Resorts in Southern Appalachia

308 Pages·2015·1.28 MB·English

by  Mary F. Fanslow

East Tennessee State University
Digital Commons @ East
Tennessee State University
Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works
12-2004
Resorts in Southern Appalachia: A Microcosm of
American Resorts in the Nineteenth and Early
Twentieth centuries.
Mary F. Fanslow
East Tennessee State University
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Fanslow, Mary F., "Resorts in Southern Appalachia: A Microcosm of American Resorts in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth
centuries." (2004).Electronic Theses and Dissertations.Paper 961. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/961
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Resorts in Southern Appalachia: A Microcosm of American Resorts
in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

A thesis
presented to
the faculty of the Department of History
East Tennessee State University

In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts in History

by
Mary F. Fanslow
December 2004

Dr. Marie Tedesco, Chair
Dr. Dale Schmitt
Dr. Stephen Fritz

Keywords: Mineral Springs, Hotels, Montvale, Tate, Unaka, Cloudland, Wonderland
ABSTRACT

Resorts in Southern Appalachia: A Microcosm of American Resorts
in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

by
Mary F. Fanslow

Five resorts in East Tennessee--Montvale Springs and the Wonderland Hotel in the
Smokies, Tate Spring in the Holston River Valley, Unaka Springs on the Nolichucky
River, and the Cloudland Hotel at the summit of Roan Mountain--stand testament to the
proposition that their region engaged fully with areas outside southern Appalachia. Their
origins, clientele, and health and leisure offerings followed those of other resorts of the
same time period. Moreover, the effects of national socioeconomic trends on the hotels
serve as a contradiction to the stereotype of southern Appalachia as an isolated region
barricaded from the outside world by mountainous topography. The East Tennessee
resorts covered in this thesis indicate that the region as a whole was emblematic of
national socioeconomic and cultural trends.

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In Loving Memory of My Grandparents
Thomas Carver (1898-1974) and Myrtle Little Carver (1908-2003)
of Carter County, Tennessee

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the Journal of Appalachian Studies for allowing the inclusion in this thesis
of an article of mine originally published in their journal. I am especially grateful to the
interviewees, who so freely gave their time to share memories and memorabilia: Mary Lee
Barron, Cora Lee Brooks, the late Myrtle Carver, Violet Carver, Pete Chitwood, James A.
Goforth, Jetta Hopson, Ted Lynch, Joyce Street Masters, Rev. Ulis Miller, George
Morgan and his family, Roy Patty, Doug Smith, the late Pauline Murrell Stone, Faye
Tipton, Arnold Webb, and Doris Wilson. I also appreciate the many other people who
offered assistance, sources, or insights: Dave Ashby, Jennifer Bauer, John Beckwith,
Valerie Monroe Braun, Skip Burpeau, David Chapman, Mary Jane Erwin, Tom Fanslow,
Cheryl Fowler, Bob Fulcher, John Hasche, the late Dr. Milton Klein, Dr. Tom Laughlin,
Dr. Tim McDowell, Rev. Mark McKinney, Carolyn Miller, Robert Morgan, Judy Murray,
David Smith, George E. Webb, Jr., and Janice Winegar. I gratefully acknowledge the
generous help I've received from others, too numerous to name individually. I thank for
their ongoing assistance librarians Anne Bridges of The University of Tennessee at
Knoxville, Annette Hardigan of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Library and
Archives, and Kelly Hensley of East Tennessee State University. I also appreciate the
support of my Eastman supervisor, Dr. Guy Steinmetz. I thank especially Dr. Marie
Tedesco, my thesis advisor, and my other committee members, Dr. Dale Schmitt and Dr.
Stephen Fritz, for their guidance. Lastly, I express my deep gratitude to my parents, Bob
and Linda Fanslow. Being exposed to their love of history at home and in my dad’s A.P.
American History high school class has been an exceptional, inspirational gift.
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CONTENTS

Page
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….. 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………... 4
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………. 6
2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN RESORTS FROM
THE COLONIAL PERIOD TO THE CIVIL WAR……………………………….. 12
3. ANTEBELLUM SOUTHERN APPALACHIA: DESCRIPTION OF THE
ECONOMY AND THE RESORTS IN VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, AND
TENNESSEE…………………………………………………...……………......... 64
4. MINERAL WATERS IN EAST TENNESSEE: MONTVALE SPRINGS, TATE
SPRING, AND UNAKA SPRINGS………………………………………………. 118
5. SUMMER HOME ABOVE THE CLOUDS: THE CLOUDLAND HOTEL ON
ROAN MOUNTAIN………………………………………………………………. 193
6. FROM TIMBERING TO TOURISM: THE WONDERLAND HOTEL’S EARLY
YEARS…………………………………………………………………………….. 244
7. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………. 269
WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………….... 285
VITA……………………………………………………………………………………….. 307

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Roan Mountain on the border between northeastern Tennessee and western North
Carolina has long been one of my favorite natural spots to seek beauty and relaxation. As
a child growing up in East Tennessee, my family, grandparents, and I enjoyed picnics near
the Roan’s summit. Much later, when I enrolled in a graduate program in history, I
decided to write my first research paper on an aspect of Roan Mountain about which I
knew practically nothing, the long-gone Cloudland Hotel. My interest in East Tennessee
resorts was further sparked when Dr. Bruce Wheeler of The University of Tennessee
suggested I explore the Wonderland Hotel in the Smokies after he had heard a
presentation I gave on the Cloudland Hotel. As I delved into research, I realized that the
East Tennessee region contained a bevy of watering hole activity in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Hence, a topic for my thesis began to crystallize.
Searching a variety of electronic and printed resources for background material on
American resorts, and then very specifically on East Tennessee leisure establishments,
gradually coalesced into the concept that East Tennessee resorts, for the most part,
followed the patterns and models of other eastern American resorts in terms of their
origins and attractions to gain and keep guests. The East Tennessee resorts’ health
regimens, entertainment offerings, and transportation did not differ substantially from
those provided by other resorts in the country during the same time period. The
socioeconomic factors affecting the nation as a whole--for example, the burgeoning
industry during and after Reconstruction, the delineation of an expanding middle-class
culture, health reform issues, and economic booms and panics--shaped the growth and
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direction of East Tennessee as well. The long held view of southern Appalachian
isolationism, most widely articulated in the late 1800s and early 1900s through such
condescendingly titled magazine articles as William Aspenwall Bradley’s “Hobnobbing
with Hillbillies” and George E. Vincent’s “A Retarded Frontier,” holds no sway when
looking at East Tennessee resorts.1 As sociologist Wilma Dunaway points out, “Much of
the accumulated knowledge about Appalachia has been generated out of ‘history written
backwards’ . . . . Successive generations of academics have faithfully re-legitimated,
without accumulating any empirical evidence, the colorful exaggerations of early-
twentieth-century novelists and journalists.”2 This thesis will describe the evolution of five
resorts in East Tennessee, with emphasis on their “hey-day” periods, to demonstrate that
they symbolize national, not isolated regional, trends in the expression of health and leisure
pursuits in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
I selected the five resorts to be studied in a somewhat nonscientific fashion. As
mentioned earlier, I chose the Cloudland because of personal interest and the Wonderland
at a professor’s suggestion. I then decided that I should pick at least one other resort
geographically near each of these two hotels to determine any similarities or differences in

1 Bradley commented that “as in the case of all mountain races, isolation has
served to keep intact the identity of original manners and customers.” See William
Aspenwall Bradley, “Hobnobbing with Hillbillies,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 132
(December 1915): 92. Vincent described eastern Kentucky residents as a “social order
arrested at a relatively early stage of evolution.” See George E. Vincent, “A Retarded
Frontier,” The American Journal of Sociology 4 (July 1898): 20, http://www.jstor.org
(accessed July 27, 2004).

2 Wilma Dunaway, The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in
Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860, The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 8.
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their cultures. While researching the Cloudland in 1998 for a course at East Tennessee
State University, I chanced upon a newspaper clipping for the Unaka Springs Hotel in
Unicoi County, about thirty miles from the Cloudland. While investigating the Wonderland
at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Archives, I found a typescript describing a
few dozen resorts scattered among the Smokies; intrigued, I picked the earliest one on
record, Montvale Springs. Later, I serendipitously learned that a red-roofed gazebo that I
often saw while driving on Highway 11W between Kingsport and The University of
Tennessee as an undergraduate signified the only remains of a once wildly popular resort
near Bean Station in Grainger County, Tate Spring.
Montvale Springs, purported to be the earliest East Tennessee resort, billed itself
as the “Saratoga of the South.” With its seven-gabled, two-hundred-feet long façade, it
entertained hundreds of guests each year prior to the Civil War and served as the
background for Sidney Lanier’s novel Tiger Lilies and for William G. “Parson”
Brownlow’s political letters while on vacation. Like Tate Spring and Unaka Springs, it
began as a watering hole for invalids seeking its mineral waters and transformed into a
gathering place for recreation and genteel amusement. During the Civil War, its
Confederate-sympathizing owners fled to the Deep South, and a Northerner acquired
ownership. Unlike the other four resorts, its “hey-day” ended before the twentieth century.
Tate Spring constituted just one of several mineral springs establishments in
Grainger County. Its two hotels, like the Cloudland, attracted not only middle and upper-
class society, but also the national elite: robber barons and Gilded Age capitalists such as
the Studebakers. Like the Cloudland, it prided itself on its high elevation that allegedly
kept away mosquitoes and hay fever allergens. Like Unaka Springs, it declined during the
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depression; the elite from the late 1800s and early 1900s had long since found other
fashionable resorts and the middle class frequenting it on newly opened roads had little
money to continue coming.
The last resort studied that began around the curative powers of a mineral spring is
the Unaka Springs Hotel near Erwin, Tennessee, and Poplar, North Carolina. Like most of
the resorts covered, its guests in the late 1800s and early 1900s consisted of the middle
class and upper middle-class elite—doctors, lawyers, bankers, and railroad management.
Again, its emphasis on health offerings declined as it, like the other resorts, began to offer
such recreational activities as croquet, miniature golf, and dancing. Like the other four
resorts, it prospered under proprietors with warm, tolerant dispositions who bonded with
sophisticated, demanding guests and who possessed the deep pockets to maintain the hotel
infrastructure. Unique to Unaka Springs, however, was its dependence on the railroad for
transportation. Without the railroad, one had to ford a river or scramble down a steep
cliffside path to reach it. That isolation, however, aided in its appeal to upper-class elite
just as Catskill resorts of the same era advertised their isolation in the rugged mountains of
upstate New York.
The Cloudland Hotel at an elevation of about 6,285 feet on Roan Mountain
promoted its altitude as a curative for that very fashionable disease of the late 1800s: Hay
fever or summer catarrh. “The Hay Fever Brigade” trooped to the hotel each summer
from 1878 to the early 1900s. Again, as at the mineral spring resorts, the Cloudland
offered a variety of recreational activities, such as hiking, golf (using weighted balls), and
dancing. Unlike the other resorts, Roan Mountain’s high altitude offered a tremendous
variety of plant species, some not found elsewhere, which attracted serious scientists as
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