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The Le Conte Hotel in
Big Greenbrier Cove
In the early 1900s, approximately
800 people lived in and around Greenbrier Cove with the number of children totaling around 600.
Greenbrier Cove
was the home to many people surnamed Whaley. The Whaleys came to this country from England in the early 1700s and settled
in North Carolina. Brothers William and Middleton Whaley crossed over Dry Sluice Gap, bound for Sevier County,
Tennessee in the 1800s. They extended down along Porters Creek, arrived in Big Greenbrier Cove, and decided to
stay. They would be joined by the Ownbys, Proffitts, and others whose surnames are linked to the Smokies.
The late 1800s and early 1900s witnessed Greenbrier expand with schools, churches, mills and a hotel.
Hotel Le Conte (also known as the Greenbrier
Hotel) was located about 150 yards past the bridge at Ramsey Prong Road, in the "V" formed between Porters Creek
and Middle Prong. The hotel was built by Kimsey Whaley and James West Whaley in 1925 and the two-story structure served
visitors until 1935, when it was removed to accommodate the newly established national park.
Porches bordered three sides of the
two story hotel, and each floor had a bath with water piped in from the nearby stream. The women used the downstairs
bath, the men utilized the upstairs bath. The rooms were lit by coal-oil lamps as was the screened-in dining room.
Rates averaged $1.50 to $1.75 per day, and visitors came from all over the country to relax, to hike and to fish.
According to Michael Strutin's History Hikes of the Smokies, during the 1930s, when Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp
David Chapman was situated in the same area, CCC officials stayed at the hotel.
In September
1926, Harvey Broome stayed at the Le Conte Hotel the night prior to his first trip to Mount Guyot. Of the hotel he later
wrote,
"It can be reached only by a narrow, winding,
steep, rough, rock-and-mud-infested mountain road....The hotel has two stories, built of wood and had a tin roof. It
must have been fifty feet square with a long hall down the middle of each floor and small bedrooms branching off from it.
The rooms and halls and whole building for that matter were lighted only with oil lamps. The floors were of planed oak
boards, and the rooms were ceiled pine flooring. A washstand, with pitcher and basin, a plain double bed, and
two mountain-made chairs completed the equipment. Water, drawn from faucets on the porches which surrounded the buidling
on three sides on both floors, came from a captured stream some half mile or so up the mountain, and we could use it with
lavish, wasteful frequency. I observed there was really no necessity for screens. We sat for awhile on the porch
after dark and were not annoyed by a single insect. The hotel was situated in the peninsula between two big mountain
streams which ran within fifty yards of it on one side and a hundred on the other and joined perhaps one hundred and fifty
yards below. The ceaseless, restless, hollow roars of the stream made a welcome music for our outdoor-living
souls." (Harvey Broome: Earth Man)
The hotel
was convenient for jaunts to nearby Mount LeConte, Mount Guyot and Mount Chapman.
We've read
that its foundation remains today, just off Ramsey Prong Road. We plan on looking for the remnants soon
and will update you on our find along with our photos of the adventure!
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Have fun looking and navigating!
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Applicants needed for Appalachian Trail license plate
Public support is needed to get a specialty license plate in Tennessee into production for
the Appalachian Trail, the legendary footpath that runs from Georgia to Maine. 
The Tennessee General Assembly in June 2008 approved the creation of the specialty
license plate. Funds produced from the sale of the plate will be shared with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy for the
support and management of the trail. Before that happens, however, the organization needs to accumulate 1,000 paid applications
to initiate production of the plates. UPDATE August 6, 2009: ATC officially received a one-year
extension (until June 2010) for gathering the 1,000 needed applications.
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization
dedicated to the conservation of the 2,175-mile Appalachian National Scenic Trail so that it will forever remain a simple
footpath within a protected greenway along the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to Maine. 2008 marked the 40th anniversary
of the trail's designation as the first national scenic trail under the 1968 National Trails System Act.
The current program in North Carolina has raised over $330,000 for the ATC’s
work to conserve the Trail in N.C. Projects funded through this program include scenic easements, shelter improvements, workshops
for teacher training for a Trail to Every Classroom, tools repair and maintenance, rare plant and old growth forest tracking
and cataloguing, and the installation of bear cables (aerial food storage systems) at ten shelter sites.
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My Last Unhiked Step in the Smokies
I can vividly recall my first trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1963 when
I was only 13 years old. Joan Giles, a good friend and neighbor, took my younger sister Jane, younger
brother Johnny and me to the Smokies with a side trip to Cherokee in 1963. It'd be another sixteen years before I'd
hike in the Great Smokies again.
Thirty Years Later (July 2009)...
It was to be a three-day outing but shortly after our trek began,
we decided to truncate our hike by one day. More....
Click to read my hiking journal and see photos for "My Last Unhiked Step in the Smokies"
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High Rocks...
Steep Rocks...
Wet Rocks...
Even Underwater Rocks!
Another "Impossibly Long"
Smoky Mountain Day Hiking Trip
I only needed to hike 8.4 miles along two
trails–unfortunately, both were in the middle of the Smokies. The result? 23.3 miles of hiking from
6 am to nearly 6:30 pm–some 12 hours–all without the benefit of a lunch break.
Here’s my story.....
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Keeping the Faith: Hiking
Hazel Creek & Bone Valley Trails
Another Smoky Mountains hiking adventure story by Janice Henderson
We’d long anticipated hiking the Bone
Valley Trail and on the fourth of July 2009, my dream came true. Al and I backpacked 31.1 miles July 2 through July 4, 2009
via the following route: Clingman’s Dome-Bypass Trail-Appalachian Trail (AT)-Double Springs Gap Shelter (overnight)-Welch
Ridge-Hazel Creek, overnighting at Bone Valley campsite (#83)-Bone Valley and then onward via Hazel Creek trail for a Fontana
Marina shuttle pick up just beyond Proctor campsite (#86).
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The Fifth Trail from Never
Today's Route.....
Anthony Creek to Bote Mountain (3.6 mi)-Bote Mountain to Appalachian Trail (1.7 mi)-AT to Jenkins Ridge (.3 mi)-Jenkins
Ridge to Hazel Creek (8.9 mi)-Hazel Creek to Lakeshore Trail (4.5 mi)-#86 to boat ramp (.5 mi).
"Rarely in Smoky Mountain nomenclature is a ridge named for a trail. One exception is a short, stocky ridge extending south
from Blockhouse Mountain to Pickens Gap known as the Jenkins Trail Ridge. Following the spine of the Jenkins Trail Ridge is
the Jenkins Ridge Trail." (Kenneth Wise, Hiking Trails of the Great Smoky Mountains)
Al and I hiked 19.5 miles of trails today, June 2, 2009, for me to complete the 8.9 mile Jenkins Ridge Trail that I’d
not previously hiked. Only a friend would do this for another friend. This hike represents the fifth trail from the end of
my hiking all 900 miles of maintained trails in the Smokies--a feat I once thought would "never" happen.......
Click here to read the complete hiking journal where you can also link to my photo gallery for
this hike.
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 Janice Henderson
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