David Whitmire

Partial Transcript: My name's David Whitmire. I'm seventh generation from Transylvania County, born in Brevard, grew up in Rosman, Lake Toxaway, area of Transylvania County. We grew up playing in the river, paddling in the river, fishing in the river, a good bit. Later on in life, I met my wife who was a Brevard College graduate, and she had a degree in Outdoor Recreation. So we were paddlers. We paddled a good bit throughout the southeast up in the Boundary Waters. And one day, we just were talking and, you know, why are we traveling when we got such a beautiful river. We paddle it, but we're—She has an Outdoor Recreation degree, so let's start a business. At that time, there were no other outfitters in Transylvania County, so we were the first outfitter in Transylvania County. We started in 1992. We started with a fifteen-passenger van and about ten canoes. And it was tough in the first years. The river wasn't as nice as we wanted it to be. There was some historic trash—as I call it there—old cars, farming, industrial things that was there in the river. Well, off the bat, we started doing river cleanups. Every spring, we would do a major cleanup. And first few years, there might have been twenty to thirty people. Up to today, we have seventy-five to a hundred folks that attend. We even had to turn people away because we're out of boat resources. But, anyway, it's made a huge difference in the last twenty-six years of cleaning this river up, and it's almost a pristine river compared to what it was in the day. And we still get the incidental trash that we see in all our waterways—plastic and other things that floods drain down—and those is what we pick up. That's the things we pick up today, not the big industrial tires that we used to see later on. So it's a blessing to see that today compared to what it was twenty-six years ago.
But overall, our mission in our business was not only provide good customer service and a great experience, but to do a business in this community that it's in section one of the French Broad—the first ten, twenty miles. But we didn't want to change the lifestyle along the river here. We had a lot of farmers who had been here as long as my family. My family has been here since the 1820s. A lot of these farmers had been here that long. And we didn't want to do things. We wanted to come together and do what we need to do and have a recreation presence but didn't want to negatively interfere with how people who had lived their lives for generations, and we're very proud of that that we've pulled that off. And, of course, I think it helped us being part of the community to begin with, but being very respective of people's property—owners’ rights, how they use their land—was very important to us. And we've had great success stories where somebody's young calf is in the river and we rescue it. You know, and the calf might not have made it if paddlers haven't been in the river, so some great success stories on that end of what we do. Nowadays, we have campsites. There's people on the river for multi days, so it's day trips, so that's evolved over the years. It's been a blessing. It was a six-month business for many years. In 2007, we brought in a fly-fishing program to our business. And that way, now, we have a twelve-month business, and we're able to hire a like-minded folks—young folks—that may have went to Brevard Colleges—a great pool for us. The people love that we live with the outdoor recreation opportunities. But I also want to work in this field, and that gave us an opportunity to hire folks. And that's just been a fantastic thing, also, to see evolve over the years as to go from one or two employees—up to, in the summer, we have twenty employees. A lot of the young kids in high school come to us for summer jobs, and that's a great thing we've seen over the years, that we might not have saw in the early years as when we first started with our business model but it grew into that.

Partial Transcript: My family history, again, goes back to the 1820s. The Whitmire side of the family moved from the Upstate of South Carolina into the Rosman area, again, in 1820, but it was on land grants. At that period of time, a lot of the land was speculated by, I think, the company was the Buncombe Land Company, but it wasn't even Transylvania County at the time. Transylvania County didn't come along to 1853, said we were here before the county. But there were grants available, and our family got a grant, and it was 2,000 acres that they were able to homestead on. Of course, the early years, it was mainly self-sufficient living. You grew your own groceries and raised your own food, so to speak. Later on, with the timber industry coming, a lot of my family were loggers in the timber industry. Probably up till the 1920s or ‘30s, that was probably the main thing that my family done—either agriculture or logging. Then about that time is when some of the industrial stuff come into the Transylvania County. We had tanneries; we had the Ecusta paper plant, some industrial plants. A lot of my folks went from the logging, that type of income, to more industrial work, so they were able to stay here. And that's been a blessing of mine that, you know, we never had to leave to go find work or be able to sustain our life here. Myself, when I got out of school, tourism has always been a part of Transylvania County even all the way back to the turn of the century or before the turn of the century. Some of the first tourism was at the Toxaway Hotel up in Lake Toxaway where Henry Ford and Thomas Edison even visited—so it was a very, very famous thing. And that was part of the logging industry that had brought the train tracks in to take the logs out but also brought the tourism in. And I had family that worked in the old Toxaway Inn up there. Even after the inn closed, they had a great uncle that caretakes in a caretaker’s house so nobody went in and pillage the old inn. He done a good job; it pretty much stayed intact till they tore it down in the ‘50s there. So tourism has kind of always been involved in my family because a lot of my folks were in service industry. I had a great, great grandfather that was a hunting guide at the Sapphire Lodge which was the middle lodge. The Toxaway Inn was the large one, Sapphire Lodge was a little hunting lodge, then the Fairfield Inn was up in Jackson County on the Lake Fairfield there just before you get into Cashiers. And he was a Civil War veteran, but he was a hunting and fishing guide for a period of time in the 1880s and 1890s for the resorts there, so we've always kind of been able to find things to do in outfitting. I guess he was one of the first outfitters in the county, so to speak.

Partial Transcript: You know, I think it's a lot like it is today. The old postcards of the Toxaway Inn, and all things I mentioned, always had the Land of Waterfalls. And the Sapphire, the country, and it always shows the beautiful vistas in the mountains. And I think people really appreciated the beauty. And I think that's why the hotel was such a prosperous thing because people love this. It was still almost wilderness here because it was rugged to get to Transylvania County during that time. But here, they had this little paradise they carved out here. And fishing was— trout fishing, always saw that on the postcards. And a lot of it was the native trout. But I think that tourism was built around on natural resources—the hiking and the picnicking was a big thing to do.
We can't overlook George Vanderbilt's footprint on our county here and what he brought in. A lot of that was tourism driven. He brought game in and had his own private game preserve here where he hunted and fished. And they had hiking trails connected all the way from Asheville back to here in horseback riding. You know, I think that was already installed in our early part of our tourism days which was basically, I would say, probably started 1870s. We had summer camps here as early as 1903, right on the French Broad. Boys camp, from where we're sitting, was about two miles from here, and that started in 1903. And I think some of that was also from the—you know, you could put your kid on a train then and be picked up at Pisgah Forest at the depot. And, of course, even like the hotel up there, you just didn't like today we make us somewhere to stay one or two nights. You know, you stayed, sometimes, for a couple of weeks or even a summer because just at the amount of time it may it took you to get to an area like this. But I think our resources, our natural beauty and resources, have always been a strong part of the tourism draw and even the extraction part of it, you know, even when they were taking a lumber out of here, it was those resources that they used, maybe not always used in proper terms, but they brought jobs and they done what they could do to make a living, and it was those resources that made us who we are today.

Partial Transcript: As far as our clean water, I mean, most of your old mountain cabins, my family cabins, most of the locations were located near springs and not just for drinking water but also to keep their stuff cool. People had spring houses, and you literally build a little spring box to put your milk and kept things, eggs and milk, cool right in the stream. You also got to keep in mind, most of the old farms here wasn't the first farms here. The Cherokee had a huge presence in these valleys and were connected by many trails and trading farms. But a lot of the farms, the land was already cleared. In the deed to our family's farm, it dictates that the land had already was cleared, and it was a Cherokee farm.
So there was a huge presence of agriculture here long before the settlers got here. They used the water, especially the French Broad corridor, because it's such an old river. It was very flat, and they used these river corridors for their travel to corridors. This one particular corridor was the 0:13:05 ??? (s/l east of towhee path) that we're sitting on today, is the east of towhee path (??). It was major trading routes for the Cherokee; the main town of the Cherokee was in the Jocassee, Keowee area of South Carolina. And they followed these trails down into that. Later on, those paths were taken away into Charleston. They had major trading routes, especially for deer hides. The whitetail deer trade was a huge part of the early settlers' economy which followed the river ways, but the Cherokee traded much of that. I think I read an article that even as early as the late 1600s, that they were like thirty, sixty thousand hides leaving Charleston a year. By the mid-1700s, deer hides themselves were the second largest import coming out of Charleston besides rice. So, of course, they worked their resources from the coast this way and this was some of the last game resources in the Cherokee. So the Cherokee used the river ways for transportation. A lot of dugout canoes, I'm sure they used to do that.
I've never found a dugout canoe on the river—it's a dream of mine to find one. I know the watershed over next to us is a 0:14:29 ??? (s/l Utuga). One was found just a few years ago, and I'd love to find a dugout canoe. I found a lot of Indian arrowheads in the river. And I have quite a collection of my own that I've actually inherited as well. Later on, the settlers, you know, it was tough with the rivers. They had to use fords; they didn't have bridges back then, so, you know, you had to pick your spot on the river where you crossed. The town of Rosman had a real famous ford up there. We're sitting at Hannah Ford today here, that was a real famous ford, so they picked low areas to cross in the river to get to one side of the other, and that can be a challenge on the French Broad because a French Broad is a very old river and deep river, so just getting across it was a challenge. Later on, they did use some smaller streams, maybe not so much, the big river here, but smaller watersheds, to do logging practices on, where they took splashdowns, put a lot of logs on it, then busted a dam and flashed it out, which I don't know if that would make the NEPA regulations, they have nowadays, on logging practices, but it wasn't very environmentally friendly, but they did use the creeks for logging practices.
0:15:45 An interesting story that doesn't get told often, in the late 1800s, there was the Mountain Lily. And I guess, it was some of the first congressional, not so wise spending maybe, we've seen in this part of the country, but they actually are docks on the French Broad between Hendersonville and Brevard where the Army Corps engineers actually designed docks. And we even had a Army Corps engineer personnel come up last year and verified this is what we were seeing. But the docks are still in place, they still are working well even though they were hand laid. They tried to deepen the river to get a steamboat from Asheville to Brevard to bring tourists, in tourism into it by boat, which was quite an experience, if you think about being able to take a couple days to follow the old French Broad up. But the flood that happen at the time, very poorly and it only made it like a year, and maybe one or two journeys, and a flood took the Mountain Lily out. It set down there in the Horse Shoe area for many years before people had raided it and pillaged it. Somebody's got the bell somewhere, I'm sure, but that was some of the first really commerce that was tried on the river there in the late 1800s.
Fast-forward more into the industrial time that I spoke about earlier, the town of Rosman had a tannery up there. I'm sure the tannic acid, it was going into the river, probably done severe harm to a lot of that. 0:17:27 ??? (s/l Strait popping) wasn't uncommon and it was probably the mainstay, I mean, out of sight, out of mind. You send your waste down the river. The paper plant that I talked about earlier, Ecusta, was a huge paper plant in the docks from the paper process, you know, probably destroyed the river many miles downstream and maybe all the way down. That was improved as early as the mid-seventies. Ecusta was very technology driven, and they put practices in lot sooner than other companies did in the southeast. At the time, I was enjoying the river, a lot of that had been cleaned up, as far as industrial. Of course, I think, 1972 was the Clean Water Act, which made huge differences in our water quality. Today, you see none of that. There's no 0:18:26 ??? (s/l strait popping), no industrial; you might see irrigation on the river, people taking water out, but you see other than municipalities—which are treated water—you've seen very little direct impacts from water coming in which is a huge part of this success.
The river itself shows that we have hellbenders. From my shop, I have a gentleman who does snorkeling tours. And, last fall, during the hellbender, mates in the fall, they're pretty aggressive little animals. The male will go build him a little castle under a rock and lure the females in and, you know, they fight and move around. But, literally, within a half a mile of the river there, he saw fifteen, which is, and it's not an endangered species—species of concern. And there's even ongoing study today, they just come out with a wildlife, North Carolina Wildlife commission. They want us to report and mark these hellbenders. But you don't see fifteen hellbenders in a half mile on a bad quality stream. And you know, that's just fantastic—it's the largest salamander in North America, so it's just a very old creature; it's the canary in the mind for us, so to speak. I'm sure the fly fishermen know the bugs, and then they know the health more. I'm not a fly fisherman myself, I don't guide, so my guys can test to the amount of diversity we have in our bugs and aquatic bugs for health. Give it time, it will heal itself. And I think we've seen a lot of that.

Partial Transcript: The earliest, the 1916 flood—there was a story, and I knew this man when I was younger, his name was Hap Collins. But him and his mom supposedly witnessed the dam being breached, had Toxaway up there from the mountain where they were standing at in, of course, that's always the story I've heard. Direct flooding—I know families has lost property, and I know of no life that has been lost—thank goodness—for many of my family members. The location we're at is called Hannah Ford, and the lady—I was named after a lady who did lost her life in a flood—so it has severely impacted the people's lives along the river. We've always tried to stay out of it. My business is right on the river up there, and it's hard to have a river business not being on the river, but we respect it very much. We're very connected to it. Believe me when it rains, as we're sitting here today, we had five and a half inches of rain the last two days, and believe me, I'm watching rain gauges and looking at the river levels. And I'm totally in tune with what I need to do, but we were very respectful of what it can be, and we don't ignore that. Our out buildings are on wheels, and we kindly move out of its way now.
Flash floods are a different thing, and we've been, close calls, I lost a small building in the 1995 flood, just a small outbuilding because I couldn't get it out quick enough, but other than that, I've been very fortunate. But we've also got to understand that those great floods that we see is the reason that we have fifteen foot of beautiful tops all underneath our feet where I'm sitting here. And the land that the farmers have is rich because of this rebuilding of the floods. Down here at where we're sitting as a campground, we don't put any permanent structures. And if we do have permanent structure or shop, we try to build by the current codes of the day which is a foot above the 100-year flood, so we try to be respectful. But we are very connected to terrain. And the water level today, we couldn't do business because the water was too high. We can adapt if I did have a fishing trip out today. Instead of doing the bigger lower sections, we just keep going higher into the watershed and then input people on either small brook trout or something where they can fish and where the water’s not blurred out. But, as a safety concern, we have a cut-off level at 3 foot on the Rosman gauge. Yesterday, it was 5 and a half, and today it was about 4 and a half, so it's well above our what we feel like is a comfortable level to put our boats out. It affects your bottom line, but, you know, you've got to look at the resources of your own.
The other extreme which, you know, I'm sure we can all debate, is climate change. I fully believe climate change—I've seen it in my lifetime—but I fully believe our winters are probably warmer and wetter. And unfortunately, that probably also means that our summers are probably warmer and drier. So I worry just as much about the big swings in the summer, as I do is too much water; I worry about not enough. You get the long, hot, dry spells. Our fishing trout doesn't do well above 70 degrees. And unfortunately, two years ago, we were seeing 70-degree weather as early as late June. Our hemlocks that we've lost along, probably the second largest psychological disaster that's tied to our headwaters in the riparian areas. That has a direct input on the amount of water that's in the river and the temperature, so, you know, we're very connected to the river in many ways, and in the climate, and in the highs and lows are very much part of that. And I think, we will continue to see more giant swings and things. I don't think it's going to be as steady as probably it was. And I hope I'm wrong but it's just, you know, the overall figures that I've seen is definitely—the winters are getting warmer and the whole temperature is gradually going up, you know, you see this and that, and it's been a cold spring. I'm sitting out here today, and, you know, it feels more like March than April. But definitely, the graph is going up, and it concerns us of what it does to our trout because we can target smallmouth and musky and other fish. But our trout is the reason people come to the mountains to fish because it's wonderful, trout fishes that we have.

Partial Transcript: You know, the whole Tennessee Valley Watershed pretty much was looked at is flood control and hydroelectric dams. And somehow the French Broad escaped that for many, many years. Started as early as the 1930s, most of the dams I know west of us. You got Fontana which was a Depression-era dam, I think. Many of the lakes over there, Appalachia, a lot of those during that era, but somehow the French Broad for many years had escaped the killing of the dam. And when you dam a river, you kill a river. There's no other way around it. When you silenced it, it's gone forever to let it flow again.
In the late 50s, the dam machine raised his head in Transylvania County. The TVA had proposed a series of dams that basically started in Mills River and come all the way up the watershed with a series of dams that would have definitely impounded many of the communities along the French Broad—silenced the second-oldest river in the world. And probably, today, is one of the longest free-flowing rivers in North Carolina. So that definitely wouldn't be the case today if they succeeded. God bless the farmers. At that period of time, there wasn’t environmental movements in this part of the country, so to speak. And very few people spoke on behalf of the river in the valley and in the land that would’ve been inundated by this reservoir. And these farmers, the Britton family here in Transylvania County—a gentleman named Hap Sampson that I take out his name for about twelve miles downstream from here—many of the Britton families in Mills River, these farmers come together and fault TVA and put up a very good fight because at that time, not many people had access fighting that large of a machine—the TVA was machine. You didn't have environmental law so you didn't have as many guidelines that you had to worry about. You didn't have the Endangered Species Act. You didn't have all these things that we have now that can kind of give you sideboards to make sure you're not hurting things. We're going to create your recreation, we're going to give you jobs, we're going to protect you from flooding, and here it is. And you know, we're going to give you a job while it’s been building, and it's yours. These folks fought against that, and in one. And it took them, I think, it was 1972, before it was finally said, you know, TV finally stepped back from this project and thank goodness, you know. Thank God that people stood up for their values and done that because again, at the time, people were more into the industrial part of their jobs. They weren’t connected with the river bottoms and they probably weren’t as focused on this land except this group of folks. And I think it's a blessing that they had the vision.
We had our own little battle as in my early ‘20s before I started my company in the ’87, ‘88. And there, flood control dams come back, and it come back with a different look than the big impoundments. It come back in a plan of twenty-one little headwaters dams. And they went further upstream above the town of Rosman. And instead of innovating the farmland, they were telling the farmers that, hey, that we will protect your land from flooding if we build these headwaters dams. And the town of Rosman, which we spoke of, which was the flood of 1916, 1964, these floods were disastrous for the town. I mean, there wasn't loss of life, so to speak, but there was huge property damage. And in this plan here touted that they could fix those problems, but unfortunately, it was taking landowners’ property that was upstream in the headwaters. It was taking free-flowing water that was on the national forest land and impounding it. We formed a coalition of groups, and the Brittons was so helpful to give me a lot of their information that they had received from their battles early in the ‘60s.
Sure, the Brittons were very supportive. They give us a lot of the details that we needed about how they had won their battle, a lot of the things that we needed. But the coalition that we formed was a broad coalition. And it was actually, a coalition, this time, of Sierra Club members which wasn’t present so much during the ‘60s. We didn't have environmental groups like we have now. Trout Unlimited was very involved with us. We called ourselves the Headwaters Paddling Association because we hadn't formed Headwaters Outfitters at the time, so we had a group of paddlers there. We involved our national organizations, the American Whitewater Organization. So we tapped a lot of resources to try to get technical assistance in combating this. In legal assistance, if you need it, you know, you first try the social game there where you go around and make sure everybody in your committee knows what's happening. And that worked quite well because we weren’t outsiders, saying, hey, you better watch the boogeyman's come in. It's, you know, here's what the plan is, and let's pay attention to this and see how it's affected. That worked quite well for us and we never had to get to the legal department. We were preparing for that if we had to. But basically, when we looked at the plan and the details on it, the cost-benefit ratios weren’t there. The promise of we're going to, you know, in a giant flood, in a hundred-year flood or larger, that we’ll protect your town—that wasn't even there. It was only just a couple, you know, a foot of water, if you're already underwater in your town, four foot in your pumps in another foot of water, yeah, that's going to do a little bit of damage, but they were trying to—A lot of the figures was based on zero damage. So once we've done the cost-benefit ratios and I'm not a, you know, I'm not an expert on facts and figures, but I know how to reach people. And by looking at the science of it, it didn't make, so we took about two years, but that was decided to be killed and go with another alternative because they did put out other alternatives to flood control. And it was basically, let's go in and raise houses if we need to in the town of Rosman. Let’s look at bridges, it might be fixed where we can, we're not creating log jams, let's go in and help the farmers destabilized some of their banks, and if there are damages, we'll use funds to repair stream bank erosion. And I think it's been much better. I'd hate to know what the taxpayers would pay today just to maintain—and there was no money for maintenance. It would have been a—you know, once it was built, the feds were the left, and that would have been up to the county to maintain it, and there was no recreational benefit because it was dry. I mean, you can't have a storage unit for water if it's full. But that was our last scare on impounding these beautiful waters. And I think today, we're much more insulated to those things just because of people's connectivity to the water being fishing, boating. All those things are much more prevalent than it was even back in the early ‘80s. Our white water industry alone on the North Fork of the French Broad, there's probably sixty or seventy-five people up there today in the high water paddling. So that awareness of our resources are much more out there than they were even 30 years ago when that raised its head.

Partial Transcript: Dams are green energy. I mean, they produce electricity pretty green, so to speak, if you compare it to a coal to a generator, its coal fire. Yeah, they are green, but we know so much more now about how ecosystems flow and even when we're—and I'm a big proponent of forest management—and even when we're doing forest management in the forest and needing to harvest trees and restore areas for resiliency. When we look at culverts or look at old bridges, you know, we try to repair those where they're flowing through. Now, we used to make amend that would almost be a waterfall, so to speak, where your aquatic organisms couldn't go through and your fish couldn't go through. So even in the headwaters, we've learned to open these things up where those natural ecosystems can flow. And the bigger the watershed, the more that it affects, and when you totally stop a river, you stop all that connectivity. And today, especially on trout waters, of course, you know, they do try to release from the bottom, in colder water, but you can affect the temperatures. Thermal pollution is a huge concern with impoundment, so your water temperature heats up. So you kill it more than just stopping the river as a flow, you kill it on just changing this whole environment. Species of fish change, the plants around it change. You know, we've got plenty. And I love to go to our lake and take my boat out, bass fish or that type of—we've got plenty of those. But I would be very hesitant to go into big watersheds now with impoundments. I hope we've changed that. A matter of fact, the trend these days, so much in the east and, well, it's happened a little bit. I saw a dam removed over on the Dillsboro on the Tuckasegee four or five years ago, one of the first I've known to be removed in the southeast. But out west, especially in Oregon area, these dams go up for relicensing. And if they need repairs and the cost-benefit is not there for the repairment, they're taken back and restoring it back to the original ecosystem. So I think we've learned a lot in input value on that more than we did back in the days when we were damming and needed to control everything.

Partial Transcript: You know, I'm a full believer that our farmers have long been conservationists and environmentalists, way before they were probably given credit, you know. And there's different types of agriculture. I mean, some people look at culture, and it’s organic, versus using the technology. But these people have lived on this land, and many times, for six, seven generations, and they're taking care of this land, so this land is not developed and it doesn't have condos on it, it’s not paved over. That one itself is conservation. And to be able to manage the land and make a living off of it and not dividing it up and subdividing it, you know, that is conservation. The farmers didn't visualize the need for—the benefit of recreation that we're seeing today. That wasn't even in their plan, but I think that they did what they did, because the recreation on the French Broad is worth millions of dollars. I mean, I'm in the Headwater so I'm the first outfitter in the watershed.
But, you know, between here and in Tennessee, there's probably two or three dozens of us. And, you know, there's thousands of people enjoyed different parts of the river that would have drastically been affected by damming the river. So they didn't have the foresight for that, but the farmers did have the foresight to protect the land and water that they were concerned about at that time. And again, hats off to them. And it was a blessing that they had their vision because times caught up to tell him where the environmental cause has progressed for—things like that don't happen anymore, and they've got more people looking over projects and other things that we used to have. But they were the front lines and their success—beating somebody like TV—I'm sure has been analyzed by many groups. And I don't know their legal—I don't know how much legal expenses they had into it, if any at all, but I think it also says something about just pure grassroots, the energy and the power of grassroots movements on things, I think, has a lot to do with it. You know, nowadays, we do have environmental lawyers and are able to attack it by the law a lot more than—back in their day, the law wasn't even present to even have a standing to go against. So, they used their social values a lot to get those. And I hope we've learned from that because I think how these rivers are melded into our culture, and the people that live along. It can still be just as powerful as any environmental law that you can put on the books because we all know that people take care of rivers from here not, you know, the law’s not always looking out at what you're doing on the land, but people down the river, they're always watching and their values is what's I think very much represented.
You know, the river, the watersheds even going back to the vision of—I go back to Teddy Roosevelt, his vision of national forests throughout this country, to protect these watersheds. I mean, to me, that's where the next battles will probably fall, and hopefully not in my kid's life, I would say, my grandkid's life, and it may even be in my lifetime, but water is a huge thing, and here we are setting up at top of a watershed, there's no telling how many people use this water behind me before it gets to the to the Mississippi, so fresh clean water is something that might have been taken advantage of, or not even thought of in 1960. But somebody had the vision even as early as is when Teddy Roosevelt was creating the national parks and the national forests that, "Hey, we need to protect watersheds." And, you know, a lot of that was from the extraction they saw and the damage they saw from flooding more it was pollution, but you know it's—thank goodness, we've had visionaries throughout the period of time. And I'm a firm believer in a divine intervention where things happen for a reason. And I'm sure, the Britton family and those folks that have fought in the ‘60s, were there for a reason. And thank goodness, I wouldn't have a business and not be running jet skis or something on the lake, I wouldn't be using the canoes and kayaks down this beautiful river today.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, we've been very much sensitive to—there's different paddling trips. And the paddling trip that we offer may be different than a paddling trip you see going down, say, the center of Asheville on a busy day. It's more of a party scene down there, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the upper end of the river is much more in tune with getting out and getting away from noise, getting away, getting back and connect with two or three four hours on the river. And it's a beautiful thing because it's called class one water so it's not something that's out of reach for most people. It's something that most people can do with a little bit of self-confidence and guidance from us. They can get in a canoe or kayak for the first or second time they've ever done it and experience this trip that we offer. And we really relate back to the history of the river being the second or the, excuse me, the third oldest river in the world, its uniqueness to how is the further southwest tributary, the Mississippi. And we try to really install that with folks. I've been on river trips on other rivers, and people don't even tell you the name, so I want people, at least, when they leave my shop, to know this is the French Broad, and be connected to this river.
It's a challenge today to get people's attention, to get to enjoy nature because so many people are wrapped up in either technology or, you know, there's a lot of competition with golfing and other hobbies, but if we can get a family together or a couple together on the water for three or four hours, it's just a beautiful thing. And you never know it, that seasons change. This time of year, we see the spring blooms, silver bales, dogwoods are blooming right now. We offer trips in the summer that go right up to dark. We start seeing the nocturnal animals at dark which is a whole different trip than you see during the day. The fall, we love the colors of fall trip, because you get these reds and yellows that explode off of the river. So there's always something if you come every season, that one year you're going to see something different. And I get a lot of return business because we are very service oriented and we believe in giving people good southern hospitality, good equipment and good service and that brings people back. But people love this trip that, you know, we've had—I see families that were kids that went down when they were young and their parents brought them, they're bringing their kids back. So you know, that just shows you how old I am, but it's fantastic to see people enjoy this because it's unique for a mountain river, because most time in mountain rivers at this elevation, you've got white water, and white water is a different experience. You either can do it yourself with the skills or you're in with a group of people in a raft and it's more of a bigger community thing. You know, this is something if a family comes and goes, they're out on their own and can enjoy it on their own. The paddle trail, another way of connecting this river never before I even—I mean, that was a not even in our business plan years ago with the campground that we're out today, I've had for about twenty years, but to connect people where you can camp from here all the way into Asheville, do a four or five-day trip, I never dreamed of that. Now, we've got this paddle trail. And four years ago, three years ago, I took a gentleman down that was doing a documentary just on the pedal trail. And I'd never spent four days on the French Broad. I've been on many river trips on the Middle Fork of the Salmon and other areas for five and seven days, but never on my home river, and it's like, yeah, this is super neat. This is not a not a wilderness river, but you see neat things and you're connected to this river for five days. And when you're not in cars and shuttles and all that, and just in rhythm of camping and being on the river, it's a special thing, so it's another connection we've seen happen over the years. And that's very rewarding to see those things happen, grow, and things you didn't vision just happen and you grow with that, that's just phenomenal.

Partial Transcript: The most dangerous thing I have, and I say dangerous in a cautious word, because it's something I make sure my guests know, and you can publish it in the background here, we have tall trees and a narrow river and these souls that are thousands and thousands years old is very loose loamy beautiful topsoil but it's loose and loamy. And these trees tend to fall over a period of time. And we always have to warn folks about that, but I personally have kept the first twenty miles opened up, and I do that as a good Samaritan, I can't do it professionally, but I do it as a good Samaritan so we can keep running trails. But we go out there and with chainsaws which is dangerous work in the water and cut the trees. Seven or eight years ago, the law in the county which at that time, we didn't outfit as much, the pedal trail wasn't there and we tended to stay on the first twenty, twenty-five miles. This was at about my marker thirty, huge log jam. Trees just kept piling and piling in, took over a 140,000 dollars to get this log jam out. And it also took a good bit of that money to build those banks back.
And speaking with our county officials, and we're very much about collaboration and partnership, that's how we have survived for twenty-six years. Talking with those guys, you know, why don't we have in log jam's up here, well, it's because we cut trees right when they fall, when we don't give them a chance to grow. That had just grown and grown. So the county got involved in there, actually, maintaining the lower section which is harder for me to do because of the depth of the water, it's shallower up here, I can usually wait and cut trees, they're keeping that. But that benefits everybody when paddlers go down and see a tree, they let us know if I can't get it, the county gets it. That's been a challenge for us. The stream stabilization that's ongoing is with the sandy soils, that's always something it has to when the floods come through, we were losing dirt. That's a source point of pollution right there, sedimentation. Our biggest polluter on the French Broad is sedimentation. And a lot of that is directly from the stream banks that are giving away so the soil and water, both federal and state do a great job about finding funds, getting these things revegetated or held back up. So, you know, that's an ongoing thing because it's a living, breathing thing here and it's always changing. And that's two of the main challenges, there's the trees and the stream bank, both of them related in the same topic. And this is just not a unique to the French Broad, it's very troubling at what's happening on our oceans, but it's plastic, plastic bags. And I did an initial float three weeks ago to make sure the river was open. And, of course, it wasn't as green as it is now, greens up you don't see it as much. But you get plastic bags blowing out of cars, blowing out of back of trucks, gets in the ditch, goes down the ditch, and it's in the river. And the floods break it apart and you got little pieces of plastic. And to me, the people have dumping big things in the river—those days are over—but it's these plastics that really—We've looked at our business, and especially after this, because it hit me hard just—and that's why I'm on this topic—it really hit me hard the last three weeks ago when I saw this. We evaluated how we use plastic and making sure that we're sending that message out. And we're going with a no plastic bag policy. You know, people love to bring their snacks with them along the river, and we're just going to say, "Sorry, buy a cheap water bag from us, something you can reuse," or you know, I'd rather you put it in a paper bag and it fall apart than a plastic bag. Because those little plastics are—what it does to our fish and wildlife, especially in the oceans today, I've seen these videos of these giant plastic islands out and some of these jet streams that flow in the ocean, and if we start here maybe we can help that, but it's definitely affecting our waterways. That's the biggest I see, far as an environmental ongoing that I see.

Partial Transcript: I have an interesting job, that's for sure. And tourism is an interesting animal because of our society today that some people just are not connected to the natural world at all. This may be the first time that they've ever been in a boat or on a river. We work with a youth sometimes, and we'll take the youth hiking, and you know, they grew up in Transylvania County which the resources are all around us, and they've never been on a hike and they're in seventh or eighth grade, so you know I get that. It is a challenge, it's not Disney World out here, and we try to relate that, but most folks really appreciative of what we do. It's the folks that see the bald eagle. We had a bald eagle sighting Saturday morning on our "signs of spring trip." One of the groups cancelled; it was a little chilly Saturday morning. And one of the groups cancelled, and just had two ladies and my head guide, Danielle, she goes, "What? We're going to cancel the trip?" I said, no, just take those two ladies out. So she paddled these two ladies down which when you got some paddling, you can be much quieter than when you've got a bunch of people, but they hadn't been in the water for ten minutes and a bald eagle just lit beside them, you know, and that makes the trip. We've had a lot of those. Then again, you get the folks that pass their takeout and you're running downstream to try to find them. You get the folks that tip over and just said they're waiting to be rescued when they all had to do was stand up and rescue themselves. So there's always challenges but we take our job very seriously. We share folks’ videos, we do orientations and we try to manage those things as best as possible. There's always characters out there. We've seen a little nudity over the years. We have a no alcohol policy on the water, even though we have a tap room, people are welcome to come enjoy a beer after their trips and all that. But that cuts down a little bit of the stuff you see on rivers that have a lot of alcohol so we want people to be more in tune with their trip than the party scene.
One story I do want to share, and this happened last fall, and it probably helped me as much as it did, the kid. But I was leading a group of, down the river, and it was a wilderness therapy program with one of our local camps. The young man was in his young 20s and very good kid, and he had just come to this wilderness therapy. You can imagine your parents drop you off and you're just starting this sixty- or ninety-day program remember what it is. But we're taking him down the river and we come down to the band and I look over and there's a little black critter in the side of the river. And I'm hearing this cow just bawling up on the hill there up on the bank and I'm thinking, what's going on here now, is it a little bird? But it's a calf had just been born and slid off the bank into the water. And it was such amazing thing. Here's this kid, he'd only been here a couple days in North Carolina, but we as a team, he was in my boat and his counselors were in the other boat, two boats, we jump out and execute this rescue, and we bring the little calf and put it back up and get it in there. And the mother runs off when we get up there, but anyway, they get joined up. But, you can't script things like that. And that kid, he wanted me to call the farmer to make sure that he checked on the calf the next morning, that this cow hadn't abandoned its calf. You know, that calf more likely would have not made it. It was in the fall; it was early October; it was chilly, just being born in the cold water might not have made it, but it was just again divine intervention that we happen to be there. It was a late evening trip which we never—usually, our general trips are off the water by about five or six o'clock, it was seven o'clock in the evening. You just can't script things like that. And to see this kid bond not only with the calf but his team, we done this as a team. That was a great story There's many others. I've had National Geographic photographer once that went down the river with us. He was ninety years old and paddled down. The stories he told and you know watching him, I was really worried about his paddling because you know he was a little frail. I was worried but he wanted to paddle the stern but to watch him there and paddle down, and knowing that you know he wouldn't have done that on his own if he hadn't been in a group with us. Things like that is very special.

Partial Transcript: I think the missing piece of a lot of people's lives today is we don't connect ourselves to nature in general. And water being right up there just as much as any of our nature and our environment. It's hard for me to picture it. I live out here and I get to work on the river every day, you know. I'm connected with cell phones and I'm connected to other things, but I don't live in a box, in a city, and I'm not surrounded by this daily. A lot of people are and their source of water is the tap. They don't connect the flush of the toilet to this, and this is water, this is where it comes from. I just think it's important when we can get people out here and send those messages when things happen. I mean a few years ago, we had a coal ash spill on the Dan River in North Carolina which was just horrific. And when you read about these things in the paper, if you're not connected to it, you don't understand it, you don't understand the damage it was done to that resource for these millions of cubic feet of coal ash, and how it just suffocates the life in that river, you know. Connecting people to things like these, I think it's very important, especially as we move forward because we're just seeing maybe some of the beginnings of this disconnection. In a lot of ways, I think we're even more connected in a lot of ways, because people have purposely tried to get back to nature through recreation, I think that's great. But it's the folks that are not connected is the ones that we need to tell this story to because it's all our responsibility. I mean, they need to know when they hear in ten years that there's no more trout in the French Broad River if the temperature is too warm what calls that or how can we fix it, you know, or if we're seeing that happening. People need, you know, if you can teach them, maybe when they hear these stories that it'll resonate somewhere.

Partial Transcript: A study, maybe a little old, I think it's ten years old. But for every dollar somebody spends in a store, they've spent three other dollars within my community at either motels, gas, food. So the tourism end of it, the recreation side of it is huge. A new study out is, I think, our interior secretary, Mr. Zinke, I think they just put out a study, it's billions of dollars of not direct related but outside we like it to do this to the outdoor recreation community. Transylvania County today is not only looking at the recreation on how we can make it a sustainability wise, but we're looking at a recreation as a driver for bringing other industry here with the folks that may want to come here because of the outdoor recreation industry far as building gear, because we've got a very much quality in Western North Carolina, it's a quality place to live. So you attract people that want to live in this environment and be close to nature, and where they can ride their mountain bike, they can hop out of their office or if they're working out of their house, and in ten minutes be on a trail. That's a huge draw even though you're not just here for that resource, you're here because of the resources. So I think not only just the recreation but to draw the other industry here is a huge part.
We know the microbreweries that have showed up in Western North Carolina. Ten years ago, that wasn't hardly on the radar. I mean, within fifteen minutes of where I'm sitting out here, there's three breweries here. They weren't here seven, eight years ago. And some of them are pretty big breweries. I remember National Breweries. Downstream not far, we've got some that come from out west where maybe their water sources were either very expensive to use or they didn't have the quality of water, or may be looking down the road in thirty years for that water may not be there, and maybe they see us as a more stabilized environment for quality water. So that within itself, and I don't know have the names of the brewery industry, I don't have those on top of my head, but that's been huge, and it's directly related to our water. And I'll mention Oskar Blues, it's directly related to what I mentioned, he brought the brewery here because he loved riding his mountain bike. And Pisgah was one of his favorite rides in the east, so he invested millions of millions of dollars and created jobs within our community. And it's been a great community sponsor. I mean, it's almost routing back to the days of the industry. I remember that was very community oriented where you had your Fourth of July parties and your Christmas parties. I mean, these guys really invest a lot in charitable organizations within our community. Those guys are here because of the recreation resources.

Partial Transcript: The two most important messages on conserving our waterways, I think, really, we need to look at the land and water connection, just not the water, but the land that surrounds it. There's a reason Pisgah and Nantahala National Forest surrounds this watershed, mainly Pisgah, again the visionary of Teddy Roosevelt and those folks that looked at watersheds and said, hey, we need to protect those. They need to see that connection. They need to see how land management, not only in the National Forest, how it can affect the water, not only in the sedimentation issues which can happen from unsustainable roads either non-sustainable logging practices or even trails, which can hurt your sedimentation; but we also need to look at how these forests can even affect our volume of water that comes off. There's some studies in Coweta Watershed that's just next door to us, which has a lot to do with—it's hard to relate studies that are out west in other parts of the country, but Coweta is on the little Tennessee watershed, just one watershed over from us, but the massification of our forests where we got the poplar and maple that's dominating the forest, and where our forests or out of whack with the natural range of variation, and these are water hogs and we may need to go in and restore these forests and do work just so we can have our water volumes.
That might not mean much today because you're not going to hurt the temperature of the water at four and a half foot, but in in a drought condition in the summer, another inch of water in that river can mean a big difference in temperatures. That's the relationship of how it all connects. And that's the National Forest part, but it's also how that connects to where they live at. The oil it gets in there underneath their car, in their parking lot, that they didn't get fixed because it cost five hundred dollars to go get fixed, it drips. When they move and it rains that residue goes into that drain down that stream into the French Broad. You know, simple things like that. Or where they're wanting to build a new house, what can I do to make this where it's not going to cause a landslide, it's not going to affect my neighbors' downstream, or how can I create a rain garden to slow water down and protect water quality. So it's that aspect to of where you're living if you're living around these waters. I think it's very important to them to be connected because if you move here from somewhere, you may not have a clue where that water goes to off your driveway because you may live in the city that went to a treatment plant and was treated, you know, but if you live in the country, that's not being treated, it's going somewhere. So there's a lot of those issues, I think, people need to see that connection. It's all about doing what you can do. The little things may not mean a lot, but if everybody does little things, then it means a lot. And if you can't take care of your back door, you sure can't take care of the bigger picture. I think that's the connection you really need, the message you need to see, and if you don't buy it far as the clean water, and maybe you'll buy it because you wanted clean water. I don't know, maybe the recreation message works too, you know. When you're tubing, you want to be in a water that's clean and not dirty.

Partial Transcript: I would hope they would get a sense of community that we are connected to the community, that the money that have spent with us goes back into a lot of stewardship for the land that for river cleanups that we try to promote. We're very active with our Natural Resources Council. We sit on a lot of stakeholders’ forums on our national forests. We want the people to feel about us that we care about what we're doing. We do not want to separate them from their money but we want to let them feel that they've got a good product. These people care more than just about getting their money and giving them a good time and service, which is very much, that we care on and above. Hopefully, we've made a positive difference in twenty-six years and we'll continue on doing that. That to me is the important messages that we could send is about ourselves. As we're driving back through this community, taking people back, you know, I point out these farmers, I tell stories about some of the families, you know, I want them to feel connected to these folks because these folks who live here year-round, they're only here for a week and they're going back to their lives, but these people live here. If you enjoyed your trip in a special place, these people have been taking care of it for a long time themselves. I want to enter that sense of community as well. I've had somebody tip over or boat get stuck and the farmer lets them use their phone, you know, you get those connections. And if we had not exerted that importance after twenty-six years, you could have a lot of negatives out there, you could have people throw rocks at your canoes going down the river because the people were not respective of people's property or hurting their cows or whatnot or fences. We always try to educate people on being respective. Hopefully, the people see that and get the whole sense of where they're at.

Partial Transcript: If you don't remember history, you don't know history—history tends to change. I met you folks up at our shop earlier in the day. When I was a kid, that was always called the "forks of the river" and that's what the locals always called it. After numbers of years of being there as my business, I kept hearing people calling it Headwaters Outfitters, "I'm going down to Headwaters." And that bothered me because I wanted them to—I didn't want to lose that "forks of the river." So when I put in a tap room up there, the first thing I'd done was call it "Forks of the river tap room" to bring that back. If you don't know history, if you don't know names, you start calling it something else. And when you call something else, it takes on a different identity. I want people to know the name French Broad and not be called just that river, this river. And it's just important me to stay with those things because it can change on you. And if people don't respect that or don't know it, you know, it could just be, "I'm going to a certain river in North Carolina," and it doesn't get that connection. So I'm very much particular on hammering that a lot, you know, about where they're at and the importance of where they're at. But names do matter. I've seen it too many times in my life, mountains. I've seen developments come in and call this old mountain something else and, you know, it's no longer Hogback Mountain. Now, it's Toxaway Mountain or Lakeside Mountain, or no, that's Punching Camp Mountain. The reason to call it Punching Camp Mountain that's where the long hunters lived up there and had a hunting camp up there. And it was written in books years ago about Punching Camp Mountain, but now you call it lakeside mountain. People don't even know what punching camp is. So stay with that history and those names.

Partial Transcript: The only other thing I might add is just the continually expanding on the recreation side of things. I mentioned earlier that we started with ten canoes probably 75 percent I put down the river today is in kayaks. So you do have within the industry itself, you have changing fast but kayaks. People tend to like to paddle their own boat which saves a lot of marital issues and two people in our canoe going down the river. Tubing is another thing that's very popular. You get a group of folks that would never get in a canoe or kayak that loves to float in a tube so you see that evolving. And I've even seen it go to the last few years, you have paddle boards on the water, so not only we paddle on this, we get to see an industry within itself grow with fads and changes. I'm kind of stuck in the mud. I love my old canoe, and I'm a canoeist by heart, I just love the aesthetics and paddle, but you grow with the market. And if you'd told me twenty-six years ago that most of your boats had been kayaks, I would have said no way because kayaks were whitewater boats then, they didn't even make hardly recreation boats. But now, they make recreation kayaks and maybe some of its commercialization, what people say, but people love their kayaks these days. A sense of drawing back to our waterways, you know, how we market things. You see it in movies and commercials. And for the good and bad, you know, it gets people back connected, as long as we don't love it to death.