Marci Spencer

Partial Transcript: I'm from South Asheville. My great-grandfather was one of the few men who refused to sell his land to George Vanderbilt when he was buying up the land for the Biltmore Estate. He was a proud Southern gentleman, loved his property, loved his land, he was a farmer and he kept that land in the family until he passed away. And it's still in the family today. There's an island there in the middle of the Biltmore Estate that's still part of the Lands property.

Partial Transcript: My name is Marci Spencer and I entered a career as a nurse practitioner after I graduated from college, was in cardiology, and emergency medicine, and worked as a medical missionary in third-world countries. And retired several years ago, just couldn't make my mind stay still, it just kept in an overactive mode and during the time I was working in medicine, on my days off, I was exploring the national forests in the trails with friends, created a hiking group from the cardiology group there and we spent every other weekend on the trails. So, after I retired, I decided to turn all that lifelong collection of natural and human history into a biography of the local mountains and the national forests themselves.

Partial Transcript: My great-grandfather, Martin Luther Lands, had moved to the area and had bought this farm in South Asheville and he was just a proud-southern-farmer landowner and it was important to him that he maintained that, that was his identity. So, when George Vanderbilt came and was buying up the property in the late 1800s there was an article in the newspaper, Asheville Times, at the time, that was announcing that George Vanderbilt was coming to the train station in Biltmore and that he was going to be building this giant mansion. And he was buying a blend around it to be part of his estate and my great-grandfather cut that newspaper article out of the newspaper and tucked it in his wallet and I still have that wallet in the library today because he used that as his mantra; that I am going to keep my most prized possession, which was the southern Appalachian land and so he did and then passed on to my grandfather, then my father and it's still in there, the land ownership of the family today. It's an island now surrounded by the Biltmore estates and we have permission to drive across and the right way to get to that island where some of my family members still live.
There were a few, I don't know the names of them but, there were. I think at least two or three that I can recall in the South Asheville area. Selling the land was difficult for some of them because it was a prized possession like my grandfather but then, there were others who had used the land and cut the land, it was no longer producing the agricultural fields that they needed and so some of them were ready to sell and move on to greener pastures.

Partial Transcript: I spent most of my childhood and then when my—I was married and had my children, I spent much of that time on Sunday afternoons with my father exploring Pisgah National Forest, Mount Pisgah was his favorite mountain. So, it was a regular occurrence after church on Sunday to go explore Pisgah National Forest and I think that's where I first got my exploratory drive in history of just learning as much as I can about the mountainous area. He continued to hike until he passed away at the age of sixty-eight or seventy, but it was his thought to the mountains too, that I think, I just naturally received and inherited.

Partial Transcript: As long as people have been living in our country dating back to the time of the Indians occupation and when they considered this their sacred homeland, the rivers, and the streams were recognized as the lifeblood of the community, not only the natural community but their human community as well. They used the rivers as their source of food and water transportation and so, of course, they would set up not only their trading routes but their villages and towns along that lifeblood of the community.
After the American Indians then were forced, unfortunately, out west to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, then the white settlers did the same thing and set up their villages and homes alongside the rivers because that was what would give the whole community area as a lifeblood there.

When the logger—they all came in the eighteenth—say 1870s-1880s and during the next thirty or forty years, they too were occupying the riverbanks because that was an easy access, the path of least resistance to get into a forest. They would also use the rivers as a way to get the logs out to their markets. They would use the river as a way to float them out. They would create splash dams, where they would build them of hemlock logs and then load the river with the logs when the spring rains would come, then they would open up those dams and to hopefully flush them out and get them further closer to a place where there was a railroad or a place with—to a roadway where they could get them to markets. So the rivers have been used for generations as a source of transportation as well as a way to connect with the area and access it.

Partial Transcript: Streams were primarily used for many of those activities, such as agricultural use, irrigating the field. They also would use the power in the stream to turn a grinding wheel in a cornmeal; they would also use the streams as a place to wash their clothes and to take a bath. I know that the first people who occupied the area that is now looking in class rock or Looking Glass falls in Pisgah used to have their children bathe at the base of the falls and that's where they would use that area for that purpose. There is a place in North Island National Forest outside of Franklin in that Little Tennessee River, where the Cherokee Indians built fourteen weirs that are rock-v-shaped barriers that will funnel the water down into an outlet where they would put a basket and collect the fish there. Those are still in existence today and they are protected and preserved. I know Wild South and the director of the Wilderness Society, have mapped all those and they're wanting to help protect those as a historic site and part of the Cherokee culture. Some of the areas were also dammed, unfortunately, to provide a reservoir for water, they also would use the rivers as a water source for their homes. And of course, it provided the food source with fish and other items that they would use to eat.
Oh, that's true and the local churches use the rivers as a baptismal service, actually, my father was baptized in the Cane Creek in the Fair View area when he was a little boy. But, I think there are still even some churches today in the local areas, backcountry areas, who will still use that as a ceremony or an official service and the baptismal service.

Partial Transcript: I think stewardship with the Cherokee Indian was just instinctive they recognized the natural resources, maybe not using that term but they recognized the wildlife, the plants, and the animals as a sacred part of their life. They had ceremonies where they would pay tribute to those wildlife and the mountain tops themselves. But, probably was just an instinctive stewardship for them because that's what they lived for and that's what they respected. Some of that seems to have been lost over the generations and we seem to have developed an idea that nature is there for us rather than we are there for it.

Partial Transcript: In the early days, in the 1800s, when they were first settling in the area again, I think it was primarily a focus on their individual needs, their livelihood. Of course, they were living off the land and creating their own gardens and using the forest for their own needs; whether it's food, water, clothing et cetera. And so, at that time, I don't believe that there was a lot of focus on the effort of stewardship to save it for the future, the next generation because they were surviving for the moment.

Partial Transcript: The northern logging companies had depleted many of the forests up to the New England and the northern states and we're looking for greener forests for them to cut. And so, they moved into the Southern Appalachians, then started to cut the Southern Appalachian Mountains and many different regions, clearing thousands and thousands of acres. And it was at that time, that there were conservationists; there were recreationists like the Southern Mountain Hiking Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, who started recognizing that we are losing what we love and what we want to experience. There were others too, as well as the Mountaineers who realized that this is not an endless resource that it must be sustained and we must protect it for it to continue in the future.

So there was a change in the conservation and stewardship notion in the late 1800s to the firsts of 1900s. Theodore Roosevelt came to Asheville on his southern tour in 1902 and they thought he was going to be late, he was coming through Massachusetts his horse and buggy were hit by an electric streetcar and it killed Secret Service agent, killed his driver, killed his horses. But, Theodore Roosevelt only suffered facial injuries. So he boarded a train, he came to Knoxville, Hot Springs, and downtown Asheville to the railway station. They picked him up by horse and buggy and took him to the Battery Park Hotel, he stood out there on the balcony was facing the Western North Carolina mountains and Mount Pisgah and he said, “These are indeed the greatest east of the Rockies.” And he and Gifford Pinchot, his new chief of forestry then, started this campaign to save the forests of the south, of the Southern Appalachians.

Prior to that time, there had been natural areas that were set aside in the West out of the public domain but there was very little public domain left in the East at that time. So, they did studies to determine what was here, what needed to be protected, and what they learned was that many of the forests' agricultural fields were left in the state of degradation because of overuse or over logging; it had been over-cut by the logging companies. There was flooding and erosion and so they decided to work toward getting forest set-aside in the East. It would take ten years of squabbling and debates in Congress before they recognized that what we needed to do was pass a law that would allow the government to buy land to be used and set aside and protected as national forests. So the Weeks Act was passed in 1911 and it was the first time in US history, that we made it available to buy land by the government, to set aside as national forests. And that's the way then Pisgah National Forest was created, 8,000 acres here in the Grandfather Ranger District at Curtis Creek was purchased from a logging company, 80,000 acres came from Pisgah Forest, which was George Vanderbilt's forests and they joined that together and created the first National Forest in the East, after the Weeks Act, after they could buy the land and it was born in 1916.

Partial Transcript: The logging companies were primarily interested in getting the logs out of the area into the market as quickly as they could and they weren't practicing any sound logging methods, like you would see today, to help sustain it for the future. Their focus was to get what they needed to market and increase the revenue. They would cut—clear-cut, whole areas; thousands, hundreds of acres of land. They also would use the streams, like I was saying earlier, to send them out of the forest to the market but that was creating stream bank erosion, it was creating silt to flood into the water sources themselves. It also created a setting of erosion and loss of the topsoil and the soil content. So, their practices were not allowing the forests to recover, it was taking away, everything that was there. Many times, a logging company would come and cut what they wanted and try to leave the area before they had to pay taxes on it, but there their focus was primarily revenue and economic interest.

Partial Transcript: The pioneers or the Mountaineers in the early status were cutting for their need and yes, they would cut out of an area maybe some of the older trees or some of the other trees that provided the type of material that they needed for the construction. But they weren't cutting out the whole area unless it was a need for agricultural purposes. But, they were cutting for a need and purpose, but that allowed them, the forest to have an open green area, the light would be flooded in and so other trees could take over such as the first-generation poplar and palm trees that could then recover in an area. As opposed to say the clear-cutting, where it takes everything out leaves the soil open to sun-bake and erosion possibilities and flooding.

Partial Transcript: That was an early policy of the Forest Service and there was an outcry by a number of people. Not only were they noticing and recognizing that it was creating an unsightly, unaesthetic scenic view from some of our roadways, but it was making it very difficult for the wildlife in the area where you were disrupting natural cycle of life as well as the habitats of some of the animals that live there and survive in the forest.

The U.S. Forest Service was first created in the early 1900's, under the leadership of Gifford Pinchot with one of the major goals to protect the watersheds of our mountain coast. And the U.S. Forest Service, as well as, scientists and others started questioning what are the effects of our forestry management practices on the headwaters of our streams. So in 1934, the U.S. Forest Service established the U.S. Forest Service Coweeta Hydrologic Lab which is in Nantahala National Forest and its goal was to do field studies in the watershed itself to determine what those forestry effects are. They started asking themselves what's the effect of the stream on cattle grazing on a hill above it? What's the effect of logging and north-facing slope versus a south-facing slope or just logging hardwoods in an area instead of the evergreen as well? And so, it was the results of those studies of scientific studies that have allowed the forest service, as well as other land managers, whether it's a public land or a personal land manager to determine what is the best way to manage that land and preserve its watershed.

Partial Transcript: Into sewage system? There were many manufacturing plants that were set up on the side of stream banks and many of that situation occurred because that was the most accessible route. The least of—the path of least resistance to get into an area would be to put a railroad or a road or a factory next to a valley area where there were streams. But many of them also were using that as a water source to generate their power, some of those were using that as a way to float in logs. There was a tannery here in Old Fort, the Union Tannery Mills in the early 1900s. And at that time, they thought it was one of the largest in the country but, they too were using logs that were brought from Curtis Creek area either a log flume or efforts to float down to the Old Fort area and bring it to the tannery factory, where they were using the tannin acids from chestnut logs, hemlock logs to create their leather goods. And of course, at that time, there would be a lot of dumping bad products into the river sources. It was thought then that was just the easiest way to get rid of it and I don't think there was a great focus on where it was going from there or who it was bothering downstream.

Partial Transcript: The industrial waste into the river has been an issue that has been evaluated now for generations or at least decades and continues to be so. There is an air quality monitoring station in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, that works in collaboration with the water quality monitoring biologists there. But many of the pollutants that are in the air then get washed out in a rainstorm and go into the water system itself and so areas around the Smokies that had smokestacks and other towers that were releasing their byproducts in the air, then would be floating over toward Tennessee, western North Carolina and into the Smokies. And so, it would be then washed out just in a rainstorm or just gradually in with gravity headed into the water streams itself.

So throughout that time, they have continued to assess that water quality. The same is for the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition who have been monitoring the water content quality and the content there at Nantahala National Forest. The Tennessee Valley Authority has placed several dams in the Nantahala region and on into Tennessee within its Tennessee Valley River system started in the 1930s. And I know Tennessee Valley Authority is required by law to do environmental impact studies and to assess those water qualities. But places like the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition as a volunteer nonprofit organization have decided to second-evaluate those waters as well and they have over the past twenty years set up like fifty-five water testing stations.

Not only test the station, keep a record of the quality; how it's changing and what effects that is making. But they also remove non-native species from the stream banks and have—going back to plant native trees and shrubs who reduce the stream bank erosion. They have said, that it's estimated that with the work they have done in the past twenty years, that they have reduced the silt run-off into the valley river between Andrews and Murphy. They've reduced the silt run-off by removing over 135 dump load—dump truck loads of silt from the valley river alone. So there has been an impact over the generations of industrial use and locating those plants on the side of the rivers dumping some of the waste products into the rivers, that there are those organizations who have now taken a concerted interest and monitoring that and see what we can do to improve the quality for the future.

Partial Transcript: There is U.S. Forest Service southern research station that's located at Brent Creek, it was established in the 1930s to assess the forest and stream health of our local adolescent mountains and some of the concerns that they have documented over the past several years is: stream bank erosion, non-native species, loss of habitat or fragmented habitats. There was a project just recently, where a small unnecessary dam was removed out of the Santeetlah Creek)in the Cheoah Ranger District of Nantahala National Forest. Because the rare hellbender—the eastern hell-bender was living in that area and it was a fragmented population, some living upstream from that dam, some living downstream and so to remove that they were able to allow the two populations to mingle, improve the genetic diversity and the health of the species. So those are some of the issues that face the streams today.

Marci Spencer
Also, unfortunately, recreational use has become quite an issue because it is impacting the caring capacity of the river itself and Nantahala River Gorge, there is a Nantahala Outdoor Center; it's l the largest whitewater center in the country and enjoyed by kayakers, paddlers, canoeist from around the world. But, in the 1980s and 90s the U.S. Forest Service did a caring capacity study because they were afraid that we were overwhelming the resources and as the resource manager for that river, they did a scientific study to learn what the impact was. And after that study, they used the data to then change the number of outfitters that were allowed, the number of people who are allowed to go down the river every day. They address sanitation issues as well as public use access so that they're not accessing the river anywhere but they will access the river at ramps and designated spots and therefore reduce the stream bank erosion.

Trout Unlimited and another group have done something similar there, at the Sycamore Flats picnic area in Pisgah National Forest, in an effort to reduce the amount of public use along the whole stream bed. If we can preserve the Riparian sides there, the Riparian ecosystem, then we're not only reducing the amount of silt that's going into the streams but we're saving those species who live in those areas.

Partial Transcript: I'm not that well-versed in that. I do know that they have built the TVA dams in the Nantahala region and I had done research in that area. They built the TVA dam at Fontana Lake after they built the TVA dam at the Hiwassee River area. Their purpose—their stated purpose in the 1930s was to provide hydroelectric power and prevent flooding in the rural south and so their efforts were to create a series of dams along the Tennessee River Valley. The Tennessee River itself, as well as its tributaries, create a stair-step, lowering in elevation lake and reservoir by the lake along its route. I think it's six hundred and fifty-mile stretch of the Tennessee Valley and its tributaries. Those lakes there and the dams are still there in existence. There are several on the tributaries; the Chatuge Dam, the Nottely Dam is in Georgia, there are several of those that then affected that area, was created to provide hydroelectric power and to prevent flooding to the area. I am not that familiar with the situation with the French Broad River, I'd like to learn more, but I don't know?

Partial Transcript: Wilma Dykeman, what would the French Broad River be without Wilma Dykeman? When I was much younger, I was a fan of her work and had read every one of her books except two that I could not find. I went to hear Wilma Dykeman speak downtown Asheville, I think it was at Thomas Wolfman Memorial Auditorium at the time, wonderful presentation, crowded event, you couldn't get to her at the end of the event. So, I wrote her a letter and I told her there was a major fan of hers and had spent a lot of time with the French Broad River because of her work but that I was missing two books and they were books that she had written about the French Broad River or the East Tennessee area. So, she wrote me back and said I have an idea, let me get back with you and she had contacted her son, I think it was her son, he lived in Tennessee at the time and she had asked him to go into the basement and check the stack of books and see if she still had those two books and she did and sent them to me. So I'm a big fan of her and I'm a big fan of her work, I don't know that anyone else has ever adopted the French Broad River with a conservationist historian depth that she has. And so, her work is historical and it's a classical piece of work.
Interviewer
Do you want to talk some about how she wrote in a way that was not marginalize or polarize just a kind of—?

Marci Spencer
No, it's a conversational style. You sit and you read her work and you feel like she's there with you and you could tell that she had become a part of the community as well as a part of the land and part of the river and so her voice through her work is just talking to you in a conversational style. There's no fact poking, there's no sense of authoritarian—excuse me, there's no sense of condensation. She just was really in control of her subject in a way that you felt like she was there talking to you as a person. It was an easy-to-access, I know I couldn't put it down; I wanted to learn more, go to the next chapter and learn more.

Partial Transcript: I certainly believe it had them open up their eyes and mind to what resource we have coming through west and North Carolina and how valuable it is, what we need to do to protect it for the next generation. I think writings such as that gives people an informed mind, they get—they become more interested in the area. the more you learn, the more you want to learn and I think she provided not only a historian viewpoint but a conservation thought so because you wanted to protect it as your natural resource in your local area.

Partial Transcript: I do believe that's our goal, especially as people who are interested in the natural environment and conservation. But the goal is to protect it for the next generation. Wilma Dykeman certainly put forth that suggestion, but there are many today as well, who have focused on the efforts and the needs to protect the natural resources for the next generation. I know we were the first country in the world to recognize that our natural resources were our national treasure to be protected. It was in the 1960s, I think, when we started opening our eyes to what we needed to do to protect it and it was the age of the clean air, clean water, and the Environmental Protection Acts. And in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the act to create the National Wild and Scenic River Protection Act and then we started investigating those rivers that we needed to protect and preserve them and their free natural flowing State. There are four now, that are protected in North Carolina; there is the Wilson Creek which should have been named a river, but with the Wilson Creek National Wild and Scenic River, which was protected in 1982, it was placed as a candidate 1982, it would take two environmental impact studies, campaigns, argument, squabbles and twenty years before then, it was signed in to act and I think it was signed in 2000 by President Clinton.

Three other rivers that are been protected under that national system, the Chattooga River and Nantahala, another one in Viscera, the Horse Pasture River, and the new river on the Virginia border. But I think we have come around and we recognize that the conservation efforts need to be followed if we're going to preserve them for the next generation. I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who said, leave our national or leave our natural resources as a heritage for our children and I think that is key. We have to have a voice; we have to have a passion and an interest to protect them. They are—the area is a multi-user area, not only the streams but the forests themselves used by hikers and bikers and kayakers, rock climbers, hunters, and fishermen. And we all have our own individual interests, but within that same forest, we have scientists and botanists and biologists who are studying it and all the wild creatures who live there and call it home.

So, it's a very diverse crowded area and I think the only way that we can get to where we need to be to protect it for the future, is to talk about it, collaborate with one another, have a voice out of passion, pass on that seed to the next generation. Children have a natural sense of wonder, they have a natural sense of wanting to explore and learn and so we could use that clean slate, that open mind, that eager interest and learning more about the outside world, by fostering that plant, that seed and have them, then follow on as the stewards for the next generation.

Partial Transcript: Unfinished business? Probably a number of things. I would say we still need to clean up the waterways, we still need to continue the water monitoring; we still need to address those issues that are causing the poor water quality; we need to get some handle on the pests and diseases that are killing the hemlock. The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, which is supposed to be a master species that protects our riparian areas. We need to educate the public; let them have a better understanding of what the value of watersheds are and what we can do to protect them. We need to get a handle on stream bank erosion; building right on the streams or clearing the area next to a stream, that then allows for the silt and erosion and the runoff. So I think there's a lot of unfinished business but, I don't know we'll ever finish it. It's an ongoing need, project, goal, passion that we'll need to continue in future generations. And it's something that the children need to understand and grow up, getting a foundation from us of what they can do to continue the same unfinished business for the next generation in the next one.

Partial Transcript: We learn from the history. We learn positive elements from the history and we learn negative things from the history that we wouldn't want to do again and we want to change our behavior, change the way we think about things and change what direction we take in the future. So, learning about the history, retaining, preserving the history is valuable in many ways, but I think, it can help us make the right decision, the wise decision as we go forward.

Partial Transcript: Children without the understanding of what has happened in the past or what we've done over the years to try to change maybe mistakes we've made in the past will then lose that opportunity to make the right decisions as we go forward. They also will lose that opportunity to build the foundation to make them the wise stewards of the future. They can learn from what we have learned from the mistakes we've made in the past or even those good things that we've done in the past. But they will lose the sole enriching value of the natural world, as well as the natural resources; the wildlife, the species there, that live in those forests and streams, they will lose that for the next future generation.