Our Southern Highlanders - Background

Background

Kephart was born in Pennsylvania, although his family moved to Iowa when Kephart was still a child. Iowa was still very sparsely populated at the time, and allowed Kephart to gain a lifelong appreciation for pioneer life. Kephart was trained as a librarian at Cornell University and in 1890 was named head librarian at the St. Louis Mercantile Library. Although a successful librarian, Kephart eventually became disenchanted with his homelife and job in the early 1900s, started drinking more often, and began spending more and more time in the nearby Ozark wilderness. In 1903, he separated from his wife, and the following year suffered a nervous breakdown. While recuperating at his father's home in Dayton, Ohio, Kephart used a map to seek out the nearest substantial wilderness area, which he determined to be the Great Smoky Mountains, a rugged range straddling the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. In August 1904, he moved to North Carolina with plans to venture into the Great Smokies, which lay on the western fringe of the state.

After a short stay in Dillsboro, Kephart secured usage of a cabin at an abandoned copper mine in the Hazel Creek valley in the southwest corner of the Great Smokies. On October 30, 1904, he arrived at Bushnell very ill (suffering from tuberculosis and possibly alcohol withdrawal). He was met at Bushnell by legendary bear hunter Granville Calhoun (1875–1978), and the two made a 16-mile (26 km) muleback trek to Calhoun's house in the hamlet of Medlin, near the middle of the Hazel Creek valley. After recovering, Kephart moved on to his new cabin (just north of Medlin), where he lived until 1907. Kephart then spent several years travelling around Southern Appalachia before permanently settling in Bryson City, North Carolina (at the edge of the Smokies) in 1910.