Discover the Forgotten Streams of Appalachia

October 27, 1934

Higden Cemetery was a small plot perched on a knoll looking out over Sugar Fork Creek. The Little Sugar, as locals called it, along with the entire Hazel Creek Valley, was once considered wilderness. It was used for centuries by the Cherokee and, more recently, by white settlers who treasured the wild game near its banks and the speckled trout teeming in its waters. Wild bison, eastern mountain lion, red wolves, and elk were all once plentiful here but within a span of roughly one hundred years, the westward expansion and industrial boom that followed had turned what was once a testament of nature into a barren wasteland.

All the chestnut, oak, and elm were gone. Only stumps remained to testify to their prior majesty. The shade they provided over the creek was no longer, and the summer sun beat down on the once moonshine-clear water. In turn, water temperature rose, forcing the trout to retreat into mere trickles on the steepest slopes, where loggers could not follow.

In the final act of a twisted plot line, copper had been discovered in great quantities just up from the Higden place. Mines had sprung up, and the pollution leached into the stream had killed any remaining life. In less than thirty years of industrialization, everything had been poisoned or otherwise destroyed.

Mourners attending this morning’s funeral could not help but believe recent events were their penance for the generations of wrath they had inflicted upon this magical place. The cemetery was dark. Much as it had been all fall. Not because of a lack of sunshine—it had been especially dry and clear—but because a persistent cloud of death was hanging in the air. Death in multiple bends even the strongest back. The cloud grew heavier and heavier each time an east-facing hole was dug—and there had been many holes dug that fall. Most of them tiny.

The flu had been especially hard on children. Families up and down the valley from Walker Creek to Proctor had lost someone dear to the fever.

The Higden family, out of a strong sense of community, had graciously allowed anyone who had a need to use their family plot. Open usable land was in short supply in the valley. There were only three graves when fall began. The Higdens could not foresee that, in less than two months, twenty-one graves would be dug. Altogether, nearly two hundred souls had fallen in Hazel Creek Valley, where about twelve hundred people once lived. Many more souls were sure to follow.

Most of the fifteen or so mourners attending the funeral displayed mountain stoicism, common to frontier families of that generation. Friends and neighbors were not letting their personal feelings show, mainly out of respect for the woman standing graciously beside her daughter as the grave diggers piled dirt on the coffins before them.

She alone could demand this respect. She had stood strong in the midst of the horror story that had devoured most of her family. She had saved what she could of the remains and—somehow—saved the family name in the process.

The mourners knew she had overcome terrible events but did not know the true depth of what she had endured. They were sympathetic to the woman, because deep down they all knew they played a small role in the events leading to her tragedy. They had all taken jobs and grown used to the healthy eight dollar a week salary. They had not only sold their souls to the company store but to an entity they all despised. The Company. The Ritter Lumber Company.

One of the mourners, knowing the woman’s penchant for pink and yellow roses, stepped forward and gave her a replica of the flower made from local fabric. The Southern belle accepted gracefully and resumed her mourning.

Prudence Ritter was not burying loved ones because of the flu. She came from a family of means and could afford doctors in Asheville. She was burying children because of another cloud of darkness which, like the flu, destroyed young lives without regard to family, love, or prospect. Prudence Ritter wrapped this darkness in her heart and carried it to her grave.