Resorts in Southern Appalachia: a Microcosm of American Resorts in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
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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 Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the Social History Commons Recommended Citation 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 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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. 2 In Loving Memory of My Grandparents Thomas Carver (1898-1974) and Myrtle Little Carver (1908-2003) of Carter County, Tennessee 3 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. 4 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 5 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 6 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. 7 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.