Web posted: 3/28/03
Cotton Patch Farm: Tryon historical landmark
by Jo Anne McCormick Quatannens, Ph.D.
Editor’s Note: The Cotton Patch farm was protected by permanent easements from extensive development recently. The 403-acre property will have no more than eight homesites, and two thirds of the extensive Pacolet Valley land will remain common open space forever. Today, we present the history of the farm, established in 1937 by a New York banker named Perkins.
The sportsmen who settled in Tryon during the early twentieth century found an undeveloped and predominantly rural area that was uniquely suited to equestrian pursuits.
Among the individuals attracted by the Hunting Country’s scenic beauty and open space were James Handa-sayd Perkins (Jan.11, 1876 - July 12, 1940) and his wife Katrine Coolidge Per-kins, who bought 130 acres of Hunting Country property for their vacation and retirement home in 1937.
The land, like much of the Hunting Country, had once been part of a several thousand acre tract owned by Govan Mills, who died in 1862. Upon Mills’ death, the Polk County court ordered the sale of the plantation to settle his estate. The land was sold slowly and in large tracts; “for the most part,” relates local historian Anna Pack Connor, “the area has remained a collection of large parcels that have seldom changed hands.”
Perkins, a native of Milton, Mass., began his career as an employee of the Walter Baker Chocolate Co., but soon discovered that his talents were better suited to the banking field. After a brief stint with the American Trust Co. in Boston, he joined National Commercial Bank and Trust Co. as a vice president in 1912.
Two years later, Perkins became vice president of National City Bank of New York. During World War I, he initially headed up the United States’ European Red Cross organizations. Commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the American Expeditionary Forces 1918, he then served as assistant chief of staff of the Second Army at Chaumont.
Perkins resumed his banking career after the war, rising to the position of chairman of the board of National City Bank and City Farmers Bank and Trust Co. In March, 1933, shortly after assuming the chairmanship of National City and City Farmers, he was instrumental in persuading New York Governor Herbert Lehman to declare a banking holiday, paving the way for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s declaration of a national banking moratorium. Perkins later served as a member of FDR’s Federal Advisory Council, and in 1939 Federal Reserve Bank of New York president George L. Harrison appointed him to serve on a committee to study the monetary problems caused by the war in Europe.
“The Cotton Patch,” as Perkins named his new farm in the Carolina foothills, provided a welcome respite from his professional and civic responsibilities. He selected the renowned architect Russell S. Walcott to design the main house, which was built to reflect the natural beauty of its setting and completed in 1938.
Local lore relates that the residence was built “off the land” using local materials, including stones from several local mills. A United Firemans’ Insurance Co. plaque marks the entry to the house, an enduring memorial to Perkins, who served as chairman of the bank that owned the company.
An avid hunter, outdoorsman, and rider, Perkins took active interest in his new property, particularly in the cultivation of the bottom land, where he planted barley, corn and cotton. Perkins also cared for the extensive flock of turkeys that he bred as a hobby until his untimely death in 1940.
In 1948, Katrine Perkins sold the property to Mr. and Mrs. Willis E. Kuhn of Indianapolis, who used the Cotton Patch as a winter residence and as a thoroughbred breeding and training facility, acquiring additional contiguous acreage – they would eventually increase the farm’s size to more than 600 acres – and adding to its equestrian facilities. The Kuhns were enthusiastic supporters of all phases of equestrian activity.
Willis Kuhn was president of the Tryon Riding and Hunt Club from 1952 to 1953, and from 1963 to 1964, Mrs. Kuhn served as the club’s first woman president. The Kuhns were also members of The Tryon Hounds, and the farm became a regular hunt fixture, with members enjoying good sport over its rolling hills and along its spacious river bottoms.
Producing a distinguished stable of equine athletes that included Illiterate, a stakes-winning daughter of Arts and Letters, and dam of 1996 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Alphabet Soup and stakes winner Starsawhirl, the Cotton Patch soon became a landmark in local and national equestrian circles.
In 1956, the Cotton Patch achieved national renown when the United States Equestrian Team selected Tryon as the site for its qualifying trials for the Stockholm Olympics. The Tryon Riding and Hunt Club was instrumental in bringing the team to Tryon, with Tryon Hounds Joint Master of Foxhounds Earnest Mahler serving as local coordinating chairman and raising money for the event.
Many other area residents contributed to the effort, welcoming and cheering on the Olympic hopefuls who began arriving in January to train for the March 3- 17 selection trials.
“The most glamorous happenings in Tryon these days center around the Equestrian Team,” a Charlotte Observer reporter wrote in mid-February. “Some of the nation’s best horses and riders began converging on Tryon a month ago to try out for the team. On Saturdays and after the shops close on Wednesday afternoon, half the town is likely to turn out at Harmon Field or one of the other training grounds to watch the workouts.
One of these training grounds was the Cotton Patch, where the Kuhns constructed an impressive stadium with ample seating for the crowds that turned out to watch riders put their mounts through their paces in hopes of qualifying for the jumping and three-day event teams.
The famed jumper, Nautical, immortalized in the Walt Disney movie, “The Horse with the Flying Tail,” was one of the impressive field of contenders. The trials received national press coverage, and helped establish the Tryon area as the national known equestrian haven that it is today .
The athletes who qualified for the Olympics at the Cotton Patch are still remembered as among the best in their respective disciplines: jumping team members William Steinkraus, Frank Chapot, Hugh Wiley and Warren Wofford; and three-day event team members Jonathan Burton, Frank Duffy , William Haggard, and Walter G. Staley Jr .
The Kuhns’ generosity in making the Cotton Patch available for the Olympic selection trials was but one of the many public-spirited gestures that made them much-loved members of the local community. Jacquelyn Kuhn served as president of the St. Luke’s Hospital Auxiliary, and bequests from the Kuhns underwrote the purchase of land for the Tryon High School, and the construction of the Kuhn Science Hall at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C.
Mrs. Kuhn took a special interest in Converse, a private, four year liberal arts college for women founded by cotton magnate Dexter Perkins in 1889. A member of the Converse College Board of Visitors and a dedicated supporter of the school’s equestrian program, she made the Cotton Patch available to the college for its riding program and other activities, hosting horse shows and other events such as Freshman Fathers’ Weekend.
For a brief period after her death in 1985, Converse students continued to use the equestrian facilities at the Cotton Patch. The college owned the property from 1986 to 1989, when it was sold to the current owner, Robert H. Wallace Jr., founder and CEO of Delta Life & Annuity Co. of Memphis, Tenn.
Wallace brought to The Cotton Patch a keen appreciation of the land’s intrinsic value and possibilities. Although the previous owners had maintained the structures, pastures and equestrian facilities of the Cotton Patch, other parts of the property were clearly suffering for lack of a land management program.
Virginia pines had long since taken over the acreage that Perkins had clear cut for cotton cultivation in the 1930s; by the early 1990s, nearly half of these trees were dead or dying, and the remainder were vulnerable to pine beetle infestation.
The Pacolet River bed adjacent to the property had become so shallow after years of sedimentation that a 1" to 2" rainfall caused it to overflow its banks.
In 1992, after enlisting the advice of state and federal agencies to develop a management plan for restoring the land, Wallace agreed to designate the Cotton Patch a Stewardship Forest under a program developed by the U.S. Forestry Service. The Cotton Patch’s five year Stewardship Program – among the first of its kind in North Carolina, and the first in Polk County – was a multifaceted effort.
Different sections of the property – which in 1992 sprawled over 600+ acres with considerable variation in terrain and vegetation – posed different problems, each requiring its own remedy. In some areas, Virginia pines were clear-cut and replaced with loblolly pines to encourage hardwood growth. In other areas, selective harvesting was all that was required to encourage the growth of hardwoods, rhododendrons, and other vegetation.
Brush was removed from some areas, but left in place elsewhere to provide wildlife habitat. The river was dredged and willows were planted to stabilize the banks; grasses and other plants were added to control erosion and to provide habitat.
The North Carolina forestry officials who assisted in this effort were “extraordinarily supportive,” recalls Wallace; and, after completion of the program, the Cotton Patch is today widely recognized as “probably the most beautiful piece of property in the Hunting Country.”
Wallace’s stewardship of the Cotton Patch reflects the sentiments and efforts of a growing number of area residents who have in recent years, recognized that the preservation and protection of the region’s natural treasures will leave a lasting legacy for future generations.
Wallace also made extensive renovations of the main residence of the Cotton Patch, which have preserved the historic character. The house retains the flavor and structural integrity of Wolcott’s original design.
The footprint is unchanged, and the millstones and United Fireman’s Insurance Co. plaque that Perkins had incorporated into the structure remain in place.
The Cotton Patch is today a unique and distinctive property, a historic landmark that evokes Tryon’ s past, and a model for its future.
(The Tryon Daily Bulletin is celebrating its 75th anniversary all through this year by publishing accounts and pictures of Thermal Belt history.)
Future golf community was 1700s settlement
by Jeff Byrd
Stratford Douglas still dreams about the Bright’s Creek Valley.
He grew up in Tryon, but his best boyhood romps were on the 1,600-acre family cattle farm run by his uncle Marion Palmer Jr. in the Bright’s Creek Valley section of Polk County.
‘Strat’ or ‘S.M.’ Douglas, today an associate professor of economics at West Virginia University in Morganton, loved the farm in that valley horseshoed up against the sides of Wildcat Spur, Cliffield and McCraw mountains.
The group expected to buy the property today shares Douglas’ appreciation for the unique property. They plan to transform the old Palmer place and the entire valley – 4,235-acres in the far northwestern corner of Cooper’s Gap Township – into an upscale, golf community.
Led by Barton Tuck, golf course developer, and Bill L. Amick, owner of Amick Farms, South Carolina poultry producers and processors, the investment group was expected to close on the $18.5 million purchase of Deep Gap Farms today.
About a year from now, Tuck said, he hopes to start construction of a Tom Fazio-designed golf course community in the valley property surrounding Bright’s Creek. His company will market residential lots averaging three acres for between $200,000 and $1 million per lot. Houses will rest on the hills and ridges fanning through the valley, where owners will enjoy spectacular mountain and links views.
In e-mail interviews this past week, Strat Douglas recalled those views as they were 40 years ago, when the land sold for a small fraction of that price. He remembered how his Aunt Jean took him fishing on nearby Lake Adger, using “minners” out of Bright’s Creek for bait.
When he was 11, in 1966, he was allowed to head out camping, and did so, joined by a troop including his brother Ben, Phil Nisbet, Eric and Lane Pettigrew, Everette Palmer, Tom Waldenfels, Bobby Gardner, and Jeff Haslam.
The guys built a cabin around 1968, up along an unnamed creek, in an area his Aunt Jean called Fluter’s Valley. The name, Douglas’ aunt told him, came from a young Indian woman who was said to have carved a flute and played it to call for her missing warrior.
“Aunt Jean said you could hear her play on a moonlit night, when the wind was right,” Douglas said. “We never heard the fluter. We were probably making too much noise.
“I took care of the place for (my uncle and aunt) occasionally in the late seventies. I think I am the only one ever to kayak Bright’s Creek. I caught it once in a flood in 1980,” Douglas recalled. “I guess there was a time when I knew that valley as well as anyone, and better than anyone besides Uncle Marion.
“Many of my dreams are still there,” he said. “A couple of weeks ago I dreamed that my current house was there beside Bright’s Creek. I was showing the president of West Virginia University around.”
Veteran of ‘Indian Wars’
Such reveries ride on the good fortune of having been Dr. Marion C. Palmer’s grandson. Dr. Palmer, one of the founders of St. Luke’s Hospital, was financially able to buy property in the valley along Bright’s Creek in the late 1930s and 1940s, a time when many in Polk County were suffering the effects of the Great Depression.
Palmer began the trend of buying up and consolidating the smaller tracts of land in the Bright’s Creek Valley.
The valley was settled early in Polk County history. Strat Douglas recalled seeing a grave marker from the mid-1800s in a small, family cemetery a quarter-mile downstream from his uncle’s farm. “The man was a veteran of the ‘Indian Wars,’ or the ‘Cherokee wars,’ I can’t remember which,” he said.
The very first settlers were Walkers and Bradleys, according to the research done by descendant Calvin Bradley of Mill Spring. He estimates the families arrived between the late 1700s and early 1800s, migrating from the north, unlike many early Polk County settlers who came into the mountains from the South Carolina and North Carolina coasts.
“(The Walkers and Bradleys came south) through the gap, settled the valley and lived there,” Bradley said.
Calvin Bradley said he believes Robert Walker, the first settler, might have been born in Ireland, but had probably resided a while in the northern United States. Protestant families from Ulster and elsewhere (Pennsylvania, Scotland) began to flood into the Carolinas in the 1750s, while still more came in the 1760s. They continued to come after the Revolution.
The Walker family’s Republican, pro-Union roots remained in place when the Civil War arrived. Robert’s son, Thomas E. Walker, went back up through the gap and fought for the Union, one of just a handful of Polk County soldiers who didn’t wear the gray, according to historian Anna Pack Conner.
By the 1860s, the Bright’s Creek Valley was home to well-known Polk County families like the Arledges, Huggins, Hamiltons and Thompsons, in addition to the Walkers and Bradleys.
The Deep Gap
Once the war was over, civilization began to appear in the valley as more commerce traveled along Deep Gap and Mills Gap roads. The gaps provided the first passage into the mountains for a stage coach route from Columbia, S.C. to Greeneville, Tenn.
The Deep Gap between Cliffield (2,040 feet elevation) and McCraw mountains, while passable, is misnamed a “gap,” according to those who’ve traversed it. It is so steep that the landowners – those who had contracted with the Board of Supervisors for Public Roads to provide road maintenance – cut trees at the top of the pass to be used as drag brakes to keep descending stage coaches from running away. Drivers would unchain the logs at the bottom and valley residents cut them up for firewood.
The gap was treacherous, but it was useful in alleviating Bright’s Creek Valley’s isolation nonetheless. Calvin Bradley recalled that there were no bridges over the Green River until the early 1930s.
“The Green River Cove Road ended at the old Clem Arledge place and there was only a very primitive foot trail that tied the two sections together. Families living in the John Bradley, Fish Top section came in and out of the area by crossing the mountain to the Big Hungry area (in Henderson County) to Upward Road near Dana,” he said.
Bradley’s grandfather, Monroe Jackson, was a rural mail carrier out of Dana who made a daily trip to the top of the mountain above the cove, and twice a week descended by foot, horse or buggy.
Jesse Foy recalled when Mill Spring people using four-wheel drives still climbed the old wagon road through the Deep Gap to go shopping in Hendersonville. The road was even opened up by the state in the early 1950s, largely to accommodate construction of a natural gas pipeline through the valley.
“I remember I had just bought a new 1952 Chevrolet and I drove up through there,” said Hugh Arledge. “It wasn’t a highway, but you could go through there pretty well. It didn’t stay open too long.”
Staking out I-26
The gap road held financial promise for Marion Palmer Jr. when, in the early 1960s, the North Carolina Department of Transportation surveyed it as a possible route for I-26.
“The highway department went so far as to stake out the route in the early sixties and Uncle Marion was very excited about selling the corridor, but politics sent it through Columbus and Howard Gap,” Strat Douglas recalled. “That was a big event in Uncle Marion’s life because he and Aunt Jean always described themselves as land poor, so the idea of selling a big strip of land to the highway department was very exciting to them.”
Columbus leaders wanted I-26 in their town, and Tryon leaders wanted access as well, according to the recollections of former county extension agent Paul Culberson, who noted that “politics” is involved in everything.
“If the highway had gone around the far end of Little White Oak Mountain and up Deep Gap, then the N.C. 108 interchange probably would have been in Mill Spring,” Strat Douglas said. “Tryonites would have had their choice of going nearly to Hendersonville on 176 or out to Mill Spring on Hwy. 108.”
Still, the plan had advantages.
“It would have been cheaper and more direct to cross the Green River just above Lake Adger rather than build the High Bridge over the Green River Gorge,” Douglas said. “And building the route across the face of Miller Mountain to Howard Gap delayed the opening of I-26 by four or more years.”
Slope erosion was so bad on Miller Mountain during construction of the final section of I-26 up Howard Gap, completed in 1976, that one slide buried the Stone Hedge Inn’s pool. (It never resurfaced.)
“It was a mess, but I was glad they left the Bright’s Creek Valley alone,” Douglas said.
Walker General Store
A community grew along the old gap roads. In 1874, the Bright’s Creek Post Office was opened under postmaster Jabez M. Hamilton. It would operate until 1909. A second post office for “Walker, N.C.” was opened July 3, 1894 in the home of Civil War veteran Thomas E. Walker, Mill Spring genealogist Calvin Bradley’s great-grandfather.
The Walkers also ran a Walker General Store.
“My grandmother (Arkansas Walker Bradley) ran the store,” Calvin Bradley recalled. “It was a stop over for stage coaches. They bought most of their supplies (over the mountain) in Dana. Barrels of flour cost $5 or $6. Everything cost so little, but no one had any money.”
The Walker Post Office closed sometime after 1913, when the last postmaster was appointed.
On November 26, 1892, Lankford Huggins gave an acre of land for a new school on the south bank of the Mills Gap Road, near its fork with Deep Gap Road. The school committee included Calvin Bradley’s grandfather, Eli Bradley, along with A. E. Jones and John Jackson. For a while, county deeds misreported the school’s name as “Bride’s Creek” School. Students could attend there through seventh grade, and after that had to continue at Stearns in Columbus.
In 1981, Thermal Belt News Journal publisher Mike O’Neal interviewed Mrs. Henry Gibson, who recalled teaching two years at Bright’s Creek, in 1923 and 1924, working with 40 students. The school closed in 1930.
Eli and Arkansas Walker Bradley gave two acres to the Deacons of Bright’s Creek Baptist Church in March 1906 for a church and cemetery, one of a half dozen cemeteries still preserved in the valley. Thomas Egerton Walker, deceased July 16,1917, was one of 13 buried at Bright’s Creek Baptist, and the only one after 1916.
‘Washed the country away’
Youth had begun leaving the area around the turn of the century for jobs in the textile mills in South Carolina. However, even their well-settled parents packed up and left after a devastating flood hit the region in 1916.
On July 3, 1916, a tropical cyclone swept up from the Gulf Coast of Alabama and brought torrential rains to Tennessee and the Carolinas. It rained for ten days. A second tropical cyclone passed over Charleston, S.C. on July 14, and two days later, on July 16, 1916, expended its full force on the watersheds of Western North Carolina. Ten inches fell in 12 hours on already saturated ground.
“It just washed the whole country away, and their little farms on the hillsides,” Calvin Bradley said. Bridges and train trestles throughout the area were destroyed by high water. The devastation wrought just took the spirit out of the back country settlements like Bright’s Creek.
“My grandparents lived near the dam at Lake Adger,” said Anna Pack Conner. “They were just wiped out when the Green River flooded. They moved after that.” Conner’s grandfather, Walter Green, moved to Tryon and had a barbershop in the basement of what is today the Tryon Daily Bulletin building.
Union veteran Thomas Egerton Walker’s son, Robert King Walker, moved in 1926 to Landrum. Robert King’s grandson, Bob Walker, today owns Landrum Insurance Agency and serves in the South Carolina House of Representatives.
Back taxes due
The exodus from Bright’s Creek Valley continued during the Depression and World War II. Former Polk County extension agent Paul Culberson said some of the families left the area to go to work in the war factories up north. Others went into the service. Some died in the war and others just never came back. Many of them did not pay their Polk County real estate taxes.
“They left to go to Chicago and other places and just didn’t pay taxes on their land,” Culberson recalled. “I remember when the commissioners said, ‘We’re going to sell all this property and get it back on the tax rolls.’ I remember thinking that just to harvest the timber on the properties would pay the back taxes three or four times over.”
“I felt bad for those families,” Culberson said. “They served their country and gave up everything, their homes and their land.”
School teacher and Lynn merchant Carl Story was buying property at tax foreclosure sales, and bought some property in the Bright’s Creek Valley from Boyd S. Randall in 1950.
His youngest daughter, Hilda Story Pleasants, said her father owned lots of property in Holbert’s Cove and “significant” land in Bright’s Creek Valley, even over into Henderson County.
About the only place in Polk County where Carl Story didn’t own land was in Tryon, she said.
Country doctor
Dr. Marion Palmer was also buying during those years. Having come to Polk County in 1910, Dr. Palmer and his associate, Dr. Allen Jones Jervey in 1924 opened Tryon’s first hospital, The Tryon Infirmary, over top of what is today Owen’s Drug Store. Holland Brady Jr. was the first child born there.
In 1928, the pair helped raise funds to build a new hospital on Carolina Drive.
In 1957, Palmer and his son-in-law Ben Douglas acquired the Thermal Belt Telephone Co. and planned a million dollar rehabilitation and expansion. Dr. Palmer would die a year later.
Dr. Palmer’s granddaughter, Marianne Douglas Carruth, said her grandfather was one of the few who got paid during the Depression, if only sometimes in produce or services.
Patients unable to pay did construction work on Dr. Palmer’s house on Laurel Avenue in Tryon, a house now owned by Harold and Carol Cox.
The doctor did his part, too, donating health care to WWII draftees for decades after the war, an act for which President Eisenhower recognized him.
Still, Carruth said her mother, Mary Palmer Douglas, was embarrassed to be better off than others.
“Mom took her shoes off on the way to school to be like everyone else,” Carruth recalled.
Big Hungry
“Mom often told me about riding along with her father in the horse and buggy to visit patients in the Bright’s Creek Valley when she was a little girl,” Strat Douglas said.
“They would visit families in the valley, then follow Harm Creek up Deep Gap Road over the gap and down through the Hungry Creek Valley before catching Howard Gap Road home, picking up Howard Gap Road near the current site of the High Bridge.
“Generally, it was late afternoon when they forded Little Hungry Creek, and Grandaddy would say, ‘I’m a little hungry.’ When they forded the Big Hungry Creek, he would say, ‘I’m big hungry now,’ every time, to the amusement of his little daughter.
“She always got a big spacey smile on her face when she told me that story.”
Palmer first shows up in the Polk County Register of Deeds books in 1937, purchasing 319 acres in the Bright’s Creek Valley. Strat Douglas says his grandfather liked to take friends out to the property to play poker.
A quick scan of the oldest books shows Palmer making purchases there for another 11 years, through 1948, buying 179 acres from Jay and Minta Lou McGuinn, and 313 acres from M.A. and Sophia Cagle, along with smaller tracts from H.D. and Fannie Jackson, James Thompson and Emma Arledge, and Birdie L. Valley.
“Generally, the prices were 50 cents to a dollar an acre,” Strat Douglas recalled. “Uncle Marion moved out there around 1935. He remembered getting a 50-acre apple orchard for his birthday one year that had cost his father $50.”
The names of all those who sold are not in Douglas’ memory. “Mom and Uncle Marion used to talk about the ‘Earley Place’ and several other old farms,” he said.
Charles Dean Edwards grandmother was raised on the old Thompson place. He said he helped survey 160 acres, of which half went to Reese Arledge for an apple orchard.
Black Angus
The Palmers named the farm they pieced together Cliffield Farm, after the mountain.
Douglas says he believes it was 1,600 acres at its greatest extent in the 1960s.
Marion Palmer Jr. cleared much of the land for pasture and lived out there alone until he married Jean in the late 1930s. They raised Aberdeen Black Angus cattle, and let their pigs roam the woods, with rings in their noses so they couldn’t root, throwing out corn so they wouldn’t stray.
Flocks of geese filled the sky and the fields.
There were no utilities, so Dr. Palmer, a lover of gadgets, built a water-wheel sometime in the mid-1950s to generate power, with a flume several hundred yards long.
“Aunt Jean told me that when she wanted to use the electric iron, she would have to call the tenant farmwife (they had crank phones between houses) and ask her to turn off the lights,” Douglas said.
The powerhouse was dismantled and the equipment sold when Duke Power ran lines out to the valley in 1962. Telephone service commenced a little bit later.
Mike Carruth preserved a couple of the water-wheel spokes. He and Marianne are using them today as curtain rods in their Pacolet Valley home.
The Palmers were accustomed to the isolation of Cliffield Farm. They were hardy people. Marianne Carruth recalled her Aunt Jean hiking the ten miles to Mill Spring in a bad snow storm because the animals needed some feed.
“Aunt Jean was gentle. She was a sweetheart,” Carruth said.
In 1966, the Palmers sold the upper 1,000 acres of Cliffield Farm to Charles E.L. Crooks of Chicago.
Crooks, who folks recollect had made his fortune by inventing a staple or nail gun, named the place Deep Gap Farm and built a house with a beautiful view of the valley and Cliffield Mountain.
Crooks went on to buy 2,648 acres, purchasing tracts from the Harjist Corp., the Carl Story estate and Reese Arledge, who retained a life estate to work his apple orchard.
The late Jim Cochran was caretaker for the Crooks.
“In all the years I was married to Jim, I was never jealous of another woman, but I was jealous of his work at that farm,” Louise Cochran said.
Deep Gap Farm
The Crooks – Charles and his wife, Nellifern – lived year round at Deep Gap Farm. Cochran did everything for them, Louise recalled, including cooking meals and putting in Mr. Crooks’ contacts.
The Crooks would be the last of the large tract owners to actually live in Bright’s Creek Valley.
After Charles Crooks died, his son sold the property in 1978 to an Asheville road construction man named Baxter Taylor. Louise Cochran recalls that Taylor only visited the property on weekends.
In 1981, Hidden Springs Corp. bought out Taylor’s 2,648 acres and later another tract of 1,652 acres to create the single largest, privately owned, noncommercial parcel in Polk County. The principal owner of Hidden Springs Inc., since renamed Deep Gap Farms Inc., is George Levine of West Palm Beach, Fla., a highly successful entrepreneur. He reportedly has used the property only occasionally, as a sort of hunting lodge and has advertised it for sale in the Wall Street Journal in recent years.
‘Uncle Marion’s Dream’
The ebb of human activity in Bright’s Creek Valley is about to be reversed. Within the next couple of decades, up to 1,200 homesites will be created there. Strat Douglas thinks his Uncle Marion would be pleased.
“It’s Uncle Marion’s dream come true,” he said. “I don’t know how many times he told me that he hoped that somebody would buy the farm (he’d keep the house) for a lot of money and build a golf course.”
It will only be in memory, however, that Strat Douglas will enjoy those quiet farmhouse evenings.
“The farm was isolated and beautiful, quiet and peaceful. I remember taking care of the farm for a week in the mid-1970s, and sitting out on the front porch watching the evening come on. A friend came to see me one night, and I could hear his car motor and see his headlights on the hills as he approached for fully five minutes before he got to the house. There was a whippoorwill that would sing incessantly on the farmhouse roof all night in the summer.”
That’s the stuff of dreams.
(The Tryon Daily Bulletin is celebrating its 75th anniversary all through this year by publishing accounts and pictures of Thermal Belt history.)
Web posted: 3/14/03
Deep Gap tract of 4,235 acres sold, buyers see Fazio golf, up to 1,200 lots
Deep Gap tract of 4,235 acres sold, buyers see Fazio golf, up to 1,200 lots
A quiet, lost, uninhabited corner of Polk County is about to become a pretty nice address – eventually, up to 1,200 nice addresses.
A group of investors, Hidden Springs LLC, led by golf course developer Barton Tuck and South Carolina poultry producer Bill L. Amick, owner of Amick Farms, was expecting to close today on 4,235 acres off the end of Palmer Road, just a few miles from the marina at Lake Adger.
The land, cradled in a horseshoe shape by six miles of ridge lines – stretching between the peaks of McCraw, Cliffield and Wildcat Spur mountains – is being sold for $18.5 million by Deep Gap Farms, whose principal owner is George Levine of West Palm Beach, Fla.
Wildcat Spur is Polk County’s tallest mountain at 3,239 feet, topping Tryon Peak by eight feet.
About a year from now, Tuck said he hopes to start construction of a gated, private golf course community in the valley property surrounding Bright’s and Harm creeks, once the site of an 1800s settlement along the Deep Gap and Mills Gap roads. The course is to be designed by Tom Fazio of Hendersonville, chosen three years running in a Golf Digest poll of golf course architects as the “Best Modern Day Golf Course Architect.”
While giving a tour of Deep Gap Farms’ property recently for Waddy Stokes, a former tour player and now the golf professional at Tuck’s Forest Creek golf community in Pinehurst, Tuck fairly gushed over the proposed golf course layout he had been discussing with Fazio design staff. He pulled over frequently to sight down the proposed fairways, hazards and greens which will fill the lush valley.
“The beauty and adaptability of this property to the proposed project have overwhelmed everyone who has inspected the property,” Tuck said. He said he first heard of the deal two days before Christmas, and the fact that he was able to raise $18.5 million in investments for the purchase in such short order is a testament to its desirability.
The property shares a common line for over a third of a mile with the 7,000-acre Green River Preserve.
A year from now, after months of land planning and golf course design, Tuck said his company will begin marketing residential lots averaging three acres each for between $200,000 and $1 million per lot. Houses will rest on the hills and ridges fanning through the valley, and up on the mountain sides, where owners will enjoy spectacular mountain and links views without crowding the course itself.
“The lots will be ample and in setting with the land,” Tuck said. “We will let the land plan help us decide that.”
Phase I, which Tuck expects to develop in a ten-year time frame, will use approximately 2,500 acres, and will include the Fazio golf course, a club house, a pool, tennis facilities, an equestrian center, and walking paths.
“We’re also looking at trap and skeet shooting,” Tuck said.
Phase II may involve up to another 500 lots, and possibly a second golf course.
Tuck said he expects his market for lot sales to be “move-up” buyers from the Carolinas, as well as nationally based pre-retirement and retirement folks looking to find their retirement home. Tuck also expects to see second home buyers, especially those from the Florida coast looking for second homes in cooler climates.
Michael Jordan is one of Tuck’s club members at his Pinehurst course.
While the high end housing market may be in the dumps today, Tuck said, “all our models show a real economic upturn. We had our best year at Forest Creek (in Pinehurst) last year.”
Tuck said he hopes to see the Deep Gap golf course completed and golfers playing rounds by late summer of 2005.
“We should get under construction one year from now, and should get the course open in a year. It will be a fantastic golf course,” he said, “truly first class, with the land as it is.” The long tees will appeal to those professionals seeking challenge, Tuck said, while the “high handicappers” will also find acceptable ways to get up and down, without feeling the urge to break all their clubs.
It’s been said that Fazio’s 120 courses “look hard but play easy.” Known for building courses that appeal to all levels of player-skills, he is also acclaimed for consulting with nature to bring out the best attributes of a site. Among the best known Fazio courses are Shadow Creek, Black Diamond, World Woods, Wild Dunes, Wade Hampton, and Nos. 4, 6, 8 at Pinehurst.
Tuck said the name his company will give the new community in Polk County has not been decided yet, but that “Deep Gap” is in consideration by his marketing consultant.
“The main entrance to the property will absolutely be through Palmer Road. Although Fazio may want us to change the name of that road,” Tuck said, joking that the designer might not want anyone to think of Arnold Palmer.
Actually, the road was named for St. Luke’s Hospital founder, Dr. Marion C. Palmer, and his son, Marion Jr., who together owned a 1,600 cattle ranch in the Bright’s Creek Valley from the 1930s through the 1960s (see related article starting on p. 4). Palmer Road is the left turn off the end of Silver Creek Road, where Silver Creek also intersects with the Lake Adger Parkway. The property is ten miles from Mill Spring.
In addition to Palmer Road, there is access in and out of the property across the north side of the mountain to N.C. 64, and two more state roads that give access through northern Polk and out toward Lake Lure.
The historic Deep Gap stage coach road still runs between McCraw and Cliffield mountains, crossing over to Henderson County and the Dana community at Upward Road, which intersects with I-26. The right-of-way to reopen that road over the mountain, however, depends upon private landholders in the Big Hungry section of Henderson County.
The positive impact of the new development on Polk County will be immediate, Tuck said. Since the farm has been taxed at deferred, “land use” rates, Hidden Springs LLC will, by statute, pay the difference back three years. Tuck said he expected to write Polk County a tax check for $135,000 to $140,000 today.
“As we start to develop the property and deed lots, you will see the impact from people working and spending money, folks with jobs building the golf course and roads,” he said. Tuck said Hidden Spring LLC expects to build 20 miles of roads in Phase I.
“In the next five years, it will absolutely have a financial impact on the Polk County tax base,” he said, with sales prices expected to average $300,000 per lot and the first 200 lots likely to be on the county’s books within three years. Once landowners begin building houses, the tax base will increase even more.
Deep Gap Farms Inc. paid just $17,000 annually in property taxes, Tuck said.
Hidden Springs LLC will employ between 80 and 90 people, Tuck estimated, providing jobs in the club house, in land maintenance, and in the guard houses. He estimated 15 jobs will be highly paid and the rest will pay between $20,000 and $40,000 a year.
“We’re going to be good for Polk County,” Tuck said. “We will put people to work and will help the county with its property tax revenue shortfall.”
In addition, Tuck said he would be “shocked” if the development didn’t bring “a real nice restaurant to Columbus and another to Tryon.” He said members typically eat away from the club house on a regular basis.
Tuck said he was aware that golf course developments have been faulted for their environmental impacts, particularly runoffs from fertilizers and pesticides. But, he said, a 20-acre cornfield is worse. He said he plans to manage his property well.
“I’ve built two golf courses adjoining reservoirs,” Tuck said. “We know what needs to be done. We’re not coming up there to cut any corners.”
The Blizzard of ‘93
Ten years ago today, the Blizzard of ‘93, also known as the ‘Storm of the Century,’ dumped heavy snows throughout the Thermal Belt, snapping trees like twigs and causing major power outages that lasted a week or more for some residents.
Thousands of trees were blown over by what was reported as a classic winter cyclone, blocking driveways and roads and taking down utility lines all over the county. Combining both the attributes of a hurricane and a blizzard, the storm brought lightning and thunder, even as the snow was falling.
Roads were impassable everywhere, creating many difficulties for emergency workers as well as local road crews. No one in the area was untouched by the storm in some manner, and everyone had stories.
Perhaps the most dramatic “storm stories” were those of neighbors and friends pitching in to help one another.
Ceri Dando of Saluda wrote that “taking care of your neighbor and doing what you could with what you had was Charlie Ward’s theme.
Charlie, along with Bill Egerton, opened Thompson’s store on Sunday afternoon to serve anybody who could make it down to Main Street in downtown Saluda. They also checked on the nursing home and delivered food, candles and flashlight batteries.
The center of activity for organizing help was the fire station. Those volunteer members of Saluda Fire Rescue who were able to get into the station worked like crazy making sure stranded motorists were brought into the shelter.”
Dando also reported that Saluda resident Dick Wright, along with Hank and Ann Osborne, went to the assistance of Mary Wright Green after a large branch of a fir tree came to rest on her bed.
Another shelter story came from Judy Moore, who was lunchroom manager at Polk Central School during the time of the blizzard. Summoned to open the high school cafeteria, Moore, along with her helpers, ended up serving about 500 people at the high school. Because the high school was without power, Tryon Estates head chef, Mark Craft, took the food from the school to be heated up at the retirement center.
Agnes Sternberg of Tryon reported that her builder, Robert Carney, had checked on her home while she was away during the blizzard; a neighbor, Glenn Webb, had turned off the water so they didn’t come home to frozen pipes. “All of us can be grateful the beauty of Tryon is matched by such thoughtful, caring people,” she wrote.
Carolyn Quarles of Tryon wrote that she was concerned about the safety of her 77-year-old aunt, who was alone in her apartment, without electricity or water. She credits Alan, Harriet and Seth Peoples with saving her aunt’s life. “Alan and Harriet took her warm soup Saturday night.” Alan and Seth took a sled to her apartment and pulled her to their four-wheel drive vehicle, and got her to the Quarles’ residence, where it was determined that she was suffering from hypothermia and had had a slight stroke. “I am certain my blizzard heroes saved my aunt’s life,” wrote Quarles.
Sunny View Fire Department captain Darrin Cronan had praise for members of the community who pitched in and helped them during the recovery following the storm. “From clearing trees out of the roads, to preparing food for hungry firemen, the community working together made a difference,” said Cronan.
The Sunny View Fire Department cut a trail through more than 70 trees to bring firewood to Cooper’s Gap resident Martha Newton. Newton said their heroism restored her faith in mankind.
The hard work of Duke Power employees, members of the North Carolina National Guard and rescue personnel were applauded by many area residents.
Eugene M. Jones of Columbus reported that he was happy to have his power restored quickly, as he was housebound and on oxygen around the clock.
Lisa Wilson, who was director of Polk EMS at the time, credited the “tireless efforts of the Polk County Rescue Squad, the First Reponders, volunteer fire departments, the Polk County Sheriff’s Department and private citizens” with helping EMS to reach those in need of medical care.
Ten years later
From high atop Skyuka Mountain, Harvey Roselli reports that they were without power for 12 days, and received water from the rescue squad. He’s prepared now, however, as following the blizzard he purchased a generator and gas logs.
Tryon’s Doris Terrano reports that her cat provided her with “a ready-made heat source” during the blizzard when she snuggled next to Doris in her sleeping bag.
“Wherever you were, there you stayed,” said Ed and Ellen Delehanty of Landrum. “West Lakeshore Drive on Lake Lanier looked like a giant game of pickup sticks.”
From One Tryon Place, Virginia Perrenod reported: “We had flashlights, warm clothes, batteries, propane stove and AC/DC TV, and a marine battery in my Ford 250 truck. Our campout ended a week later when electricity and water returned.”
Ruth and Jim Sutherin spent the many days without power helping neighbors and getting together for neighborhood “cookouts.” It was Monday before Jim was able to get out and drive around and see how badly the storm had hit the area. On the Wednesday following the storm, “all of a sudden the fan started to turn and the lights came on. Jim grabbed a flashlight to go to the basement to check the furnace, and I reminded him that he could turn the lights on.”
“We were out west on March 13 and did not know about the storm until our return on the 18th,” report Col. and Mrs. R. Peyton Tabb of Tryon. “A large pine tree had fallen toward the house and the top was on the second landing of the tower steps. We don’t know how many trees we lost, but the whole place was a mess, causing a lot of hard and costly work to clean up. Hope we never see such a storm again!”
Good neighbors every day
Back in 1993, Sandy Flood of the Tryon Theatre wrote, “We went into town to check on our movie theater and discovered there was power, so we stopped by the police station and let them know we had heat in case someone needed a warm place to stay. And that is how the shelter came to be. Cooking and serving the food at the shelter those two days were friends who were in the same predicament as everyone in Tryon and just wanted to help. Someone said to me that this storm was a punishment from God.
“I don’t think so. I think this was an opportunity to show that we can be responsible friends, neighbors and citizens. It would be nice if we all would take the time to do it every day.”
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