Big Tom: Legend and Reality

When my brother and I were children, we got to spend a couple of weeks every summer visiting our grandparents and aunt in Eastern Kentucky. They lived in town, but our aunt was a social worker who often traveled into the hollows and onto mountaintops to check on her clients, many of whom lived so far back in the woods there wasn’t an actual road into the homestead. Instead, there was often a mule path we’d follow, sometimes with fine limestone cliffs she’d let us climb just for fun. We learned about the plants, the animals, and had great fun helping at harvest, then got to sit at the crude picnic tables in these homestead yards and listen to the stories of the old folks.

A frequent topic for those old men was a legendary mountain man named Big Tom Wilson. He became a hero to my brother and I, and we often played in the woods pretending we were Big Tom-like mountain folk, seeking deer trails or following bear hollows through the rhododendrons to the mountain peaks, blazing trails and knowing everything about everything these abundant mountains have to offer.

Decades later my own family moved here to Western North Carolina where Big Tom is more than just a legend - he was a real man who played a significant role in the history of this region. He’s still got descendants here, I taught one of them in junior high a few years ago.

Big Tom was born Thomas David Wilson in 1825. He got his nickname by being a lanky six foot two in a time when most men were much smaller in stature. They say he killed 114 bears in his lifetime, and he knew the Black Mountains (the Seven Black Brothers) better than anyone alive. He married Niagra (Polly) Ray in 1852 and they lived in a 2-room cabin on the upper Cane River while he earned a living as a gameskeeper for a hunting preserve, as a farmer, hunter, fisherman and a mountain guide. It was as a guide that he played his strongest role in the history of the region.

Big Tom (right) at the waterfall pool where he discovered Elisha Mitchell’s body.

When Dr. Elisha Mitchell came to the area in the late 1830s to survey the Blacks for science, Big Tom was a young teen. He accompanied Mitchell on an 1844 ascent, one of the guides who crawled with him through bear hollows to the ridge to determine which of the ridgeline’s peaks was actually the tallest east of the Mississippi. In the 1850s, however, Senator Thomas Lanier Clingman made his own survey and designated a different peak (current Mt. Gibbs) to be the tallest. The disagreement evolved into the infamous Clingman-Mitchell controversy, and that ongoing fight sent Mitchell back to the Blacks in 1857 to restore his claim. He tried to descend by memory, but by then a man in his 60s, he got lost as night fell.

When Mitchell failed to return to the Cane Valley, Big Tom and other area guides and mountain men set out on a search. It was Big Tom who tracked Mitchell’s last movements from the ridge, and found him sitting upright at the bottom of a pool beneath a waterfall, where he’d fallen to his death. Mitchell was buried ceremoniously atop the mountain that still bears his name, and which was a few years later demonstrated to be the tallest mountain. Clingman, who had made the original claim, had to settle for a different mountain in his name.

Big Tom lived into his 80s, died in 1909. Today there is the Big Tom Wilson Preserve on the western slopes of Mount Mitchell, where a replica of his cabin and other historical artifacts are displayed inside the Mount Mitchell State Park.

No visit to Western North Carolina is complete without a stop at Mount Mitchell, a short climb up the observation tower, and a tour of the historical material kept so well by the dedicated Park Service guides. The entrance is off the Blue Ridge Parkway east of Asheville, and it’s open to visitors as long as the Parkway is open (closed occasionally during the winter). Bring a jacket, it gets cold at night. And the wind can blow strongly on the ridge, so be careful of your footing on the trails!

Links:

NC Parks: Welcome to Mount Mitchell
The Nature Conservancy: Mount Mitchell State Park
Hiking in Mount Mitchell State Park

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Filed under Bears, Adventure, Hiking, Carolina History, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina |