University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-1996 Building the Back of Beyond: Government Authority, Community Life, and Economic Development in the Upper Little Tennessee Valley, 1880-1992 Stephen Wallace Taylor University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Taylor, Stephen Wallace, "Building the Back of Beyond: Government Authority, Community Life, and Economic Development in the Upper Little Tennessee Valley, 1880-1992. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1996. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3387 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Stephen Wallace Taylor entitled "Building the Back of Beyond: Government Authority, Community Life, and Economic Development in the Upper Little Tennessee Valley, 1880-1992." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. James C. Cobb, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Bruce Wheeler, Charles Johnson, John Gaventa Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council : I am submitting herewith a dissertat ion written by Stephen Wal lace Taylor entitled "Building the Back of Beyond : Government Au thority , Community Life , and Economic Development in the Upper Little Tennessee Valley, 1880- 1992." I have examined the final copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfil lment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy , wi th a ma j or in History . dissertation Accepted for the Council : As socia te Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Graduate School BUILDING THE BACK OF BEYOND: Government Authority, Community Life and Economic Development in the Upper Little Tennessee Valley , 1880-1992 A dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Univers ity of Tennessee , Knoxville Stephen Wa llace Taylor May 1996 ii Copyright Steph en Wal lace Tayl or, 1996 Al l rights reserved iii DEDICATION For Maggy , without whose support this work as it now exists would have been impossible. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Those who have assisted me in refining the idea that became this manuscript are far too numerous to list, but some deserve special mention. My ma jor professor, James C. Cobb , provided invaluable assistance through insightful criticism at many points along the way . The other members of my committee, Dr. Bruce Wheeler, Dr. John Gaventa , and Dr. Charles Johnson, also provided substantial insights which have shaped the present work . Dr. Michael J. McDonald provided a great deal of encouragement during the early portions of my research , and helped me focus on the key issues facing the study region . My fellow graduate students in the history department provided a forum in which I could try out new ideas and refine my approach. Kitty Manscill and Annette Hartigan of the Great Smoky Mountains Na tional Park tirelessly dug through the massive collections in their custody in order to facilitate my research, as did Mary Ann Bailey and Michael Rogers of the National Archives Southeast Region . The staff of the TVA Corporate Library and the Cultural Resources Program provided expert assistance , as did George Frizzell of the Special Collections department at Hunter Library , Western Carolina University, and the Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State Un iversity . Ben Lea of the North Carolina Political Broadcast Archives at Pfeiffer College provided uniquely valuable insight as we ll as access to his own research materials . Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, my fami ly provided both encouragement and thoughtful criticism wh ich helped me keep the proj ect in perspective . v ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the relationships among government authority , community life , and economic develop­ ment in the Upper Little Tennessee Valley . This area saw extensive growth during the first quarter of the twentieth century because of the exploitation of its timber and miner­ al resources. These industries introduced transient fami ­ lies into the area, contributing to the fragility of the economic and social structure . These trans ient families , like the longtime residents , embraced the regular paychecks industrial employment offered, and willingly participated in the exploitation of the area' s re sources, sacrificing long ­ term sustainable growth for the short-to-medium- term securi­ ty of a cash income . Following that period of rap id growth, the founding of the Great Smoky Mountains Na tional Park and the construction of TVA 's Fontana Dam cut off access to much of the area' s resource base and displaced many residents from their homes , disrupting the already tenuous threads holding the area' s communities together . Both trans ient families and longtime residents again adapted to the changing economic conditions by seeking whatever short -term financial security they could obtain . After the completion of the dam in 1945 , residents found their economic options even more severely curtailed . Tourism provided the sole opportunity for escaping the poverty which a half century of extractive growth could not eliminate . By the 1990s, several communities in the Upper Little Tennessee had begun to use tourism as a means of economic growth, but their growth paled by comparison to neighboring counties adj acent to the National Park . vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. PATTERNS OF PEOPLE AND PLACE . 1 2. BOOM (AND BUST) . 27 3. TWO SUITORS . • . 55 4. TVA MOVES INTO THE BACK OF BEYOND . 79 5. WORK , LIFE AND WAR IN THE BACK OF BEYOND 111 6. REBUILDING THE BACK OF BEYOND 158 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 191 VITA .. 204 vii LIST OF TABLES 1. AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY: PERCENT OF TOTAL INCOME IN 1940 • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • • • • . • . 4 2 2. HOUSEHOLD AMENITIES , 1940: PERCENT OF ALL DWELLINGS so EQUIPPED . 43 3. HOUSEHOLD AMENITIES , 1940: PERCENT OF RURAL NON-FARM DWELLINGS SO EQUIPPED . 43 4. HOUSEHOLD AMENITIES , 1940: PERCENT OF ALL OCCUPIED DWELLINGS SO EQUIPPED . 43 5. HOUSEHOLD AMENITIES , 1940: PERCENT OF OCCUPIED RURAL NON­ FARM DWELLINGS SO EQUIPPED . 44 6. PERCENT OF HOUSEHOLDS WITH SPECIFIED AMENITIES , 1940 (SWAIN COUNTY) . 4 5 7. PERCENT OF HOUSEHOLDS WITH SPECIFIED AMENITIES , 1940 (GRAHAM COUNTY) . 45 8 . PERCENT OF FARM HOUSEHOLDS WITH SPECIFIED AMENITIES , SWAIN AND GRAHAM COUNTIES , STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, AND UNITED STATES I 1940 . 45 viii LIST OF FIGURES 1. POPULATION, SWAIN AND GRAHAM COUNTIES , 1880-1990 ..19 2. POPULATION IN UPPER LITTLE TENNESSEE, MARKET vs. NONMARKET AREAS , 1880-1990 .. 21 3. POPULATION IN UPPER LITTLE TENNESSEE , FARMING VS . EXTRACTIVE TOWNSHIPS , 1880-1990 . 22 4. LAND OWNERSHIP, SWAIN COUNTY , 1958 175 5. NUMBER OF FAMILIES RECEIVING AFDC AID IN GRAHAM COUNTY . 184 6. NUMB ER OF FAMILIES RECEIVING AFDC AID IN SWAIN COUNTY . 185 1 CHAPTER 1. PATTERNS OF PEOPLE AND PLACE In Southern Ladies and Gentlemen , Florence King de - scribes the eminent Boston social scientist, Dr . Jonathan Latham, out to win the Pulitzer in "regional studies . 11 Latham struggled to understand the South using only two books : Gone with the Wind and The Mind of the South, with selected passages highlighted, of course . Latham' s experi - ences in the South some times reinforced the stereotypes in the books , and sometimes confounded them . Emotionally and intellectually exhausted by trying to figure out what the South was all about, Latham final ly resolved his confusion 1 by catching a plane back home . Dr . Latham' s counterpart trying to understand western North Carolina would probably carry Horace Kephart 's Our Southern Highlanders , with similarly mixed results . Kephart left a cozy librarian' s job in St . Louis in search of a mythical pioneer lifestyle , and believed he found it in the woods of Swain County, North Carolina , in a solitary place he lovingly called "the Back of Beyond ." Kephart 's meticu- lous description of the physical environment provided aca- demic students of the region with excell ent maps and sketch- es of the flora and fauna of the area . His notebooks pres- 1 Florence King , Southern Ladies and Gentlemen (New York : Stein and Day , 197 5) , 14 -24 . 2 ent a fascinating and detailed natural survey of the region . His obj ective descriptions of the phys ical world of western North Carolina aside , however, the romantic individualism and rugged lifestyle of which Kephart wrote is a popular, but misleading stereotype of the region . Just as Margaret Mitchell 's romance of the plantation South helped shape popular images , Kephart 's backwoods adventures helped mis - lead readers into seeing Appalachia as isolated and roman - tic . His best-known works aside from Ou r Southern Highland - ers are several treatises on backcountry camping and a guide to sporting firearms , and he was