http://www.ls.net/~newriver/cm/cm25.htm
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For you must know that the Big Pigeon River starts in the most remarkable
cul-de-sac in the mountains, a cul-de-sac formed partly by Pisgah Range, which,
sweeping down in a southwesterly direction, meets a line of high balds coming
down from the northwest. These two mountains ranges form, as it were, the
prongs of a mammoth pitchfork, whose handle is the Tennessee Ridge reaching
down nearly to Toxaway Mountain. At the point where the han dle joins the
prongs, forming, as it were, a strong connective, is the beautiful Tennessee
Bald, its summit covered with blue-grass and white-clover.
The cup-shaped space between the prongs of the pitchfork is occupied by the
nearly circular Cold Mountain uplift, that, at Sam Knob, its highest point,
rises to an elevation a little over six thousand feet. The two Forks of the
Pigeon almost surround Cold Mountain, receiving the waters that rush down its
steep sides as well as those from the western slopes of Pisgah and the eastern
slope of the line of balds. The two Forks come together at the north end of
Cold Mountain just above the settlement of Garden Greek, forming the Big
Pigeon, one of the wildest streams of the mountains, and that speeds along in a
general northwesterly direction, finally to break through a gorge of the Great
Smoky Mountains some miles south of where the French Broad makes its exit in
gentler fashion, the Pigeon entering the French Broad when both rivers are well
out of the mountains.
Garden Creek, with its restful levels, its grainfields and apple-orchards,
and its fine outlooks to the western mountains, is a good place from which to
explore the interesting country of the Forks. It is reached by driving up the
valley of the Pigeon from Canton on the Murphy Branch. If Mr. Osborne is still
at Garden Creek, he will tell you of the Indian mounds he helped to open, as
well as of many interesting things of the surrounding country. There is one
mound at Garden Creek with an apple tree growing out of the top, but the
greater number have been found, and opened, in the present Cherokee boundary,
and in those larger valleys like that of the Valley River, where the more
important Indian villages stood.
The contents of these mounds, principally bones, pottery, and stone
implements, which do not differ essentially from the contents of other Indian
mounds, have been placed in various museums of the country, principally in that
of the Valentine Museum at Richmond, Virginia. Henson Cove, under Sugar Top
Mountain, is not one of the wild Fork coves, but being at Garden Creek you will
often go there for the sake of the pleasant walk through the woods and past the
little farms, where the catbird and the thrush sing to you along the way, and
for the sake of the friendly people who live there. As you go along in the
fresh morning, the air perfumed by the wild grapevine draping the tree above
your head, the wild roses blossoming along the slopes, white azaleas on the
edge of the woods, ripe strawberries hiding somewhere near in the grass, as you
go along, the warm summer sun drawing the fragrance out of all sweet things,
you decide that there is no better walk than that to Henson Cove.