HAGETT COVE WAS ROAMING GROUNDS FOR YOUNG BOYS

By Marshall McClung
Graham Star Correspondent

One of my favorite places to roam in while a young boy on Atoah Creek was an area known as Hagett Cove.  It lay directly across the valley from our hillside farm behind the present day location of the Robbinsville Pallet mill.  In those days, this section of the Atoah Creek valley was a combination of cow pastures, meadows, and cornfields.  From time to time, we grew corn there for our cows and chickens and to be ground for corn meal.

I was the youngest child of four and was five years younger than my brother Sam.  This meant that for the first few years of my childhood, I was at home while they were in school.  Our home was in the edge of the woods, well out of view from Atoah Road.  At an early age, I started spending my days playing in the woods and exploring.   From the first time I can remember seeing Hagett Cove, I wanted to roam all through it.  The imposing Hagett Knob (imposing at least to a small child), seemed to present a challenge to me.  I wanted to climb it, but the steep rise to 3,000 feet in elevation seemed a formidable task to a young child.

At a very early age, I set about exploring the area.  I asked my father how it got its name, and found that a family by the name of Hagett had once lived there.  One story had it that “old man Hagett” had hung himself in the cove and that some people called it “Hanging Cove”, although other residents thought that ‘Hanging Cove” was located near the old Ambrose and Ethel Worley house near the intersection of Snowbird Road and what today is known as Atoah Circle.  This made me want to explore the area even more.

My first journeys into Hagett Cove were short ones due to my early age.  Each time I went, I would force myself to go farther into the cove without stopping.  Finally, I thought I was ready to tackle going all the way to the top.  One winter day when Hagett Knob was frozen white with rime ice, I decided this was the day.  I set out from the house at a brisk pace and never let up, never stopping until I went all the way to the top.   The view amazed me.  I felt like I was looking down from the top of the world.  The rime ice frozen on the bare trees and especially the evergreens was beautiful.  When the wind blew on the rime ice, it produced a sound similar to our wind chimes of today.  Of course, some of it also went down my neck.

In those early days of childhood innocence, it never once entered my mind to wonder who owned the land or had owned it.  Children in those days pretty much had free range, roaming over neighboring property at will.  This was no problem as long as no damage occurred or gates were left open allowing livestock to escape.  We were taught to respect the property of others.  Failure to do this would result in severe disciplinary measures being applied to a certain part of the anatomy.  I continued my treks into other parts of the nearby woods including an adjacent area known as Nichols Cove.   I gradually was able to cover more and more distance faster and without ever stopping.  Little did I know at the time how well this was preparing me for a career in forestry and search and rescue missions with our local rescue squad looking for people lost in the woods.

I decided to check into the history of Hagett Cove, and was told that Dewey Sharpe was knowledgeable of the area.  Was he ever!  Dewey has a name of being able to get through the woods at a fast clip despite his age( he is in his 90’s) and had the name of “busting” or “breaking” people much younger that tried to keep up with him.  It was interesting to find that he had trained himself as a child in the woods much like I had.

Dewey recalled going into Hagett Cove with his father J.M. “Mark” Sharpe to pick blackberries around 1916.  At that time, there were still old fields visible with piles of rocks that had been cleared from them.  Dewey’s home place was across the dividing ridge on Long Creek in an area known as Poplar Cove near where the pavement ends on Long Creek Road today.  An old trail led from there over into Atoah.  Dewey remembered seeing poplar trees almost as big as those in Joyce Kilmer Forest along the trail.  At times, Dewey and his brother Sam would go into Hagett Cove hunting or to dig ginseng.  The Hagetts were gone from the area by then, with no sign of a cabin left.

“Hoot” Gibbs was very helpful in assisting me in obtaining information about the Hagetts who had once inhabited this area.  In 1892, Eben Hagett purchased 1,120 acres of land from W.B. Lenoir for $1300.  This included Hagett Cove and areas on Long Creek and Rock Creek.   Eben Hagett was from the town of New Castle in Lincoln County, Maine.  How someone from Maine came to be on Atoah is a bit of a puzzle.  Perhaps he had come into the area with a logging crew, not uncommon in those days.

In 1893, Eben Hagett sold the land to Ebenezer Hagett of Cambridge, Maine for $1300.  The land was described in a Commissioner’s deed from L.H. Rogers listed as “next friend” of James E. Hagett who was listed as an infant.  In 1904, L.H. Rogers filed a petition to sell the land for the minor, James E. Hagett.  In 1905, the Graham County Clerk of Court entered an order authorizing the sale of the land for Hagett.   The land was sold to Robert B. Slaughter for $2,000.

In 1926, the Buffalo-Snowbird Railroad Company, owned by Bemis Lumber Company and Champion Paper and Fiber, began construction of a railroad up Atoah Creek that went through I.U. Gap and on to Snowbird.  Hagett Cove was said to be the first area along the railroad to be logged. Today, most of Hagett Cove is a part of the Nantahala National Forest administered by the U.S. Forest Service.

I recently returned to Hagett Cove.  Much change is evident from my childhood days.  I entered the bottom of the cove.  I could have gone in by a Forest Service logging road and shortened my hike considerably, but I wanted to go the way I did as a small boy, all the way from the bottom to the very top of Hagett Knob.   I was surprised to find that the cove is still very open, the old road still is much in evidence.  Once into the cove, it was very peaceful and quiet with only the sound of the wind blowing and the rustle of falling leaves.  Brilliant patches of autumn color were still visible here and there.  Once on top of the knob, the view is still worth the hike.   From one side of the knob, I could see down Atoah and outlying areas around Robbinsville.  By moving to the other side of the knob, I could look down Long Creek with its church visible in the distance.  By turning around, I could see Joanna Bald with its forest fire lookout and cell phone tower.  As I viewed this domain, I though of the Hagetts living there, of Dewey Sharpe visiting the cove, then myself, then others after me.  It reminded me of a couple of Bible verses found in Ecclesiastes 1:4, 10; “One generation passes away and another generation comes --- Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new?  It has been already of old time, which was before us.”