Panthertown Creek flows through slow, open pools and steep gorges. Photo © Wally Smith
No one really knows when Carlton McNeill started building trails in Panthertown Valley, but by the mid-1990s they were everywhere. They came in all shapes and sizes: wide boulevards along old logging roads, fern-lined footpaths on the creek banks, and some—the ones that led to the bases of waterfalls and lined the cliff tops—little more than game trails. Carlton would often be spotted walking his trails and greeting visitors with a folksy persona and a hand-drawn trail map. In time, he became known simply as “the caretaker of Panthertown.”
Today, visitors to Panthertown Valley in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains might not have a clue that Carlton ever existed, nor do they realize that, without his homemade trail-building efforts, the valley as hikers see it might not even exist. Panthertown is a 6,300-acre bowl perched at an elevation of 3,600 feet in North Carolina’s Nantahala National Forest. It is, arguably, one of the East’s most unusual wild treasures. A collection of rounded granite domes rim the valley where the rugged Tuckasegee River is born amid a blend of waterfalls and high-elevation bogs. The wild scenery has even spurred some to dub Panthertown the “Yosemite of the East.”
What makes Panthertown so remarkable is not just its scenic beauty or the work of a man with a lust for building trails. Panthertown’s history is an odd blend of wildness, loss, redemption and a bit of serendipity. It’s a story of individuals and groups coming together—some of them unwittingly—to protect one of the nation’s most ecologically diverse areas. Most importantly, it’s a story that may hold valuable lessons for the future of forest protection.
Panthertown Valley’s tumultuous history began in the 1920s, when the entire valley was sold to lumber companies. In the following years the valley was stripped of virgin timber. A combination of wildfires and floods followed the logging and further raked the valley floor, leaving it a shadow of its former self by the mid-twentieth century. A network of dirt and gravel roads that were once used to carry timber out of the valley would eventually become the precursor for its now-famed trail system.
Panthertown sat in limbo until the 1960s, when a group of developers purchased the valley with the intent of building a resort, complete with a golf course and plans to flood parts of the valley for a lake. The resort never came to fruition, and Panthertown entered another limbo period until 1987, when utility giant Duke Power purchased the entire valley floor.
During the following years three developments came together to shape the future of the valley and lead to its protection. The first of these had been set in motion years before. Following the logging of previous decades, the area began a slow recovery. By the 1980s the diverse Appalachian hardwood forest blanketing Panthertown had recovered surprisingly well. A combination of unique geology and unusually high rainfall—the mountains surrounding the valley receive as much as 100 inches of precipitation per year, some of the highest levels in the East—led to a proliferation of plant diversity in the valley. The area is home to eleven natural plant communities, including a handful of rare mosses and liverworts restricted to the moist recesses of cliffs and waterfalls. Among this smorgasbord of rare plants, the valley hosts an incredible spring display of wildflowers, including the delicate pink lady’s slipper and the unassuming, but rare, Cuthbert’s turtlehead. The federally endangered rock gnome lichen can be found in scattered patches on the valley’s numerous rock outcrops. Only fifty or so populations of this species have ever been discovered worldwide, all of them in the southern Appalachians.
This ecological diversity and beauty initiated a drive by conservationists to push for Panthertown’s protection, the second major step towards the valley’s renaissance. As part of a bid that began in 1987 and was pushed by the late U.S. Representative James Clarke, the North Carolina chapter of the Nature Conservancy purchased the valley from Duke Power in 1989 for $7.9 million. The Nature Conservancy then sold Panthertown Valley to the Nantahala National Forest. Although much of this exchange involved intense communication between the Nature Conservancy, Duke Power and other landowners, it was Clarke’s efforts that made the purchase a reality.
“Clarke almost singlehandedly managed to cobble the federal money together from the Land and Water Conservation Fund,” says Fred Annand, associate director for the Nature Conservancy in North Carolina and a member of the team involved in making the original purchase. “He was really one of the champions of leading Panthertown Valley to its protection.”
The deal was a bittersweet one for conservationists. Although Duke Power was willing to sell the land, Panthertown came with another kind of price: the utility company was planning to build a controversial, high-voltage transmission line on the valley’s eastern flank. Duke was only willing to sell the land to the Nature Conservancy if the company was allowed to keep the easement for its transmission line. But after negotiations, Duke agreed to locate the line across high points on either side of the valley and to paint its towers so as to blend into the surrounding landscape, heralding a compromise with conservationists.
“At that point, we agreed with Duke that we would do everything we could to purchase the valley from them, less the transmission line,” Annand says. “We really needed each other.”
It’s here that most stories about conservation would end. The parties involved would be congratulated, and the landscape would go on to be preserved indefinitely. But a third event in Panthertown’s history—one unforeseen by anyone involved in its protection—would add a new wrinkle to its story. That was the coming of Carlton McNeill.
At some point after the exchange between Duke Power and the U.S. Forest Service, Carlton, a local resident, began building his trail system, seeking out remote waterfalls and cliffside vistas that had long been forgotten, and slowly clearing existing roadbeds through the once-again wilderness. While the roadbeds needed little construction to become trails, many of Carlton’s new paths were minuscule and torturously winding, the dense undergrowth on either side often less than a shoulder’s width apart. The size might have been frustrating for others, but it was perfect for Carlton, an elderly but vivacious fellow with a deceivingly fragile build who was able to out hike even the youngest visitors. Author and photographer Kevin Adams, who began making trips to the valley shortly after it became accessible to the public, recalls early tours with Carlton.
“He was so excited that he had someone that he could show his valley to,” Adams remembers. “Although some thirty years older than me, he left me in the dust on numerous occasions.”
Carlton lived in a small house near the valley’s eastern rim but called the entire area home, frequently striking out on his trail system to greet others, sometimes ushering lost hikers back to their vehicles. Over time, hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts began to take note as Panthertown’s trails ballooned to cover nearly eighty miles. Word of Panthertown and Carlton’s trails spread, though Carlton never seemed to be seeking personal publicity.
“I think Panthertown Valley provided Carlton a way to feel that his life was important. He wanted to help others and give something back to Earth,” says Adams. “He could do both in Panthertown.” Although Carlton’s true motivation will likely never be known, it is perhaps best captured in what Carlton claimed to be his favorite poem, a few short verses by Sam Foss entitled “The House by the Side of the Road.” There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths / Where highways never ran. / But let me live by the side of the road / And be a friend to man.
Carlton’s trails have become the valley’s conservation flashpoint. On the one hand, Carlton’s trail building was illegal, and illegal trails often wind through sensitive areas, resulting in harmful erosion and occasionally leading to overcrowding. Some of Carlton’s trails, in fact, have done just that.
“The trails that Carlton created were not made to withstand the impact of the thousands of visitors that use them nowadays,” says Nina Elliott, coordinator of Friends of Panthertown, a nonprofit group helping to manage the valley. “Due to increased popularity in recent years, the trails and fragile ecosystem have sustained significant damage.”
Over the past several years, the Forest Service and Friends of Panthertown have been busy mapping and signing many of Carlton’s trails, as well as closing several of the most environmentally impactful. One of these closed trails—a steep path on the slopes of Panthertown’s Big Green Mountain—ran adjacent to the mountain’s rare granite dome plant community.
Crystal Powell, a recreation staffer with the Nantahala National Forest, says that deciding how to manage Carlton’s trails has been one of Panthertown’s biggest hurdles. “A major challenge was completing a (trail) inventory with limited resources,” she says. “Unclassified trails will be closed and naturalized as funding and volunteer efforts allow. Passive management, such as trailhead information, blazing and working with groups, is very effective (on classified trails).”
On the other side of this debate are those who claim that Carlton and his trails, by bringing droves into the valley’s heart, brought Panthertown’s treasures to the forefront of the public eye. By the time the Forest Service had began releasing public notices on the valley’s trail management in 2007, Panthertown was arguably in its most wild state in almost a century. Despite the expensive actions of conservation groups and efforts to catalog the valley’s diversity, it seemed as if the greatest public support for Panthertown came from those who had hiked Carlton’s renegade trails. Carlton, through his efforts to make a trail system for himself, had unwittingly made it possible for thousands to visit the valley and, ultimately, appreciate it.
Adams belongs to this latter camp. “Carlton didn’t write books or magazine articles about Panthertown. He didn’t post information on the Web. All he did was make the experience more rewarding for those who did come.”
Carlton McNeill passed away on July 20, 2007. He lived to see his trails become Panthertown’s main attraction. The Forest Service, partnering with Friends of Panthertown, plans to revamp his trail system for full public access—a fitting conclusion for a story defined by partnership.
On a blustery March afternoon the year following his death, I hiked Carlton’s trails through the heart of Panthertown. I followed an old logging road across the valley floor, turned onto a narrow trail around a low ridge, and finally clambered down what looked like a deer path to Warden’s Falls. The Tuckasegee River spills over the valley rim at the falls, and I couldn’t help but feel like I’d found my own personal Yosemite. The scene reminded me of the words of Rich Stevenson, a local photographer who has chronicled Panthertown. “As you enter Panthertown Valley, let Carlton’s spirit be your guide.”
Stevenson was right, I thought. There was no shortage of spirit here.