Our State/August

Headline: Franklin, Murphy and Brevard

Subhead: Our writer seeks out high country charm set amid some of the most remarkable scenery in the state.

By Ralph Grizzle

Coming from Asheville, I was surprised to find no parking meters on the main street of Franklin, North Carolina. "Used to have them," Loretta Fields informed me. "They took them out several years back, though. You were only fined a quarter for overparking anyway, so it was cheaper to leave your car in the same spot all day [and not feed the meter]."

Welcome to small-town Western North Carolina, where Mayberry meets the mountains and where tourists come in droves to experience high country charm set amid some of the most remarkable landscape in the state.

This month, we visit three small mountain towns--Franklin, the self-proclaimed gem capital of the world; Murphy, the state's frontier town; and Brevard, one of Western North Carolina's quintessential small towns. Each of these towns is worthy of a day trip on their own or near enough to the others that they can be combined to make a long weekend.

The Plan

I opted for the long weekend, making my base in Franklin. From Asheville, I had only a little more than an hour's drive. If you're coming from the Triad Area, plan on driving four hours; from the Triangle, you'll want to allow just under six hours.

If you get an early start from parts east, you can make lunch in downtown Franklin at either Mountain Vittles or The Frog and Owl Kitchen, whose owner and chef, Jerri Fifer Broyles, has been featured in Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Southern Living. I had Jerri's chicken salad with pesto sandwich, and I now know that the fare at the Frog and Owl deserves its wide acclaim.

Franklin has about 600 rooms for guests. My plan was to spend two nights here. On the afternoon of my arrival I would visit downtown Franklin and the surrounding area, then travel to Murphy, an hour west, the next morning.

I would spend the day in Murphy, then wind back to Franklin over beautiful Wayah Bald, a knob of mountain rising to a height of just over a mile above sea level. On the morning of my third day, I would go mining for gems just north of Franklin before heading out to Brevard, an hour and a half to the east. Looking back, this This schedule allowed ample time to take in all the sights.

I pitched camp at the Snow Hill Inn, a turn-of-the-century schoolhouse that has been renovated into a bed and breakfast. One of the eight beautifully restored guest rooms still bears the faint markings of idle students who wrote their names on the back walls of the auditorium. The Inn's large rooms feature 12-foot ceilings and windows that look out on pristine mountain views.

Located six miles north of Franklin, the Snow Hill Inn sits on a hill overlooking a scenic valley rich with history. Settlers came here to mine native rubies, sapphires and other precious gems and minerals. They built farms, churches, stores and homes, many well-preserved. When this issue of Our State went to press, the region was on its way to becoming a state-designated "rural historic district."

It was also from here, north of Franklin, that in 1767 a South Carolina planter shipped to England chalk white clay that was used in the production of Wedgwood china. And it was here in this valley that the Cherokee held their town council, on a mound they called Cowee.

Franklin First

In his recent best-selling book, "A Walk in the Woods," author Bill Bryson characterized Franklin as "small, dull, and cautiously unattractive, but mostly dull." He wrote that Franklin was the sort of place where, for lack of anything better to do, you'd find yourself "strolling out to the lumberyard to watch guys on forklifts shunting wood about." He added that there were no diversions, nowhere to buy a book "or even a magazine that didn't involve speedboats, customized cars, or guns and ammo."

No doubt that Bryson's observations were skewed by his grumbling trip through the southern Appalachians. The weather had not gone the way he had wished (which had forced him to come off the Appalachian Trail into Franklin.) The hiking was harder than he had anticipated (which had forced him to eventually accept defeat and travel by car from Gatlinburg to Skyline Drive in Virginia.)

By contrast, I arrived in Franklin on a sunny June day and found it to be fascinating. For starters, Franklin is surrounded by natural beauty. The town sits in the middle of the half-million-acre Nantahala National Forest, the largest of four national forests in North Carolina. Moreover, the 18 miles between Franklin and Highlands through Cullasaja Gorge is arguably the state's most beautiful mountain drive (the Blue Ridge Parkway's Lynn Cove Viaduct, skirting Grandfather Mountain, would be a fierce competitor in this category.)

Culturally, this town of 3,000 has three museums, including the Scottish Tartans Museum. Declared a Cultural Treasure by the state, it is the only museum of its kind in the country, a branch of Edinburgh, Scotland's Scottish Tartans Society, charged by the Crown to maintain the Official Registry of All Publicly Known Tartans.

At the museum, descendants of Scottish pioneers may view their family tartan on a computer. Or they can trace their Scottish heritage in the library. Visitors will also be able to see how tartans were woven and used in dress over the centuries, dating back to 325.

Why did the Society choose Franklin? Part of the decision was based on the fact that North Carolina has more Scottish descendants than any other state, according to Matthew Newsome, the museum's curator. Another factor was that Macon County, of which Franklin is the county seat, has a strong history of Scottish migration. Finally the region resembles Scotland, thus making it a natural choice for this branch of the Scottish Tartans Society. Plan to spend at least one hour in the museum.

All That Glitters

Down the street, at the Franklin Gem and Mineral Museum, native rubies and sapphires are on display along with other gems, rocks, arrowheads and Cherokee artifacts.

Mining for ruby and sapphire began in Macon County in 1870. In the 1890s, American Prospecting & Mining Co. and US Ruby Mining Co. came to the area hoping to find the source of the rubies. Both ended their search after only a decade or so, leaving the area open to tourists and gem enthusiasts. The source still hasn't been found.

The region north of Franklin, in the Snow Hill Inn area, has about a dozen gem mines. I visited Rose Creek Mine, where for $5, I grabbed a bucket of dirt, poured part of it into a mining screen and lowered it into water rushing through the trough known as a flume.

As the dirt washed away, the gems began to appear. Most were tiny, about the size of a pea. I found a few worth keeping, but none so grand as the one found by my flume-mate, Martin Hartshorn. A gem enthusiast, Martin travels from Kentucky each year just so he can go mining. Two years ago, in the spot where we were sitting, he found a 14.5-carat Star Sapphire, appraised at $2,000. "All you can find in Kentucky," he jokes, "is coal."

I asked Marty Martinez, owner of Rose Creek Mine, if many people walked away from here with a valuable gem. He told me that most people come to the mine just to relax and have fun. "If they find something worth $200 or $300, they've had more fun," Marty says. "But it's not a get-rich-quick type of thing."

Even so, you can have your gems checked--at Burglens Natural Gems, Tari's RokGems or any other lapidary shop--to determine if you've found anything worth keeping and cutting.

Also, you should know that many mines "salt" their buckets with stones from abroad. These enriched buckets can sometimes make mining more exciting for the kids and for gem enthusiasts who are looking for exotic stones. For the purist, most mines offer "unsalted" buckets, where all that you'll find is what Mother Nature put there. Plan on spending a minimum of two to three hours mining.

Macon History

Back in town, at the Macon County Historical Museum, I learned a little more about the Scots-Irish, English and Germans who pioneered the region. Most came from the eastern parts of North Carolina and from upstate South Carolina. I also learned a great deal about the first inhabitants, the Cherokee, who ceded a large portion of their land in 1819, then all of it in 1835.

And down the street, at Alpine Tobac & Coffee Haus, I learned why people are attracted to Franklin. From behind the counter, Loretta Fields, the woman who had told me about the parking meters, said that she and her husband came here 23 years ago, leaving behind St. Petersburg, Florida. The Fields wanted to get away from the big city and all its problems. Here, they found their mountain paradise.

And so have a lot of others who are following in the Fields' footsteps. "Hardly a week passes when a couple from Florida doesn't come in the store and say they've just bought property here," Loretta says. Then, she adds: "People are polite here. They stop to let you cross the street. They take time to say 'Hello.' It's a different type of living, very nice."

Very nice indeed say the 200 to 300 tourists who stop daily at the Chamber of Commerce's Information Center. Floridians constitute the lion's share of those visitors, with almost 90 of every 100 visitors coming from the Sunshine State, according to Linda Harbuck, executive director of the Franklin Area Chamber of Commerce.

What brings them here?

"Probably the biggest thing is geography," Harbuck says. "We're convenient to get to. But the other thing is that we are just small enough for people to be comfortable and yet large enough for them to have everything they need to have."

Go West, Young Man

Harbuck sent me on the scenic route to Murphy, across Wayah Bald and by Nantahala Lake on a road that changes numbers three times. If you're interested in traveling this route, I recommend stopping by the Information Center to get a free map. Have someone there highlight the way for you, and be sure to allow three hours going this way, only because you'll want to stop and stretch your legs along the way. The drive back to Franklin, on Highway 64, takes about an hour.

Murphy is a quaint town, with some interesting architecture and history all within a few blocks' walk. The Cherokee County Court house is worth a visit. Completed in 1927, its exterior walls are constructed of native blue unpolished marble, quarried just two miles north of town. Down the street is the Cherokee County Historical Museum, where you'll find weapons left by Spanish explorers, led through here in 1540 by Hernando de Soto.

The museum's largest collection is devoted to the life of the Cherokee. Wanda Stalcup, the museum's director, showed me a ledger dating back to the 1830s that recorded transactions between the Cherokee and shopkeeper Archibald Hunter.

"What a lot of people don't realize is that the Cherokee were removed from this area," Stalcup told me. In 1838, the Western North Carolina Nation of the Cherokee were rounded up and held in Fort Butler, which was located in what is now Murphy. With the first footsteps out of the gates of Fort Butler, those hapless souls started their 1,200-mile journey on the tragic Trail of Tears.

Heading west from Murphy on Highway 294, I came upon Fields of the Wood, a "Bible Park." I drove through the gates of the park where "God's word is displayed amid God's creation," according to the park's brochure. On my right, running up a grassy hillside for what must have been 100 yards or more, were the Ten Commandments and the New Testament Marker in huge letters. "Come to the mountains . . . catch the vision!" reads the brochure. Replicas of Joseph's Tomb and Golgotha await the curious visitor. It really was truly a sight to behold.

As I was leaving, I thought it to be a bit ironic that the Cherokee must have walked right by this place that in later years would glorify such Christian virtues as, "Love Thy Neighbor." I remembered reading that one Georgia soldier had written in his journal that he had seen war and murder but nothing as cruel as the Removal. One in four Cherokee died along the way to Oklahoma.

Brevard Bound

I returned to Franklin late in the evening and set out the next morning to Brevard. I had two choices. I could either head over up to and along the Blue Ridge Parkway and down Highway 276, past Sliding Rock and Looking Glass Falls or I could head up the Cullasaja Gorge, through Highlands and past Lake Toxaway. I chose the latter only because I was less familiar with that route and wanted to see what it offered had to offer.

I drove the 111 curves through Cullasaja Gorge (I overheard a Floridian tourist who had counted them), to charming Highlands, which was bustling with tourists. I then continued on toward Brevard through Cashiers. The drive took me about an hour and a half, and I crossed the Eastern Continental Divide along the way. It was almost a fitting metaphor, for Brevard is different from Franklin and Murphy.

The catchphrase for this town of 7,000 is "Catch the Hometown Spirit," and Brevard was indeed a friendly town. It had the feel of a 1950's small town, where people were kind and friendly. . The town even had its own 1950's style soda shop, Rocky's.

While downtown Brevard provides a fun afternoon of diversions, the town and county are perhaps better known for their waterfalls, of which there are more than 250. Nature is magnificent here. In the town parks, you may see the local white squirrels, whose predecessors were reportedly brought here by a visitor in the 1930s. Brevard College even offers a wilderness program.

The college has also broadened its curriculum from a two-year to a four-year program. In Libby Freeman's mind that underscores the fact that Brevard is developing into a real cultural community. Executive Director of Brevard's Chamber of Commerce, Freeman says that Brevard has a "very active" arts community. She also mentions the Brevard Music Center, which draws visitors from all over. The Center has attracted internationally renowned musicians and performers since its opening in 1946.

Homeward Bound Again

I enjoyed my three days visiting these three small towns in Western North Carolina. They offered not only beautiful scenery but also small town charm and a dose of history. They also offered a simpler style of living than I was accustomed to, even in laid-back Asheville. I thought of that when I picked up the local paper and read about the City Council's plan for raising rates for downtown parking, from 25 cents to 60 cents an hour. The thought of it made me want to go back to Franklin.