Scouting Trip 2/3 Devils Triangle

Asiatic Dayflower is a tiny blue wonder in Summer 

Scouting Trip-- 2/3 Devils Triangle

Sunday July 12, 2020
Kenny & Dana Koogler 

Pictures are here: Devils Triangle

   Going through some old photos recently I came across two photos taken the time we rode the motorcycle around Devils Triangle.   Motorcycle rides are not conducive to photography.  I got the maps out and began looking at the triangle.  I phone Kenny up while he was still at work.
"Here's something for you to ponder.  Remember when we went around Devils Triangle?  You want to go do it again with a different vehicle?"  

He said he'd think about it, but I knew the answer already.  Sure enough he was more than happy to make a repeat trip.  

Above: One photo taken while riding round the Devil's Triangle several years back on the motorcycle.   Beautiful fields of purple New York Ironweed and golden wingstem in bloom on a rainy, misty day.  

Below is the one other photo taken at the same spot of Kenny on the bike

    Scouting Trip 

 I am a creature of reason, but I am also led by instincts.  

I had the sense  we needed to repeat this trip.  I did a lot of online research of the area around the scenic, exciting drive called Devil's Triangle.

It is around Fork Mountain.  It is made up of Hwy 62,  SR 116, and SR 330.

It is a curvy mountain drive that is heavy on excitement, scenery, and history thick enough to cut it with a knife.  

     Below is the logo that shows the route of the Devils Triangle. I do not own the photo, but am just displaying it for demonstration purposes. 

   

   We started the loop clockwise because it is more exciting and the good stuff is mostly on those two pieces of it.   Rt 330.. Frost Bottom Road is to me.. a cool down after the first two thirds of it.   It is easy driving, but it is mainly just a pretty country  drive through a residential area.  The only real place to get off the road along it would be to turn aside and make a trip on Hoskins Gap Road to Windrock Campground.      We left off the final 1/3 of the trip.... the last nine miles out Frost Bottom Road... Rt. 330.  We were hungry and took a speedier exit route to get to a very late lunch.  

     

Trip Highlights & Findings

    The area around Petros and Devonia is full of natural beauty.  It is charged with history.  Once this area was a thriving community with many churches and homes.   The coal industry was a booming business out here.  The roads you drive on in coal country are often patched heavily. You look closely and you'll see many shored up areas where the road has crumbled off the mountainside.  Coal seams make for unstable ground.  We found evidence of former coal operations, lots of area churches,  and cemeteries.

Above: Fork Mountain Baptist church with its colorful red bridge
      The area is suffering from a lack of rain somewhat like much of Tennessee is this Summer.  The New River was very low.   Since we were in the jeep we did not have the ability to explore some of the areas I wanted to.  I think I see a drainage with potential for waterfalls, but it will have to wait for a time when we have had some rain.  A friend came home and posted photos of Atlas falls that is a wet rock. 
Below: the New River right at the bridge.  Very low water.



   Below: a better look at Fork Mountain Baptist church

   
     

   Above: Outhouse behind Fork Mtn Baptist church.

  A bit further down the road we turned into a lane that was a trail.   We only went far enough to see where it went and to see the river.
Below:  the ford of the river where we drove through

     

 I walked downstream exploring and found holes of much deeper water.

Above: green waters of the New River
We did not see a lot of Summer wildflowers, but some. Below is a nice patch of purple phlox.


I did see a real pretty Queen Anne's lace bloom that was tipped with pink.



I  found an old bridge abutment I'd been looking for, but the google image was out of date. All that remains is the concrete piers.  The metal frame is now gone.


 We continued down the road and stopped at the old coal washing plant.
It is a hulking abandoned complex of chutes and buildings and little ponds filled with tailings from old mines and coal works.

    I wanted to finally see the old abandoned train. I'd seen lots of photos of it. I knew it was supposed to be somewhere behind the coal washing plant.  We pulled in and found it easily.


Above and below: coal washing plant. It has been closed since the 1990s.




  We had to drive across a bridge behind the coal plant to reach the siding where the train sits.   The view of the New River from here was really something.


Above: mimosa blooms scent the air and frame the New River


above: the former New River scenic railway train. It was an excursion train.  They brought it here from Arizona in 2005.  It consists of an engine and two passenger cars.   It ran for awhile then sat abandoned sometime around 2010. It has been vandalized. The windows smashed out.   There has been talk of rehabbing this train and the tracks and getting the excursion trains running again.    Other possibilities that have been discussed for the old tracks which have now been officially declared abandoned include a rails to trails conversion.  Virginia and Pennsylvania and a few other areas have had real good luck converting former railways into hiking and biking trails.  Either one of these options sounds good to me.  I will say that I can't help thinking rails to trails would be less costly than fixing up the train and the tracks again. 

     We visited with several other folks who were there at the train checking it out.
One older couple was from the area. Fascinating to talk to.   He told me the train had set there since the 1970s.  In checking that is inaccurate. I think where he got the 1970s time frame was from the fact the rail line was bought by National Coal Company in 1973.
Below: inside the coach car of the train
     


Below: inside first class passenger car



On the way out of this spot I noticed a Kwanso double lily in the ditch.  I have lots of them now, but I still think they are pretty and a good find.

Heirloom "ditch lilies" Kwanso double.

   After the train Kenny drove us up one of the old haul roads.  He was curious as to where it went.  It did not go anywhere except up to the flat topped mountain that was obviously put back together after strip mining.   At least they cleaned it up.   I thought I heard water running real hard ,and got out of the jeep. I walked over and peered into the weeds.  I had to move poison ivy branches and thorn bushes out of my way to see.   The tailings pond way up high on the mountain was leaching water out hard enough to form a small cascade near the road. It then flowed under the road in a culvert to additional catch ponds below this point.
 Below is the source of the water I heard gushing.  If you notice the rebar sticking up in a row... it kind of sets the tone for the area. ROUGH!


  Another area I wanted to check out and photograph was the old Rosedale Elementary school.  I was perusing the map prior to us going out there. I had it in satellite view.  The map indicated Rosedale Elementary (Temporarily closed)
With Covid19 going on... I was not sure what was going on.  I figured maybe it was just temporarily shut down like all the area schools have been.  Zooming in closer I could tell it looked to be in rough shape for one that had been in use til  March 2020.    I did some checking round and found a newspaper article that told how two area men were renovating the old school. They planned to turn it into a museum.   The article was dated 2009.   I wondered what we'd find?

    We were pleasantly surprised to find the old school has indeed been fixed up.
It looks amazing.   The status of the scenic railway is still sketchy. The men who fixed it up planned on using it as a depot for the rail line.   It appears now it is going to cater to the ATV crowd as lodgings.  I plan to call Jimmy Byrge and have a conversation with him to find out what the status is on all of it.


Above and below: parts of the Rosedale school have been fixed up and look good!


Orange butterfly weed was blooming by the road at the school.



    We then stopped by the New River General store.  I had long seen other folks photos of it. I wanted to see it for myself.  It was closed on a Sunday, but at least we got to see it.


Above and below: views of the Blue & White Station.

Below: a view of New River Highway 116.  A back road that takes you into the past.


below is the W.L. Coker store. It is open except that today is Sunday.


   Next we came to another spot I wanted to investigate.   I had told Kenny there was a new campground that had both RV spots and cabins for rent.  He tried to look it up and told me I was wrong.  He claimed the only new campgrounds were around on the Wind Rock side.   Ligias Fork has cabins to rent and six RV sites with full hookups!  It is by the river and is very attractive.    I later learned that the same fellow,Jimmy Byrge is the business man who runs this outfit as well as the Rosedale school.

Above: Ligias Fork cabins and campground
  
Above: suspension bridge over Ligias Fork.. not New River, but a tributary.

Below: the RV sites with full hook ups.


below:  one of the cabins. I believe there are three total. Very nice!


Below:  Contact info for the campground and cabins.


In reviewing the website and their Facebook page.. the Rosedale school is lodgings also for rent.  Calling it the Rosedale Retreat.

   On down the road we came to a turn that looked interesting so we took it.  It was Patterson Road.   It went to a ford of a stream and was supposed to dead end at a cemetery.    It wasn't too interesting, but we did find another suspension bridge!

Above: suspension bridge and below.. the stream under it.


  I saw wine berries beside the road and had to stop and pick us some. We have these on our farm in Virginia.   They are delicious.   I got a couple handsful of them.

Above: ripe wine berries

    We continued round Hwy 116 on roads that gave us a partial view through the tree canopy.   Long way down!  The roads through here are super curvy


Above: Al's Market... also closed on Sunday.


   We moved on to a spot I had not anticipated next.  The Circle Cemetery.
I knew before coming out there that 1. the Coal Creek Wars happened over coal miners vs. the state using convict labor in the mines.  2. that a mining disaster out in this area claimed a lot of lives.   I was only partially informed.
The area employed a lot of Welsh and foreign miners, but primarily Welsh because that is what they were great at in Wales.   Briceville Church was constructed by Welsh miners who moved to the area.  The culture was influenced by them heavily.   Circle Cemetery is another example.

   Below: Briceville church is in the national register of historic places. It looks like American Gothic, doesn't it?  Like something that should be in a horror movie.  It is a pretty and cleverly constructed church.  Built by the Welsh miners of the area.  I'd love to know why they decided on this design.  You can walk to it, but not drive. 
Below is a view of the cemetery behind the Briceville church.

Below: beside the Briceville church runs a set of long abandoned rails.


Below: this is the view of the church from the spot you have to park.  It definitely caught my eye.  I was going to see it. No doubt about it.


Below are two historic markers that sit at the parking spot to walk up to the church.




   so from these two markers I figured out there were TWO mining disasters in the area.  Crossville Mountain Disaster happened December 9, 1911 and out of 89 miners 84 perished and five were outside the mine and survived.  It says they were rescued, but per a local historian the reason they did not die was that they had not yet entered the mine.

   Fraterville Mine Disaster happened May 16, 1902.  Two hundred sixteen men in the mine and all perished.  At lease four families in town lost every single male member in that mine explosion.  Only three male members of the entire town survived.  It is to this day the worst mining disaster in the South.

      Now back to the Circle Cemetery...........

The miners buried here from the disaster have their graves arranged in a circle.
Possibly because of the Welsh influence on the town. Miners depend on one another like soldiers in battle.   They had a brotherhood like the military.  They viewed themselves as equals in life and work... and equal in death.   They are buried together in a circle both here in the Circle Cemetery and the Leach Cemetery in Rocky Top (Lake City) nearby.    The stone circles found in Wales are fascinating, but the purpose for their existence is unknown.  Many speculative theories have been put forth the most popular being for astrological purposes of planting and harvesting. Another is for religious rites.

      below: photo of the central burial monument at this site.. looks like one of the tools made of stone has broken off. 


Below is a photo of the entire monument it is the center of the circle

Below is a photo of as close as I could capture of the circle shape of the burial.

It is large and on a hillside so I found it impossible to illustrate by photo.  You can see it by being there in person, but even then it is a little hard to picture on that hillside.

  I found a photo on the internet of the Leach Cemetery circle burial of miners. I am placing it below because it was taken from the air.  It shows far better how this is arranged.   It is not my image, but I am using it as an illustrator.

Below are photos of four individual graves at the Circle Cemetery.  It was very sobering to read the same date of death on one after another in that cemetery.

Emmett Miller

S.H. Miller

Henry Burton

J.T. Carden

   So I learned a lot about this area and now I have a little validation regarding the sorrow I feel in an area such as this.   Beauty and sorrow in the same place.  

   We moved on to look for another historic site I learned of two ways. 

I saw what appeared to be an abandoned rail bridge from a satellite view of the area.  I later learned more about it and figured out it was the same bridge.. on bridgehunter.  The Slatten Creek Bridge or Drummond Bridge.   It was the site of a hanging and is supposed to be haunted.  One of the newspapers even ran a story about it awhile back, but I did not read it until I learned of the bridge's existence.

  It is located behind the Briceville post office. The north end on the post office side... is so overgrown with kudzu it is impossible to see in Summer.

Above: a photo of the post office on the right.. the pile of kudzu across the road... is where the bridge sits. From this side you can't tell its there.

Below: an image taken from the south side... you can see it far better, but it is in a residential area.   

  The story is that a local miner Richard Drummond got into a brawl with a soldier from the National Guard and Drummond killed the soldier.   He was hanged from the bridge for his crime.   They say his ghost haunts the bridge. 

I later spoke to an area historian who told me something rather confusing.  

It was the worst non sequitur I've run into in awhile.   He told Kenny and I that the story about it being racially motivated was false. That the only reason he was hung was because he was stealing. Not because he was fooling with a white woman.   blink blink..... okay.  I'll just say the stories about the hanging are many and varied leaving the facts unclear.

           We moved on from the bridge to our last spot we'd hunt for today.

I learned of the existence of an abandoned airforce base at the top of Cross Mountain nearby.   I wanted to see it.   We headed in the general direction using the TomTom.    She began saying "Turn around when possible."  About the time we wondered if we could trust the directions... two men pulled up in a side by side. I flagged them down to ask them.   I introduced myself and asked if they could show us how to get to the abandoned airbase. The older fellow grinned and told me yes, but that it was part of Wind Rock's trail system. We'd need a permit to visit.   I was very glad we had not tried to go any further without knowing. I don't want to upset anybody or go about this the wrong way.

       We got out to visit with these fellows.  It was a really fortunate meeting.

I felt blessed!  Bennie Aslinger is the fellow wearing a Wind Rock security uniform.   Dwight Isabell was his buddy riding along.   Both of them as nice as they could be!  We were treated to a very interesting historic discussion and mini tour.   Bennie is a wealth of knowledge and has actually lived much of it and experienced the things I read about over my morning coffee today! I read about the base and there being no road access. The men who worked there had to ride an aerial tramway up from the base of the mountain.   We were actually at the site of the lower part of the airbase!  This is where they boarded the tram to go up.     

       Above: Mr. Bennie Aslinger of Wind Rock security force.   He is amazing in his knowledge of history.  He has the same dry, dark sense of humor I do. 

 We got a mini tour, lots of great information for a future trip, and made two friends into the bargain. I'd say we won the Lotto today!   We found enough out here today to warrant at least a weekend trip to spend out here and explore.

All this did was whet our appetite for more!   

Below is a photo of Kenny leaning on the jeep door and chatting with the two fellows.  

  

The blue building pictured behind the jeep is what housed the tram.  It left from there to go up the mountain and back down.  An article I read said it was set up on a pulley system like one of those devices where you have a clothes line on a pulley system between two buildings.  You can hang your washing out from one spot by pulling the line.    See the image below. Now imagine that is what is going to convey you up the mountain and back down. Yikes!  

Smoke stack at the former air base

Another original building or two shown below. 

Below: Bennie points out to Kenny and myself where the tramway went up the mountain. The area of lighter green within the red circle is what he pointed out as being the path it took. It was dismantled and removed, but that is the scar from where it was.

    He described for us and pointed out the guard shack at a check point at the base of the mountain.  There was a machine gun nest there to shoot bad guys if they showed up trying to approach the base.   The need for this was back in the Cold War era and had to do with protecting Oak Ridge.  This was the home of the 663rd Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron constructed in 1951.  I did later read that while the tram way was the conveyance to the top part of the base, there WAS a road existing to the top, but it wasn't fit to use.  It was so full of potholes and so treacherous it was a joke.

Bennie described riding it and how it dipped and swayed.  It had steel towers helping support it every so many feet up the mountain.   He pointed out a low ridge and said that as the "bucket" dipped down over that ridge it was really something.  They called it the 'gravy bowl".   It took them 30 minutes up and 30 minutes back down on a good day when the weather was fair and the lines not iced up.  The compliment on the base.. at the top and bottom was 227 airmen, 14 officers, and 26 civilians.   116 families were represented from the area.   They lived mostly in Lake City and Clinton with a few living in Norris and Campbell County.     The base helped the economy of the area a great deal providing commerce and many jobs.  I had no idea there was ever a country club in little ole LaFollette Tennessee, but there sure was!   

    Later the budget cuts in the 1960s closed the base.    It now stands abandoned.  There are a couple radio towers and one tv station tower at the top of the mountain.   Apparently the design and positioning of the air base and radar station was not good from the start.

It was too high to pick up low flying aircraft but the lower portion was in a bad spot to detect also getting too much clutter from surrounding hills.    

     We finally parted company with Bennie and Dwight and headed out.  We were famished. 

It was 2 pm and we had yet to eat lunch.   We finally decided to push on toward Oak Ridge. We held out for Freddy's for lunch.  Our favorite place.  A perfect place to eat lunch or get a treat.   Freddy's is about as all American as you can get.  He was a patriot, a soldier, and a veteran.   Our kind of guy.     If you haven't tried it you should!  I will not eat hamburgers in a restaurant setting.   I will however eat a Freddy's steakburger.   They are sinfully good.

Steakburgers with mustard, onion, and pickles.   Best fries in the world.  

I never have room enough left over for frozen custard. I'll fix that.  I'll have to go sometime for JUST dessert.   It will be worth a special trip.    We don't have one yet in Maryville, but I wish we did.  I know of one in Morristown and one in Oak Ridge. 

  

Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steak Burgers in Oak Ridge, TN

     I see in my Crystal Ball of the Future....

A trip to the top of Cross Mountain to visit the rest of the airbase the proper way.

I see more exploring the Devonia area and a return by a prodigal... me.... to Wind Rock.

I agree with Bennie that the Briceville/Devonia area is the pretty side of Wind Rock.

The other side is too crowded and too groomed for me.  I like the wild side.

   I need to put aside my dislike of the Brushy Mountain prison and talk myself into a tour as well.   It is a creepy place, but I will get my head right and go.  I might end up liking it.