Learn the History of Logging in Tellico Plains

The Cherokee Hiking Club invites the public to a special presentation on Thursday, September 13, 2012, 6-9 pm
 at The Outpost Pavilion in Tellico Plains.

"Early Logging Days in the Tellico Mountains (the Tellico Ranger District of the Cherokee National Forest)" will be presented by Pam Hall Mathews. Local documents and pictures from The Charles Hall Collection will illustrate the operations of the small scale lumber companies of the late 1800s and the larger enterprise of Babcock Lumber Company. Babcock began their extensive logging operation in the Tellico mountains in 1906. Topics will include the sawmill, the Company store, the building of the logging railroad, harvesting the timber, the tools used, the oxen and horses used in the venture, the engines used in the logging operations including the Shay engines, the skidders, and the log cranes. Life in a logging camp will be described not only with pictures, but with the recorded stories of the local logging families. A tour of the Charles Hall Museum, Building 2, will follow, to view its displays of logging relics. Charles Hall will be available to answer questions and to speak about his experiences as a young boy, visiting the recently abandoned logging camps, and the information he learned from the loggers and their families. His pictorial collections of the logging railroad days include over 750 pictures specific to the Tellico, Citico, and Slickrock areas.

Pam Mathews is a local historian and a clinical psychologist who published the definitive history of the Tellico Plains area last year: A Pictorial History of the Tellico Plains, Tennessee Area (1849-1949). Pam is a member of the Cherokee Hiking Club and maintains a section of the Benton MacKaye Trail up Sycamore Creek together with her husband, Kent. Charles Hall, her father and the former mayor of Tellico Plains and founder of the Tellico Plains Telephone Company - who built the museum to house and share his vast historic collections -  will also be present at the meeting to answer questions.

Bring friends and family to The Outpost Pavilion, Main Street, Tellico Plains, on Thursday, September 13th at 6 pm, first for dinner (your tab), then as Pam Hall Mathews delivers her presentation on the early logging days in the Tellico mountains.