LOOKOUT FOR OUR MOUNTAINS
Our Mountain
Lofty and grand, like a warrior band
Are the mountain peaks, dark frowning And tall and green on their heights serene
Are the pines, their dark cliffs crowning. Then far and near ring out the cheer,
Till the mountains join the chorus, For above them all, like a giant tall,
Is Lookout smiling o’er us. And ere we part, join hand and heart
In bonds which naught can sever, And a three-times-three for the wildwoods free,
And our mountain home forever.
George Norton, 1868
For perhaps 10,000 years people have come to Lookout Mountain in search of a home, wild game, or a place to rest and contemplate. There are other mountains in the world, but few stir the passions like Lookout does.
Home to several rare and endangered animals and plants (like the green pitcher plant, found only in four counties in the world), the mix of flora and fauna is amazing. In fact it’s one of the more biodiverse areas in the United States. One of the last battles of the American Revolution was fought on its slope near the northern end of the mountain just outside modern Chattanooga. And the Battle above the Clouds, fought in Chattanooga in late 1863, resulted in a victory for the Union that opened up the door to Georgia and the city of Atlanta, and the eventual march of the blue-clad army all the way to Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. History has been made here for a very long time.
First, a few facts. This is a long, narrow mountain, about 83 miles, by one estimate, running from Gadsden and Attalla, Alabama to Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s only nine miles across at its widest point between Mentone, Alabama and Cloudland, Georgia. It’s not particularly tall: 2,393 feet above sea level at High point, Georgia. The mountain’s height decreases from 2,111 feet above Chattanooga to about 1,120 feet above Gadsden. Yet its combination of altitude and latitude give it a noticeably different feel from more southerly places in Alabama and Georgia. There are four distinct seasons here, and snow is not uncommon. In fact, Mentone even has a ski slope, the second most southerly in the nation.
And this is an old mountain. Limestone deposits, accumulated from a shallow sea that once covered this area, were laid down 600 million years ago. Two hundred million years ago the Appalachian Mountains were formed by massive tectonic upheavals, and geologists who have studied Lookout say it was once actually higher than the European Alps and the Rocky Mountains. The action of wind, rain, and ice over the ensuing millennia have worn it away, leaving us with a limestone, shale, and sandstone lump covered by a thin layer of soil. It has been estimated that there are more than 7,000 known caves in and around Lookout. Legend has it that during the Civil War, a band of Confederates managed to walk under the mountain all the way from Chattanooga to Gadsden. A number of major waterfalls cascade over steep precipices, including ones at Lula Lake, Cloudland Canyon, Mentone (Desoto Falls) Blue Pond (Yellow Creek Falls) and Gadsden (Noccalula Falls). There are at least two major underground waterfalls, the most famous of which is Ruby Falls, in the side of the mountain above Chattanooga. Water was also on the minds of early visitors. Springs like the one at Mentone drew people from all over the United States who believed that drinking the water was good for every ailment from asthma to cancer. Little River Canyon, in places 700 feet deep and reported to be the deepest in the eastern United States, is in the middle of the mountain, running almost 25 miles in length.
When whites first began pushing into the area in the 1700s, they found some Creek and many more Cherokee Indians already in residence. Area archaeologist Lawrence Alexander says the Cherokee here were never present in anything like the numbers who lived further east and north in the Carolinas and east Tennessee and north Georgia. But two Indians in particular, John Ross and Sequoyah, made names for themselves and are still remembered today. Ross had a landing along the Tennessee River which eventually became Chattanooga, a Cherokee/muskhogean word believed to mean “rock coming to a point.” Ross was a planter and influential indian leader who, like many of his relatives and friends, was “removed” to Oklahoma in the 1830s in what became known as the infamous Trail of Tears. Even though the removal was massive, not all the Cherokee went west. In the 1970s, a teacher at Attalla’s Etowah High School, Jeanne Vance, taught many Cherokee descendants at Etowah High School whose families never left the area. Sequoyah, who lived along the middle of the mountain, actually developed a widely adopted alphabet of the Cherokee language that quickly came into use in tribal newspapers ad personal correspondence in the 1830s.
Wild game was always plentiful on the mountain, at least until the 1870s, when it was reported that hunters could longer find deer or turkey; they had all been hunted out. Today, through careful management, deer and turkey are back. Eagles can be scene from time to time, as well as fox. Recent sitings of bear also indicate that they are still here, though in very small numbers.
Lookout has been a magnet for tourists and travelers for more than 100 years. More than 100,000 soldiers fought in the battles around the area during the Civil War, and they began returning to visit their old battlefields within a decade of the war’s conclusion. Magnificent hotels sprang up on the brow at Chattanooga, Mentone, and Gadsden. In fact, next to Niagara Falls, the Chattanooga area was one of the most popular tourist destinations of the latter 19th and earl 20th centuries. It wasn’t always easy to get up on the mountain in the early days. A special train was built in Gadsden to transport folks up to Noccalula Falls. In Chattanooga, early roads up the mountain were little more than rutted goat paths, unsuitable for anything but the most rugged wagons and intrepid travelers. The trip could take up to four hours. The first Incline Railway was constructed in 1886. Tat opened the top of the mountain to home building and hotel construction.
Today, there are two state parks (Cloudland Canyon and DeSoto State Park) on Lookout, as well as the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, dedicated in 1895, and located right on the tip of the mountain overlooking the city. Over the decades of the twentieth century, thousands of children came from across the country to attend one of the dozens of summer camps operating here. Juliet Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts, established the only camp she ever personally founded, in the Cloudland area.
The Lookout Mountain Flight park is attracting visitors from literally around the globe to its world-class hang gliding opportunities.
Nowadays, if you take a drive down the valley on either side of the mountain at night, you can see a string of homes lit up along the brow. The challenge as we enter the 21st century is to protect this special place from such modern threats as water and air pollution and over development. Chattanooga, a city with the worst rated air quality of any other U. S. city in the 1970s, now offers residents and visitors a much improved ecosystem, and a clean and vibrant downtown area. Eco tourism seems to be on the rise, as people flock here for birdwatching, hunting, and recreation. The Little River in the middle of the mountain, is one of the longest rivers in the world to run most of its course on a mountain; it’s water quality is being challenged by development along its banks. But citizen monitors are watching it closely, and are not shy about calling unsound development practices into question. A new visitor center and museum near Little River Canyon, will be completed in 2009, allowing more visitors to see and experience the wonders of this magnificent natural resource.
There are higher mountains in the world than Lookout. There are places that are more developed in terms of tourism. And there are spots with scenery just as inspiring as that found here. But for those who know Lookout intimately, few can imagine a more satisfying locale. History, Mother Nature, and even the hand of man have conspired to create a truly incredible and unforgettable place.LV
Bob’s Little Acre
Make Hay While the Sun Shines, or Not
By Robin Ford Wallace
When is the best time to start your spring garden? Right now, of course.
Don’t you hate people who say things like that? They’re the same smug little mouth-breathers who tell you to begin your children’s college fund before you’ve finished developing your secondary sex characteristics and to start saving for retirement while your allowance is still a dollar.
On the other hand, I mean it.
Not that I have any intention of starting my garden right now. I was thinking more along the lines of pizza and beer. But you should. Go on down and get started while I sit here on the porch and tell you what to do.
I hate to eat in front of you, but the pizza’s getting cold. Hey, before you go, you want to hook me a beer mug? They’re in the freezer. Thanks.
First you need to mark out the plot. Wait a minute. That’s too big. Don’t you remember what happened this year? All those cucumbers you threw furtively over the fence? The shame you felt at wasting food while people are starving in Africa? About half that is fine.
Hmm. I thought I told them green olives. These are black. Those kids behind the counter never give you what you ask for. Is it youthful high jinks, or centuries of inbreeding?
Okay. Now, see that hay over there? Spread it a foot thick over the entire plot. No, it’s not necessary to dig up the grass first. Yes, I said a foot thick.
Okay, so this is an adult beverage, but I’ve only taken two sips. All right, all right. I’ll explain...
This is the famous deep-mulch method Ruth Stout, the grandmother of organic gardening, described in her books, How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back and The No-Work Garden Book, published by Rodale.
Instead of tilling, you simply dump masses of hay on your plot. The thick organic layer kills the grass and at the same time, by its constant composting process, adds nutrients to the soil and fosters earthworms.
Ruth was the sister of Rex Stout, who wrote the famous Nero Wolfe murder mystery series, and she narrated just as entertainingly as her bro’. I read her books mostly for fun in the ‘90s.
But I didn’t start using her method until 2001, when, for reasons I now forget, I bought this house. The house site was made by bulldozing a flat place on the side of the mountain, incidentally scraping it bare of trees, undergrowth and any topsoil whatsoever. The yard consisted of red clay baking in the sun, covered by patchy tufts of pasture grass, except where it wasn’t. The last earthworm had died of loneliness some time ago.
If a garden were to grow here, something had to be done. I remembered Ruth Stout, and in October I began to gather hay.
Starting in the fall gives the hay time to kill the grass and start composting, making the soil richer and richer. If the hay gets thin and grass starts growing up through it, you just throw another armload on.
Then in April, to put in tomatoes, peppers or other transplants, you just make a hole in the hay and stick your plant in, drawing the mulch back around it. The hay keeps the seedlings moist so you don’t have to water, chokes out other growth so you don’t have to weed, and keeps the garden nourished so you don’t have to fertilize.
To put in corn, squash, okra or beans, you just mark out your rows and then push the seed down through the by-now compacted mulch with your finger as far as it will go. The plants push up right through the hay, and so do potatoes and asparagus, without breaking a sweat.
This method worked so well for me that I not only have rich black dirt where the red clay used to be, earthworms enough to start a bait store, and bumper crops of vegetables, I even have the nerve to write a gardening column. Sort of.
Tne of the few problems of this method is with small seeds such as beets and carrots. The seedlings are too small to come up through the hay, but if you pull back the mulch and try to plant in the earth, millions of seedlings come up, few of which are beets or carrots.
But the biggest problem is keeping yourself in hay. You don’t need good hay; spoiled will do. When hay gets moist, it immediately begins losing food value and farmers are delighted to get rid of it, so you can usually get it cheap or free. But you need a lot, so it’s best to pay someone to deliver it on a flatbed.
Finally, Ruth called this a “no-work” method, and certainly throughout the summer there’s nothing to it. Others hoe; you drink beer and harvest. But front-end? Depending on how big your garden plot is, covering it with a foot of hay is no joke. You’re liable to need an adult beverage by the time you’re through.
Snag me another one while you’re there, will you?LV
