  In 1940, there was “a $20,000 air-conditioned moving house” – ah that would have been the old Palace Theatre which very thankfully has now been fully restored and continues to be a source of entertainment for Cumberland County. 

When this historic booklet was produced, the CCC’s still had two companies at work in what is now The Cumberland Mountain State Park.  The book notes the recreational opportunities at the park as well as mentioning a total of ten lakes in Cumberland County for fishing. 

Image from: http://tnstateparks.com/parks/about/cumberland-mountain

The Homesteads, which we’ve previously discussed here, are mentioned especially noting the hosiery mill and furniture factories located there.

Overall, this article seems to be recruiting farmers as it notes that only 20 percent of the county is currently in farms.  There are several mentions that homes and land can be had at very low cost and the profitability of livestock and vegetables are strongly touted. 

Only passing mention is given to Pleasant Hill.  The Pleasant Hill Academy had been in operation since 1884 and in the early 1920’s a medical clinic was established there which would grow into the modern Cumberland Medical Center (we’ve discussed that here in regards to health care on the mountain).  However, I suppose by 1940 the focus of Cumberland County had adequately shifted to Crossville so that the author of this promotional booklet felt little attention was needed in Pleasant Hill.  The academy would close just seven years later and by 1950 the Uplands Hospital would have relocated to the south side of Crossville as Cumberland Medical Center.

I just really love this directional sign now located on the courthouse lawn in Crossville.  I hope you can enlarge it on your screen to show that it gives general direction and miles to towns from Albany to the north, Chattanooga to the south, Knoxville to the east and Nashville to the west.

Red Boiling Springs “Nature’s Clinic for Sick People”

You may recall my talking about Monterey, Tennessee’s history as a resort town.  Well, just sixty miles northwest sits “a resort nationally known for the health restoring properties of mineral waters”.  Red Boiling Springs has four types of water, each of which was historically prescribed for different conditions.  This unique medicinal nature of the geography brought about one thousand people into town each year.

The Armour Hotel
Built in 1924 as The Counts Hotel, this brick building was rescued from deteriorating conditions in the late 1990's.  It is open today for year round enjoyment. 
Visit their site at www.ArmoursHotel.com

Tourism led the people of Red Boiling Springs to provide accommodations unheard of in most rural community and many small Tennessee towns of the 1940’s.  “Electric lights, an up-to-date water system, good highways, local doctors, drugstore and other similar modern provisions await the arrival of guests each month.”

The armour hotel today

The commercial aspect of Red Boiling Springs began in the mid-1840’s with the first inn being built by Samuel Hare.  By 1873 a stagecoach line had been established to deliver tourists from Gallatin which is located forty miles away and held the nearest railroad stop.  Then in the 1890’s a railroad spur was built to Hartsville and the stagecoach ride shortened to about twenty-five miles.  Doctors in town would prescribe the specific water your condition needed and how it was to be “taken”.  In addition to ingesting the water, there were bathing and steam options.

The Thomas Hotel
Built in 1890, this hotel sits on the edge of Red Boiling Springs' city limits.
It is open today, serving home cooked meals in a 125 seat dining room and still offering the use of expansive lawns for games and relaxation.
http://www.thomashousehotel.com

The THomas Hotel Today

While I didn’t find an exact number of hotels in operation in the heyday of the mineral springs, it appears there were at least five or six and they are big things, boasting fifty or sixty rooms.  Today there appear to still be three of the original hotels in operation and I have to tell you an overnight visit there has got to go on my bucket list for they appear to still be decorated with antique furnishings and memorabilia.  Moreover, at least one of them, The Armour Hotel still offers the steam treatment and mineral baths.  I’m including “then and now” pictures of the three hotels pictured in the book along with links to their websites.

Donoho Hotel
Built in 1916, this hotel replaced another which had been built in 1901 but burned in 1915.
No mention is made of the house in the foreground of this picture, but Wikipedia discusses The Donoho House which was built for the hotel's management and I wonder if that is what is pictured here.
The hotel is open today; they have a Facebook page but I couldn't find a website.
https://www.facebook.com/thedonohohotel

Sadly, the years of gasoline rationing took their toll on this remote resort and after the war the town never recovered.  The article in The March of Progress booklet does not seem interested in recruiting industry to the town and I can’t help but wonder if the author of this article felt sure that the tourists would return when the economy recovered from The Great Depression. 

Donoho Hotel today

Today, there is still industry and employment surrounding the magic waters of Red Boiling Springs just now in bottled form.  Nestle is bottling the freestone water - after they remove all the minerals from it.

The county seat for Macon County is Lafayette, just twelve miles west of Red Boiling Springs.  While the very short article on Lafayette boasts that Macon County has the largest number of hotels of any county in the state “on a population basis” and it also promotes a “new, commodious” hotel in town, there is still no solicitation for new industry.  The short article is followed by details on the benefits of raising sheep in Tennessee.

Celina, Tennessee and The Free Hill Community

Sitting in the heart of Clay County, Celina is today the jumping off point for recreational opportunities at Dale Hollow Lake.  Since the Dale Hollow Dam was not completed until 1943, our historic publication wouldn’t have realized the effect of the project on the Celina area.  The information in this article is simply informative with little of the marketing that we’ve seen for other towns in the Upper Cumberlands.

The booklet gives a very brief history with a passing note to the “Free Hills” in the background.  After my realization and historical confession last week, I was curious to learn more about that community and I find it so fascinating that I want to share a little about it even though it isn’t really covered in the March of Progress.

According to www.FreeHillCommunity.org  and the historical marker, a North Carolina slave holder named Virginia Hill bought 2,000 acres of hilly land in the early 1800’s.  Located five miles northeast of Celina, she gave this land to her slaves when she freed them then she left the area.  There is a legend that she left her own multi-racial children among the group.

Free Hills thrived for a time, having “two grocery stores, three clubs, two eateries, two churches, a school, skilled artisans, and three hundred residents.”  Like so many rural Appalachian towns, Free Hills has declined since the 1960’s as residents left farming for more prosperous jobs in urban areas.

As history so often does, this story leaves me with more questions than answers!  Don’t you wonder what ever became of Miss Hill?  If the legend is to be believed, she birthed four children by a man who most certainly was a slave and probably one owned by her father.  She must have loved him a great deal as she surely gave up any possibility of a normal life yet she went to great lengths to try to give her own children as much normality as possible by providing this freedom.  I wonder how old she was when she did this and I wonder where she went when she left.  Do you imagine she went back to the North Carolina plantation now devoid of its workforce and still a century before the Civil Rights movement that would begin to move people of color into every phase of American life.

And what of these people she left behind?  Carving farms and creating a life in the hills of Tennessee would be vastly different than working on an established plantation.  I wonder if they relished their freedom so much that they never complained?  Or did they, like the Children of Israel cry out to the spirit of their benefactor that she had brought them to this place to die.  Did they think it would have been better to remain slaves on Mr. Hill’s plantation?

For us twenty-first century Americans who have never known really any restrictions on our freedom, it’s hard to read the biblical account of the Exodus and really appreciate the complaints.  I always think that surely freedom is worthwhile even in really bad conditions.  But when I think about the difference in working an established plantation (and some of the slaves probably never saw the fields for they were ‘house slaves’) and trying to clear a Tennessee hillside, grubbing out stumps with nothing more than a broad axe and a mule and trying to nurse a crop out of soil that would rather erode into the river than nourish your family.  It must have been easy to look back fondly on their days of bondage.

Oh my, there’s a story in this!

Cookeville, Tennessee “Thrift and Vision”

This week’s stop in our 1940’s Tour of the Upper Cumberlands is Cookeville, Tennessee.  The March of Progress publication dedicates a whopping eighteen pages to the town and I am fascinated by the information it shares as well as what seems omitted.

I never tend to think of myself as an historian.  Yet, I am quite eager to preserve the history of the plateau region and I suppose that qualifies for the title.  Recently, I’ve been troubled by a trend in America to revise our history.  As we study the past, there are things that we applaud and things that we mourn – but they are both history. 

I confess that in reviewing the “March of Progress” story about Monterey last week, I purposely omitted a racial observation by the publication’s author.  Undoubtedly in 1940 many towns were quick to promote their “abundant supply of native, white, efficient labor.”  However, in the context of this blog and our focus on commemorating Appalachian history, I felt that element was out of place.  When I began working on the Cookeville story and found that amid details about the brand new City Hall and a National Guard Amory which cost $60,000, the African American population was noted as residing “just outside the corporate limits”.

Now, here on the plateau, we have never been at the center of civil rights movements or thankfully the unrest some of our nation has seen of late.  While I know that prejudice exists on the mountain, I never saw first-hand any unkindness based on race or religion and I am awfully thankful for my own ignorance in this area.  Perhaps some of you readers who may have a better grasp on 1940’s history in America can comment and help us understand why the author would have even mentioned this separate community.  We’ve seen that a lot of the articles in this booklet are geared toward recruiting business and industry, but there is no indication given here that the residents of “Bush Town”  are offered for any particular type of labor.  Surely they would have been a part of the larger labor pool for new businesses locating in Cookeville.   He does note that the races are “economically indispensable to each other” but doesn’t elaborate any further. 

Ironically, the author seems to see no inequality in his statement for in the next paragraph he notes the phenomenal growth of Cookeville “due to a spirit of courage and cooperation”.  Then the following section opens with, “Out of the chaos, penury and prejudice which characterized the years following the tragedy of the Civil War…”  I suppose it is possible that he held no particular bias and is simply reporting the factof where “resides the colored population” and that they do have “their own schools, churches and community life”.  This is one of the challenges of reading a historical document with modern eyes.

In 1940, Cookeville was the proud home of Tennessee Polytechnical Institute, and there is a beautiful two page spread dedicated to the school.  Surprisingly, after the detailed account of Baxter Seminary, the information here is simply a nine point summary with a list of departments within the school.

Ellen Dee Webb, First woman to solo a plane in Putnam County.  Note that she appears to be wearing a parachute.

Separately, the article notes that the institute has contracted with the federal government to train pilots with the head of the mathematics department serving as coordinator to the Tennessee Flying Service.  At the time of publication, twelve students have already received private certificates and another class has started with an unknown enrollment.  They have trained one woman, and she is pictured with the caption “The heroine of the air.”  Miss Ellen Dee Webb of Richard City, Tennessee was the first woman to solo an airplane in Putnam County.

Sometimes in reading an old periodical, the advertisements can teach as much as the text.  The Cookeville article seems to have a lot more ads than the other towns we’ve visited.  On in particular was fascinating to me; Hotel Shanks is pictured and its location is noted as West Main Street, opposite the depot.  I don’t believe that building is standing today, at least not if the Cookeville Depot Museum is located where the train depot was in 1940.

One of the Terry Brothers who owned a dry goods store on the square

Finally, I’m going to include two horse pictures.  It seems there were some fans of the Tennessee Walking Horse at work on this booklet for we’ve seen similar pictures before.  The president and vice president of The First National Bank were of the Wilhite family, and Miss Sara Elizabeth WIlhite is pictured driving a fine example of the breed.