Mountains, Music and Memories
Around Whitesburg, fine folks, fiddling are just a few of the natural attractions

Noted Kentucky author Ed McClanahan makes me laugh. So I attend his public readings whenever time permits. Several times I’ve heard him fondly mention Whitesburg, Kentucky, and made a mental note to go there and find out why. On a foggy morning in late August I finally did just that, and by the time my day of exploring Letcher County had come to an end, I wished I’d gone sooner.

Born “way the heck out in the county,” J.C. Day is a retired postmaster who’s now executive director of the Letcher County Chamber of Commerce. He met me for a cup of coffee at the Pine Mountain Grille.
“Most of the recreational opportunities we have in Letcher County were made by God,” he began. Having been awed by towering sandstone cliffs topped with deep green pines that peeped through the fog clouds on my trip there, I knew just what he meant.

One of those, Pine Mountain, which stretches 90 miles from Breaks Interstate Park in Pike County, is a thrust fault mountain, rare for this part of the country. When you drive up it and look north, all the hills are level. Millions of years ago, he explained, a probable earthquake thrust up the south side of the mountain to form a very steep side, called a fault scarp. “When you see it from 2,400 to 2,500 feet,” he said, “it’s a beautiful view.”

Is it ever. As I climbed US 119 up Pine Mountain, I had to stop at every pull-out on the way up to snap a photo of the magnificent mountain vistas that stretched to glory. “It’s the best view you can get of Eastern Kentucky from a car,” says Jim Webb, program director for Appalshop’s radio station WMMT-FM.

Off this winding byway, you can drive Little Shepherd Trail right along the crest into Harlan County and scenic Kingdom Come State Park, named for John Fox, Jr.’s noted novel about Appalachian life, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. A new road built up the fault scarp has drawn curious geologists from around the globe to inspect the pronounced layers of this geologic phenomenon.

Most folks, however, just come to inspect the gorgeous scenery here come fall. Day swears the colors are more vivid here than in the U.S. Northeast. “Up there, they have primarily only two colors, the red of maples and gold of aspens,” he says. “Here, we have the reds of oaks, sourwoods and dogwoods, as well as about four or five other species of oak, plus the pronounced deep yellow of many poplar groves.” Many people, Day’s dad among them, once made a living from farming the steep hillsides here, and poplars spring up soon after the land is left fallow.

If you drive over the mountain, you can dig into the state’s rich coal mining history in the old coal camps of Lynch, which has a historic walking tour, and Jenkins, whose Kentucky Coal Mining Museum is a storehouse of “black gold”-related artifacts.

Back east on 119, wet your whistle with icy cider at Apple Tree Orchard, or a cool drink at J.D. Maggard’s Cash Store, where scenes were shot for “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Check out the antiques and crafts at Oven Fork Mercantile. Then head to tiny Eolia, set right between Pine and Black Mountains, the state’s two tallest peaks.

Be sure to call ahead to make certain either Jeff or Sharman Chapman-Crane are at their Valley of the Winds Art Gallery at Eolia, because if you miss them, you’ll peep in the window of their tidy country house gallery and wish you hadn’t.

At the Pine Mountain/Letcher County Crafts Co-op, I experienced a down home hospitality that seems to be prevalent in these parts. Its secretary, Sharon Adams gave me a guided tour of its marvelous myriad of crafts, including handmade birdhouses, cane-bottom chairs, soft sculpture dolls and hand painted gourds, plus antiques and collectibles.

Thanks to the persistence of Ruth Shackleford, who “bugged” her county agent, the co-op began in 1993. “When coal mining went out, we had so many retired people with nothing to do,” Shackleford says. “They’re so talented but had no outlet for their crafts.”

I had to eat lunch at the Courthouse Cafe. McClanahan had recommended it, and I’m glad he did. My homemade potato soup was so rich and thick, I could almost stand a spoon up in it. Next door, I worked off very little of it while perusing The Cozy Corner’s hand-carved folk art, vibrant quilts and wealth of books on Appalachia.

Both businesses are owned and run by Josephine Richardson, who moved to Whitesburg in 1969 with her husband Bill, founder of the nationally-renowned film and recording studio, Appalshop.
“I think there’s an openness here that belies any of the usual stereotypes about Appalachia,” Richardson says.

A cornerstone of this community is a grassroots organization that has blasted those stereotypes to smithereens. Begun in 1969 as a film workshop to give locals and minorities job access to the film industry, Appalshop was a product of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the anti-poverty program and the American Film Institute. “The local kids got very involved in videoing their family stories and various aspects of life, culture and recreation in the area,” says Richardson, explaining one reason she and her husband never left.

These documentaries formed Appalshop’s foundation, and today its creative media outlets – all with an Appalachian focus – include Appalachian Media Institute, a media literacy and production program; Appalshop Films, producer of area documentaries for home and educational use (most recently, the poignant PBS-aired “Stranger With a Camera”); June Apple Recordings; the nationally-acclaimed traveling Roadside Theater; WMMT-FM, a non-commercial community radio station; a public art gallery and 150-seat theater.

Smack on Route 7 in western Letcher County, the C.B. Caudill Store is a tradition begun in 1933. For years it carried “mule feed, brassieres, bologna, coffee and plumbing supplies.” Upon C.B.’s death, his daughter Gaynell and her husband, Joe Begley, took the reins, furnishing the community with “soda pop and gasoline, music and conversation” while taking activist roles in county health, education and welfare and fighting strip mining and oil and gas drilling.

No longer a retail business, the old general store in Blackey is now a museum and history center, chock full of Blackey memorabilia, from Native American relics to miners’ lamps. You’ve got to stop here, poke around and chat a bit with the Begleys. “We ain’t got King Tut’s tomb here,” says Joe in his brochure, “but I think it’s pretty good.”

From Blackey, it’s just spitting distance to an arboreal treasure. One of the only old-growth forests in the state, the Lilley Cornett Woods is deeded to Eastern Kentucky University and is truly a step back in time. Never having been logged, part of the 554 acres is virgin timber. “They’re big trees poplar, white oak, red oak and hickory,” says Doc Cornett, Lilley’s 79- year-old son, who’s lived on the property all his life. “Huge trees. It’s awful pretty.”

His sage, eccentric father bought the first tract of land and its mineral rights before he was drafted into WWI, then came back and purchased three more. “He always told us boys,” says Cornett, “‘Children, if you ever sell this property, you’ll never get it back. Don’t sell it. Don’t trade on it. There was about 93 acres of level land on it.” (Rare for this area.)

To walk in the woods, you must go with a guide. Caretaker Robert Wells can schedule that daily from May 15 to August 15, and April, May, September and October on weekends.

Hike on your own to Bad Branch Falls, in a 2,600-acre state nature preserve. Sign in at the parking lot and pass an old growth hemlock grove on your way to ogle the 60-foot falls that Jim Webb calls “one of the jewels in the whole state.” It’s an easy hike, he says, and is the only place in Kentucky where you can find ravens nesting.

What I found about these mountains is that just over the next hilltop or down the next hollow, there’s always one more intriguing thing to see. As I drove out of Whitesburg, WMMT’s lively mountain fiddle music blared on my radio, pine-scented mountain air whipped in every window and a cartoon welcoming committee of kudzu characters bid me farewell. I’ll definitely return...with my hiking boots.

Katherine Tandy Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report.
kathybrown@lanereport.com

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