Dan Pierce on Waterways Heroes

Partial Transcript: I'm Dan Pierce. I'm a Professor of History at UNC Asheville. And I spent most of my life in Western North Carolina. And I'm privileged to do research on this area.

Partial Transcript: Well, in a variety of ways, the people in the pre-industrial age related in a variety of ways to their water. I mean, obviously, you had to have a water—a reliable water supply. And so, you know, being able—and Wilma Dykeman talk so eloquently about the importance of a spring to a mountain family and how crucial that was, and the almost spiritual connection there between people in Springs and how important that was. But also in terms of if you look at—I mean—go back to the Cherokee, I mean, you look at where Cherokee villages were located, you know. And then later, of course those same places where Cherokee villages were located—where the prized location for mountain farms—because they're near their creek beds there, their alluvial soil, you know, where there's been repeated flooding from streams and rivers in the area. And so, those were always the most prized places. You know, you don't see people—You know, people think about people in mountains living, you know, way back in the hall but that was only when you were pushed there for some reason—and all the other land was taken. So when people first come in, they're going to settle in the river bottoms. And so, those—you know—the replenishment of the soil that those rivers and streams provided are crucial for agriculture and that was conducted. And so, that's where you're going to find people locating. And then, of course, you know, the springs and creeks as water supplies for drinking water are crucial as well. And I might add when Europeans, you know, came to the area, one of the things that was—I guess—an added attraction is that you had a really good water for making whiskey as well, and so, and plenty of that around.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. Well, one of the issues that becomes apparent pretty early on is the issue of abundance and the fact that there is a lot of land and, apparently, plenty of good water. And so, people as James Fenimore Cooper put it in the “Leatherstocking Tales”—he talked about the wasty ways of pioneers. And that and that was a problem because it was a very mobile society. And if you look at census records and deed books and things like that, you see that a lot of people came through state a few years and moved on. And so, that does kind of breed. You know, if I look at my own family history, you know, those—my family came from Southern England and from Northern Ireland, and came and they were moving generally about every other generation it seemed like—you know—constantly westward. And until they ended up on some of the worst land in Mississippi and stayed and are still there—which I've never quite understood. But, you know, they started Albemarle section and went into South Carolina into Georgia to Mississippi, you know, over the generations. And so, that does breed an attitude that—although, you know, spoiling someone's water—one—you didn't have the capabilities to do it on the scale that it came to be once railroads and industrialization coal mines and things like that came in, but spoiling someone's water—even under those circumstances—was a big issue. And that really kind of goes back—you know—Kathryn Newfont talks a lot about the commons issues and, you know, and understanding that. And so, you know, spoiling someone's water was a major issue and very much a legal issue that people would take one another to court over.

Because it was so important to the value of your land, it was so important to your being able to live on that land and subsist successfully. And so, you know, if someone's messing with the water supply either through—This was a long-term issue. You know, issues of dams and mill races and things like that and any sort of diversions of water were always very contentious things. Now, eventually, courts would kind of find in favor—most of the time in favor—of progress—you know—it's meant that the mill or the dam builder or whoever was going to eventually went out. But those were very contentious issues particularly in the early 1800s and in this area and throughout North Carolina.

Partial Transcript: Well, I don't know that there was because in a lot of cases those people didn't own the land, they're living on someone else's land. I think where you have an attachment, I think, and that really continues once you get here. And again Kathryn Newfont talks very eloquent about this—our notions of commons rights on land. And that was something that was—you know—they were very contentious in the British Isles in particular—the loss of those rights—which actually sent a lot of people here. And so, I think there's a real attachment to those kind of notions of commons right which would include water as well.

Partial Transcript: Well, you know, and I think they're still alive. I know I get resentful as a fisherman, you know, when water is posted and I—you know—and I'm thinking well if I—if both feet are in the water you can't really say anything to me if it's a "navigable stream." So those are very powerful notions about, you know, anyone controlling water to the extent that it limits my access or my use to the water—and again, that has been contentious legal issue for long periods of time. And particularly commons rights like fishing, I think, you know, and limiting access—you know, particularly the fact that—because there is this notion of egalitarianism that's very powerful in this region—you know—that a rich person is going to somehow limit your access to that. And it was always a challenging thing—I mean—later—particularly—when you get into the 20th century and you get things like elite fishing and hunting clubs and things like that that want to limit people's access to fishing rights on streams, and even the government—when the government comes in and puts—you know—like creel limits and things like that on how many fish you can catch—people don't like that at all because of that very powerful notion of streams and waterways as commons areas that are important to the community as a resource—as a supply of water—in some cases an avenue transportation, but as a source of food for people.

Partial Transcript: Well, one important—you know—transportation is limited because—I was always shocked I grew up not far from the French Broad River but people didn't go to the French Broad River. But I remember—I guess I was working at a summer camp and we did a canoe trip with some of the kids down part of the French Broad River and I was shocked, you know, when I realized how much of the French Broad River you could literally walk across, you know, that there are very few places—that it's really deep—you know—over your head; in most places—at normal stream flows—you can pretty much walk across it. And that's the largest stream in Western North Carolina by far, you know, and so that's the case. And there were some areas where you had kind of limited—I guess—steamboat access and stuff and, you know, you could use canoes although with the rapids in Madison County and those types of things—you had to be pretty good to negotiate those types of things. So it's limiting—you're not going to be able to haul a lot of freight or anything like that, you know, along these rivers, so that's limited in terms of the transportation. Although, you know, the roads that were generally followed streams, you know, the Buncombe Turnpike being the most notable example—it's a river cutting through the mountains and providing some access for roads. And so, that's something that's pretty limited in terms of the waterways and to get into the recreation here. But things—you know—the people don't think about one—although you generally seek whenever there's, you know, like an old mountain house in the Smokies—in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—is preserved. A lot of times they will have preserved the spring house, and so the spring house was kind of a really important thing, you know, where you could keep your milk and your butter and things like that cool and have, you know, kind of a very minimal level of refrigeration—but that was something that the mountains spring and the stream provided for folks. Irrigation is not—you don't really need it that much because, you know, we get pretty abundant rainfall. And so that was not generally an issue for people. Important for practically everyone there were streams as for mills—for grinding corn in particular. And people commonly had what they call a tub mills small or which is short for turbine mill. These—which are, you know, we're accustomed to the big overshot wheel which came later on—which is on a vertical plane; and the tub mills on a horizontal plane so the wheel is on a horizontal plane. These are small mills that people would grind pretty slowly—a few bushels of corn—but they're all up and down every creek in the region in the 18th and 19th century very commonly until pretty much you get into the late 19th and early 20th century, and people are generally taking their corn to a big overshot mill somewhere in the community. But those mills were very important. And so using that water power to grind corn—which was the staff of life—I mean, people in this area lived a lifestyle that some historians have called a hog and hominy existence. Corn is tremendously important—it's a staple of life. When people said bread—I mean, my mother even does this—she would usually say wheat bread or white bread if you're referring to what we generally refer to as bread because bread was corn bread. And corn was so important in so many ways, and ground corn, in terms of your cornmeal that you're going to eat and also what you're going to feed to your livestock, to your dog. I mean, there was even a grade called dog bread, and also what you're going to use in your distillery—it's important. So water was crucial in terms of grinding that. You also had some uses early on in powering what are called “sash saws” which is kind of an upright saw that's powered by water pretty slow. But there was some limited logging before you get into the major steam era—when you get the big steam-powered mills coming in. William Holland Thomas, for one, had all sorts of commercial activities. And one of those things he did was to sell saw and lumber that was produced with one of these sash saws water-powered operation. So water was crucial in all sorts of ways.

Partial Transcript: Well, I mean, you had to have water to make liquor and so—and of course—that was easier when it was legal because you didn't have to conceal the place. But you have to have a reliable source of water because you use a lot of water not only for—to mix with the cornmeal and your malt and whatever catalysts you're using—to make the liquor but also for cooling because that's how you make—you're producing steam and then that steam run through a call or some sort of condenser that's in cool water, and then that's what turns it back into liquid there. So water was crucial. When you get into the illegal air, of course, it becomes much more important to conceal that; and I've actually done some exploring around in Montreat area and discovered some old—and some friends knew where these were—but I've got the scratches to prove the bushwhacking we did back into these places. But one of the more brilliant places we found was really interesting—and this was a very dependable spring that came out and they had dug out a bowl not too big area that collected water that they could then run—they used them different kinds of kind of sluices and stuff to run water down to the still site. But the brilliant thing about this is because the revenue agents, of course, would follow up streams to find still, but in this place you had a spring coming out and then there was a pretty—what they would call a—bold spring that produced a good bit of water. It came down and then flowed past the still site, but then it went back underground. And so, there was no stream down below that revenue agents could use to say, Okay, well, there maybe is still on that. So it's pretty brilliant—a type of operations—that's kind of an ideal kind of situation there for that. Although, you know, I'm pretty convinced about any place that had water on it, and then enough of a flat place, that there was a still located there one time or not.

Partial Transcript: Okay, okay. Well, for Baptists in this region, and again, once you get to the second great awakening in the early years of the 19th century, Baptists are—at or near—the majority of people. And, you know, one of the core beliefs for Baptists is baptism by immersion. And one interesting belief that's not—I guess—necessarily—although there are still some Baptists that believe it—not only baptism by immersion but baptism by immersion in flowing water so that you do it as Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan in flowing water, and so, not in a Baptistery or something like that. Now, that's not a common belief today, but there was that belief—of course—in the nineteenth century—no church would have a Baptistery or anything like that. And so, all baptisms were done in streams. You generally—unless someone felt a real sense of urgency that they were really wanted to be baptized—you would usually wait until late spring, summer, you know, when you have baptism. But every church would have a place in the river where they traditionally did baptism—a deep, deep place in the creek or a relatively calm place in the river—where you could do a baptism by immersion. And of course that really increased that connection to water, I think, because for so many people—even well into the 20th century—in fact, some of the some of the earliest environmental movements in the 60s and 70s, you get some very interesting connections between people that we would think of as traditional environmentalists and people who had deep roots in the region who had very strong connections to water because of that connection to, this is the place where we baptize and we want that water to be protected, and so don't dam this stream, don't pollute this stream because it has a very important spiritual significance to us. And so, again, you get a very powerful, again, particularly among Baptists—and also Pentecostals and others who also baptized by immersion—that very powerful connection which when you go back to the Cherokee and the whole very important thing of going to water—the very spiritual connection that has to the Cherokee and of course a lot of Cherokees converted to Christianity and many of them became Baptist partly because of that—Okay, we understand this, the importance of water, and going to water.

Partial Transcript: Well, you know, a lot of Cherokee ceremonies including kind of a ritual purification of what they call going to water at times like the green corn ceremony, and also as part of the ball game—that part of the ritual of the ball game was that before the ball game is that the teams, the competitors, would go to water for ritual bathing, and so that's a very important thing spiritually for them. If you look at Cherokee folktales and religious practices—cultural practices—you see this as an ongoing theme about the importance of water and going to the water this.

Partial Transcript: Yeah, I think it did. Once you get to the industrial era, it really creates a conundrum—I guess you would say—about because a lot of this industrial activity provides much needed jobs, but at the same time, it's look at what it's doing to these places that are so important to us. There's a real tension there. And, in some cases, people become very determined that, Okay, we're going to protect this—they can't always do that because these are very powerful interests. But there is that sense—I think—of the importance of and preserving those places that have very much a sacred value.

Partial Transcript: I'm trying to think something that—well, again, I think it played out later once you get—a more so—once you get into the—in terms of that being articulated in that way. I think people understood both concepts—both the concept of dominion as it talks about in Genesis 1, you know, where it says that human beings are a special creation and they're to have dominion over the land and over the waters and over the animals and these things. But, at the same time, when you look at into Genesis 2, there is this very clear articulation of a doctrine of stewardship that there's a responsibility there to care for these things and not just, you know, Oh, you have the right to them and you can do whatever you damn well pleased with it, that there is a real sense that that we are caretakers of this. Now, people didn't always read off there in many cases, but I think people understood both, they believed in special human beings as a special creation, and that they do have control, and that God has ordained that control, but also, that involves a stewardship and a care for the land. I think once you get into that, it's something that people struggle with in lots of ways when they really have the need for jobs and they really saw the benefits that industrialization could provide them, but at the same time, to see what it did to the environment.

David Weintraub
So you, kind of, wide out the Genesis 1 as a skip to Genesis 2, or the other way around.

Yeah, the other way around, generally. Well, you know, I think a lot of it is people can be very selective in some ways and they may even think, Okay, well, I live above Canton, and my water's fine, and I work to protect it, but I've got a job down here, and what happens on downstream is not my responsibility necessarily.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. So you get in the late 19th and early 20th century, it's amazing how rapid the transformation comes to where the transformation of the landscape—because of logging primarily—and the transformation of the waterways which is incredibly dramatic and in a very, very short period of time that you get this transition. And so, you know, the industries that come have a huge impact on this. I mean, one industry that people don't talk about a lot about, but that was very important and used a lot of water and dumped a lot of not good stuff into the waterways, was a tanning industry. And tanning was huge because of the presence here of what they call tanbark—you know—chestnut oaks barks rich in tan and which were used; and of course the largest agriculture enterprise—most valuable enterprise—was cattle industry. And so, I mean, all the mountaintops were bald. I even remember that in the 50s and 60s that most of the mountaintops were bald and they were cattle grazing on top of those during the summer. And so, you had lots of cattle and you had lots of tanbark, and so it's a natural thing that you're going to have a major tanning industry and there were really on every river there were major tanning enterprises—I mean, Andrews had a big one, there was a big one in Rosman, on the French Broad, there were in Asheville—there was a big tannery as well. And so, it used a lot of water for the tanning process and then they dumped the waste into the river—so that was one of the, I guess, earliest major of what point sources of pollution in the rivers, in the area, was the tanning industry, which affected a lot of the rivers and streams in the area. The other thing that happens with the logging industry is that when the major commercial loggers came in with railroads and a lot of capital investment, I mean, they were going to cut every piece of what they called "merchantable timber" that they could get. And, of course, in the process of cutting that merchantable timber, you're going to take down a lot of smaller timber that's not necessarily merchantable as well. The pictures are very dramatic of the diluting of the mountainsides. And so, you have exposed the shallow soil of the mountains to the rain that is very common to this area. In addition to that, you had all this smaller stuff laying on the forest floor—what they call slash—and very commonly because of the use of steam equipment and the old practices of burning the woods that people in the mountains did. You had these major fires in the slash, and so, in some cases, that mineralized the soil and just made a massive erosion. All this soil is going somewhere and it's going into the streams. You raise the level of the streams because the sediment that's going into the stream. You have massive floods in the area and those are just so easy to document—all these major floods in the area—and it's because of all the sediment partly at least because the forest is not there to absorb a lot of this rainfall and just run straight off, takes the topsoil in there, raises the level of rivers, and you have this massive flooding that is so destructive, which in turn, creates a demand from some people, Oh, we got a dam the rivers now. There is some thought, Okay, we got to replant these forests because they are important to this, but then we got it down the rivers because of these disastrous floods which really you didn't have—I mean, you had flooding, you always have—but you didn't have that that level of disastrous floods that you had in the early years of the 20th century and really because of the of the massive logging. So that's another major effect on the flooding that comes, the exposing of streams to sunlight, the warming of the streams, changing the habitat of the destruction of aquatic life in these streams along the way—and so it has a massive effect on the area. And then you have other industries that are coming in connected to that—particularly the paper and textiles as well—paper especially—and in Canton in particular most notably. The Tuckasegee and the Pigeon rivers have become highly polluted because of the waste from the sulfate—I think it's called sulfate sulfide process—that they use for bleaching paper. You get these rivers that are running chocolate brown or darker and with all sorts of toxins in that water. And so this is when you get to the point where Wilma Dykeman talks about the death of the Pigeon in particular, but also who killed the French Broad, you know, the French Broad River as well, because of this industrial pollution from the industrial development from the textile mills, but particularly, from the paper mills as well which really do a number on the streams. As a child growing up, you just didn't dream of going to the French Broad or fishing in the French Broad or particularly eating a fish that came out of the French Broad, I mean, you just assumed there weren't any fish in the French Broad. We're taking a canoe down the French Broad—much less the Pigeon. The Pigeon was like the Cuyahoga River around Cleveland, you think of it in those terms, I'd never call them far to my knowledge, but it's an industrial wasteland in many ways.

Partial Transcript: Okay. Well, the paper industry goes back to the early years of the 20th century, and in this area. But you also had Ecusta at Brevard as well, but Champion being the largest and one of the, if not, the largest paper plants in the world. A company out of Hamilton, Ohio, that came particularly to the early years of the 20th century—they developed a process where they were using the red spruce to make paper—red spruce is a high elevation tree—and so they owned hundreds of thousands of acres in the Smokies in particular because there are lots of red spruce there. They were using that for their process which made it difficult for them because they didn't want to give up that land to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Although, they had discovered they can get red spruce or spruce from Canada, and they change their process actually where they could use other types of soft woods for the process. It became incredibly important to the economy, again, of Western North Carolina, and in places like Canton—obviously—and Sylva, and Brevard, these papermaking because there is so much of the raw material here to use. And also, I guess, I mean, some ways you could throw Inca in there as well because the rayon process is making fiber out of wood cellulose. And so they are a wood products industry as well. And again, these became—I mean—when you look at those industries, the number of people that they employed in Western North Carolina was huge, and it was something. I mean, it was always a problem—I grew up in West Asheville, and you could smell Inca, and then, of course, driving past Canton, you could smell that, if you went through Sylva, you smelled that, and in Brevard, you can smell Ecusta. And then see the waste products in the river so obviously in Hominy Creek and the Pigeon River and the French Broad and Tuckasegee. The response that people gave a lot of times, people would ask people that live in Canton, how can you stand to live here with this smell and everything, and the response was often it smells like money. And that was kind of the standard thing. So it was a very hard—and these were for the mountains, and one thing you have to keep in mind when you're weighing all this and trying to understand how could people who did love the land and did love the waterways and they were important to them, allow this to take place. But you have to keep in mind the economic conditions. And we did have kind of an idealistic view of farming and subsistence farming and stuff like that. But for the most part, once you get into the late 19th and early 20th century for a variety of factors, people just can't make it on what they're producing on the farm. For one, you got this problem of partible inheritance where people are dividing up their property to their heirs. And so, if you got a mountain farm, you're getting smaller and smaller farms, when you're having to work less and less productive land, that's not going to last very long. As Horace Kephart talks about in “Our Southern Highlanders,” he said, "Well, I'll get one or two crops out of this land, but after that it wouldn't even raise a cuss fight." And so then you move on somewhere else, and so this is what's happening in some people. Subsistence farming is not really a viable option, and even though tobacco is coming in at the time and providing some respite for some people. Even those people that are growing tobacco or mainly are working at Champion or Enka or somewhere like that, and then, they're supplementing their income with tobacco. And these jobs—comparatively—they don't pay what union jobs pay in the north, but comparatively, people make good livings with these jobs. I grew up with people whose these parents worked in Inca. Today, we would tend to look at those jobs, Well, I wouldn't do that, that's not a very good job. But for those people, given the alternatives they had, what they were able to provide for themselves, and particularly for their children, because much these people's kids went to college which was something unimaginable to their own generation. So these places are providing a life that a lot of these people never really imagined. And so it becomes very difficult when you get into that era and people start to become, and people like Wilma Dykeman would start to sound alarms, and say, "We have done a really bad thing here and we have killed these rivers." Or we have taken them to a terminal level and we need to turn, we need to stop, while we still can. And so that is still a very difficult process as evidenced by—the Pigeon River is much better than it was but it still got a long way to go and how long that would take. Again, one of the interesting things that happens is that you get these traditional connections, but once you get into the 60s and 70s when you start to get more recreational interests in rivers—and the Nolichucky is a good example of that—where it becomes this really famous river for kayakers and rafters and people like that. That brings a new constituency—I guess you would say—and a new value to clean water that wasn't there before. Of course, that has just become more and more important to where you get this really strange—I mean, for someone who grew up along the French Broad River in the sixties and seventies to see these tubing places along the French Broad River is almost surreal. It's just hard to imagine that people would take an inner tube down the French Broad River.

Partial Transcript: Wilma Dykeman has talked—and actually, we now have Jim Stokely's explorations of addicts—that we have some of our earliest writings where she talks about the importance of water and the meaning of living on Beaver Dam Creek growing up and then marrying into the Stokely family and living on the French Broad River. And having that connection, one of the things I loved about Wilma—I was fortunate enough to get to know her later in her life, not as well as I would have liked to—but one of the things she told me was that she always—because she had her home up in Linko and then her home in Cocke County, Tennessee, on the French Broad. She never would take out I-40. And she always went—and it was the slower way—but she always took, I think, as long as she could drive. She always took the road by Hot Springs along the French Broad. And so she always maintained this connection—this very personal—as someone who was kind of born and raised on a tributary of the French Broad River, and then spent much of her life living in a home in Tennessee on the French Broad River, and then going back and forth through the gorge there, and through Hot Springs and Marshall in those places. She always had that strong connection to the French Broad which translated into her—an incredible story in some ways—being able to produce as her first book. Not only her first book, but a book with a major publisher in this rivers of America series. And so, she does this very loving book entitled "The French Broad" which still remains amazingly you know with anything I wrote have that kind of longevity and continued relevance. It's just a very loving tribute to the French Broad and that human connection to the French Broad from Native Americans up to the present day. And, of course, one of the most important things that Wilma did in that book and the most controversial by far, was a chapter that she wrote—and this was in the mid-50s when this book came out or when she wrote the book—this chapter called "Who killed the French Broad?" which really sound an alarm. And you look at Wilma Dykeman and she was just such an amazing person in terms of—she was so far out in front on some of the issues, she was so far out in front on environmental issues. People talk about Rachel Carson—she's five, six years before Silent Spring writing this Who killed the French Broad Chapter. She's out ahead on racial issues, she's out ahead on women's rights, but particularly in the environment, she is so far ahead of her time in terms of calling attention to the importance of water traditionally to the people of this region, and of kind of, I guess, a revival and renewal. I think one of the things that I love so much about Wilma Dykeman, and this will probably get me in trouble, but I think one of the things that's wrong with the environmental movement today, is it's all about warning, it's all about berating people, it's all about saying what's wrong. And Wilma Dykeman did that, but I think the thing that that made some of those early environmentalists—that John Muir is going back there, the Aldo Leopold's, the Wilma Dykeman's—was their ability to inspire people to do better instead of just—you're bad, you're wrong, you know, stop, stop, stop—this ability to inspire. She had that. She really called people—particularly of this region—she called them back to their traditions, I think. And she reminded them of the importance of water to them and what that had meant to their families over the years. I think she produced some guilt but she also inspired people to a better way, and I think that was the beauty of Wilma Dykeman that she had that ability to be a prophet in some ways and challenge people, but also have that quality—almost of an evangelist—to inspire people and to bring them on a positive way. But incredible courage too. I think the way that she really took on—again, that attitude of—these people who write jobs we can't question what they're doing. And this is important to her livelihood to say we can find a way to provide jobs and support the economy of this region, but also, and in fact, if we look at things in the long term, and I think, that's another really important thing about her thinking was that she encouraged people to we can't just think about the immediate, we've got to think about the long-term, we got to think about future generations. And I think she inspired people in that way to think longer term. And that was another key feature I think of her thinking about rivers and waterways is that, for the long-term economic viability of this this region, we've got to protect this very precious resource that we have. It's hard to overestimate her importance, I think, as someone who called attention very early on to these issues, long before these were national issues, long before they're really was much of an environmental movement, she's doing this. And then to continually do that, her work on the Pigeon River, in particular, light into her life was tremendously important.

Partial Transcript: It's really interesting in terms of the Pigeon in particular is that you don't get much activism in Haywood County. The activism comes out of Cocke County, Tennessee, because they're not reaping the economic benefits. And again, Champion is such a powerful entity there, and it provides so many jobs that you just don't—and I think, part of it too—Canton's kind of in the middle of the county and there's an enough of the Pigeon above Canton that was still a beautiful stream where you could trout fishing and do those things and other tributaries that —Cataloochee Creek or something like that or so concrete—that flowed into the thing that people could still enjoy those kind of traditional activities, and then kind of ignore that lower stretch flowing from Canton into Tennessee. And it really does not—it goes past Clyde and Iron Duff and lower Fines Creek—but for the most part they're not a lot of houses or people in that area until it flows into Cocke County where it does go buy the homes of lots of people, and was connected with the drinking water system, and things like that. And so, it really—the activism—aimed at cleaning up the Pigeon River comes from there, and of course Wilma Dykeman is there too in that area. But particularly once you get into the 1980s or so, when there start to be a lot of concern about docks and other cancer-causing agents, and they started to do studies and look at cancer rates in Cocke County, and there probably a number of factors that played into that, but probably, the condition of the Pigeon River and what was in the Pigeon River, had some connection to those high cancer rates in those counties. I think that really prompted the activism. One, there's no economic—if they shut Champion down, that doesn't have an economic impact on Cocke County. And, they are the ones that Haywood County is getting the benefit of it. Cocke county is the one suffering the cost of that pollution for the most part, Haywood County's suffering son. But again, the bulk of the cost of that pollution are our own Cocke County. And so this is where you get that activism. And then, eventually, the lawsuit that goes through that, I guess, the most famous incident there was when, I think it was a lawyer, it was either a lawyer or an expert witness for Champion, was talking about how the stuff that they were adding to the Pigeon River—dumping in the Pigeon River—was relatively harmless, and it was just a little color or something like that. And then, Wilma Dykeman challenged him to drink a glass of water drawn from the Pigeon River which he refused as any sane individual would. But it did dramatize that whole thing, and did begin the process of limiting what Champion, and then Blue Ridge, and Evergreen County, subsequent iterations of Champion Fiber akin dump into the Pigeon River. Although, again, it's problematic and what's at the bottom of—what's the name of the lake there——oh shoot, it's the same as the dam there at Big Creek. Anyway, that lake next to it looks pretty from up above than what's in the bottom of that from all the years of the Pigeon River flowing from Canton through that gorge, and then stuff falling down into the bottom of that lake—who knows what's in there.

Partial Transcript: I was actually living in Tennessee—in Middle Tennessee—during that time period in solidness as observant of what was going on as I went later on, but I remember well because we drove frequently from Nashville to Asheville, and then coming by the billboards in Cocke County, particularly the Dead Pigeon River Association—I guess that's what it was called—which had some very dramatic billboards along the way there next to I-40 calling attention—the billboards were right on the Pigeon River there next to I-40. I just remembered, that was dramatic enough, the name itself—the "Dead Pigeon River"—and that really stuck out too, but I do remember it was statistics about cancer rates and things like that as I recall on those billboards, but they did very much get your attention of a lot of people that drove through that area and really dramatized. It didn't say those billboards in Haywood County, by the way.


David Weintraub
Yeah. Nobody would be caught dead—And so, this chapter on the Pigeon River has yet to be completed?

Dan Pierce
Yeah. It is one that, again, it's better—I don't think I drank out of it yet—it does demonstrate—I think—particularly the level of pollution in that particular river that this is a long, long term process. I mean, they could stop dumping today anything into the river and you'd still have problems for generations to come. This is something that going to be rectified overnight.

Partial Transcript: I think that notion of stewardship is something that—in fact, I was fishing with friends this week and we're sitting around the campfire in these deep discussion with these fellow academics. We're talking about lost virtues—and humility being one—with stewardship being one. I don't think we talked about it enough. I think that that was something early in the environmental movement—that was a major point of emphasis of emphasizing stewardship and the responsibility we have as people who benefit from these resources—to take care of them. Again, I think that's something that we've lost in terms of the environmental movement, is that ability to inspire, to convince, to reason with people, to call them back to the core values that really are there in people's cultural beliefs, their religious beliefs. These are things that are deeply part of our identity as a society that we've kind of forgotten and gotten away from. And I think that's something that we need to get back. The other thing, I think, that we do, or don't do, is we don't talk enough about success. We don't talk enough about the possibility of redemption and that thing—the very fact that people have thriving businesses along the French Broad River, renting out inner tubes to people to float down—I don't know that Wilma Dykeman imagine that would happen at this time. The Pigeon is still a concern, but when you look at other—when you look at the Tuckasegee—when you look at the French Broad, and you look at how people use that, you look at the fact that you have a Wilma Dykeman Greenway that people flock to the riverbank and to the river itself. That's an incredible story right there and I think that's the type of thing that we need to thank people—and I've been a critic cover at times for various reasons—but to thank Karen Cragnolin of Western North Carolina who you have done an incredible thing. Again, as someone who grew up along that river, really didn't imagine what happened, these places along the French Broad, along the Tuckasegee, along the many rivers of this region, the little Tennessee, and so on, that would be these magnets for human activity and not just sewers.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. And I think that is a big part of Wilma Dykeman's legacy was that ability to inspire that optimism that says this is terrible what we have done to this river, but we can do better, and we can make it into a place that is the treasure that it should be. And I think that's the beauty of her message right there. And again, we see what's happened again, which is in many ways, it was something I could not imagine.

Partial Transcript: Well, you had an heir in American history starting even before the Great Depression, but really that accelerating the Great Depression, because these projects provided so many jobs of damming every river that you could. And, of course, in this part of the nation, the Tennessee Valley Authority being the main one, and no one really questioned these things. But until you got into the 1950s and some of the damming of the collar of the upper levels of the Colorado River and people started to question some of these and actually to scale back on some of these, although, again, people really didn't question the wisdom of dam building until you got well into the 1960s. And TVA, in this part of the country, was an incredibly powerful bureaucracy. And if TVA wanted to build a dam somewhere, TVA built a dam. But that did begin to change in the late 1960s, and a lot of that had to do with the TVA plan to damn basically every tributary of the French Broad River in a massive project that would have created impoundment dams. And impoundments were really from Asheville south and east and west, and, you know, what's going to be a massive project. And it really looked like this was one of those things that was just an unstoppable movement. But the story of the Upper French Broad Defense Association is an incredible story of a grassroots effort that, and again, there were all the politicians were pretty much on board, all the chamber of commerce people were on board, and you had this very powerful federal agency in TVA who was full steam ahead and people are unstoppable—you can't stop TVA. But this grassroots organization—which is just really fascinating—I think it has some very important lessons in terms of how you create an effective coalition to fight these kind of things because you do have people who—a lot of these were people who had moved to the region—who come in and I guess will be considered environmentalists. But then you have lots of people that they're tapping into churches. That notion of these sacred places on rivers where they had conducted baptism and were important to those churches and important to those communities, and this was going to be gone or the destruction of farmland that have been in families for generations that these impoundments would cause. And so you get this very effective organization that brings together people there that are often at odds, but they have a common interest in protecting these rivers and streams. And it becomes a very powerful thing. It is a wonderful story, and I think, again, a story we need to keep telling ourselves about how you create an effective organization that can take on. And again, there were very few politicians. One of the really bizarre things, one of the few politicians who actually came in on the side of the Upper French Broad Defense Association was Charles Taylor which is—no one could accuse him of an environmentalist—but he was very much—and I'm not sure what his motivation was—but he was he was one of the few politicians early on that supported this group. I think it's a great lesson about how you create a true grassroots effort. And again, it's one of great—I mean—because we do tend, I think, sometimes get very cynical and think you really can't fight these forces, but here's a great example of how ordinary people came together with a variety of interests but a shared common interest in protecting these rivers. And TVA actually really hadn't had a setback like that. I think it was the Tellico Dam issue was kind of beginning at that point, but this is the first major example of TVA Pinto—no, you can't build these dams—and that was kind of a revelation for people at that time that not all dams are good, and that these communities would be better off without these dams. And I thank God that this happened, you know, that these people were very serious and well-organized, and again, united even though they're very different types of people, but really united in this cause.

Partial Transcript: David Weintraub
Are you familiar with the public hearing that occur and what the result was?

Dan Pierce
At UNCA? Yeah.

David Weintraub
Can you talk some about that? Because the TVA's position was that everyone's supported there and then there was just a few outspoken people and so they all wear yellow scarves—if you know that story.

Dan Pierce
Well, probably not the detail that you probably want, but I do—I mean, actually, I had several students that have done their senior thesis. But I do remember—it's a very dramatic meeting and really did point out in a very powerful way—in a public forum—that this was not something—and I think it did kind of shocked TVA, I think, to see the outpouring and the flood of people who came in to publicly declare their opposition of this.

David Weintraub
And so, what was the result of all of this?



Dan Pierce
It didn't happen. There's a whole—that we don't have dams on this river or Swannanoa River, or that these are wild running streams to this day. And, of course, these are our water supplies, and these are key places for recreation in the region—I mean, if you do—I haven't seen specific economic analysis done on what's the value of the Mills River or Davidson River or the Swannanoa or other rivers in Western North Carolina, like that, the Green—which actually closed the other way, so that wouldn't be dam. But again, there's a huge economic value that wouldn't have been there had they dam these streams.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. I think the real beauty of the Upper French Broad Defense Association was that it did bring together these diverse groups, it brought together people who had moved to the region because of the beauty of the region, they love the fact that we had these wild flowing rivers, it brought together people who had farms that have been in their families for generations that they didn't want flooded, it brought together the Baptists who had used this river to baptize in with people who are not particularly religious or who were Catholic—these were people that would not have ordinarily—I think one of the really cool thing where they kind of community gatherings they had that we're really kind of Baptists in lots of ways, you know, like covered dish suppers, and things like that, that really created a community of people that, particularly, today, we are all in camps and don't communicate with any—you know—we watch different news, we go to different churches, we go to different—we're part of different organizations, we don't associate, we unfriend these people on Facebook or whatever, and we don't communicate at all—but again, these were people from very different and diverse backgrounds who came together in common cause because of a love that they shared for these rivers and streams. And I think that's a powerful thing—it's something we need to get back to.

Partial Transcript: I think one of the things—probably most frustrating—I guess—about my profession of being a historian is—and we talk a lot about the importance of—why is teaching history important? And we always come back to that because the past teaches us important lessons. Unfortunately, we tend to ignore those lessons far too much of the time. But I think, particularly, in looking at environmental issues, I think, in terms of looking back to our long shared history as human beings, and of looking at our religious traditions, of looking at philosophical traditions, and looking to those values that we all generally agree on. When you really get down to it, that's important to people of all kinds of faiths, are not faith that we think important, and stewardship is, maybe, the chief of those—that we have a responsibility to use in a responsible way that is going to protect the resource for future generations—that it's not just us, it's not just me, it's not just my generation, it's my children, and my grandchildren, and my friends' children, or whoever else, on and on that we have a real responsibility there. And I think that's something that we all agree on. So I think we need to get back to that—hearken back to that—history about how important that virtue—for lack of a better word—that virtue is. And also to look at the times where people really tapped into that thinking about stewardship and did some wonderfully powerful things. And you look around us in Western North Carolina, and those examples are so powerful in things like the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and how that happened, the creation of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the way that the use of our National Forest have evolved in important ways that really do value ecosystems and clean water, and these types of things, and not industrial uses only. Although, you know, they try to find a way to make those things compatible. The successes of cleaning up our rivers, of protecting the rivers, of the Upper French Broad Defense Association, these are powerful things, I think, we can look back to and say, Okay, here's an example of how this notion of stewardship was used in a powerful way that has made Western North Carolina this place that everybody wants to come to, unfortunately. And that's even more important now because so many people want to come, that we have got to be—continued to be—vigilant to protect these resources that make this place such a magnet.