Before LeConte Lodge was born

The 1923 pioneers: guide Wiley Oakley, Gertrude Schwass, Frank Freels, and Jennie Russ were "like drowned chickens" when they made it back to Gatlinburg. Gertrude's hat had been nibbled by a mouse while she slept, and their hiking boots were ruined by the mud. (Orpheus Schantz photo, Appalachian State University archives)

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 16 marks the 100th birthday of LeConte Lodge. Befitting the mountaintop, it will be a quiet celebration. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is not promoting any centennial events. As the co-author of LeConte Lodge / A Centennial History of a Smoky Mountain Landmark, I've been invited to share a few remarks at supper July 17 (as I did last August at Myrtle Point to mark the centennial of the 1924 national park commission hike). —Tom Layton

Professor Orpheus Schantz
(Appalachian State University archives)

 On July 11, 1925, the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association authorized Paul Adams to establish a camp on Mount Le Conte. He hired some local boys and erected a tent not far from the Basin Spring.

 Five days later came the first guests, as Professor Orpheus Schantz brought a group of tourists and students from Chicago. Schantz paid $32 for his group to stay two nights. Since then, there's always been a human and commercial presence on Mount LeConte.

 That winter, Adams built a crude cabin, and in 1926 Jack Huff opened the original 32-bed LeConte Lodge cabin. 

 Professor Schantz may have been first at the lodge, but tis wasn't his first time atop Mount Le Conte. He first scaled the mountain in 1923, with three friends from Chicago. I recently located a scrapbook that details that adventure—long before the lodge was born.

 Schantz was a professor at the University of Chicago, president of the Illinois Audubon Society and a member of the National Geographic Society. His scrapbook reveals a playful and poetic spirit. He first visited the Smokies in 1918 and was a 49-year-old widower on his fifth trip in June 1923.

 He hired guide Wiley Oakley, "the Roamin' Man of the Smokies, " and enticed his entourage (Gertrude Schwass, Fred Freels, and bank secretary Jennie Russ) to hike up Mount Le Conte. The trail-less mountaintop was owned by Champion Fibre Company, which intended to harvest the balsam forests, churn the timber into pulp, and sell trainloads of newsprint to papers across the country.

 A logger named Andy Huff had opened a boarding house in Gatlinburg, which became the Mountain View Hotel. He sent a few of his loggers up Le Conte Creek (then known as Mill Creek) to "swamp out" a rough trail. When Knoxville newspaper columnist Carson Brewer investigated the history of Le Conte cabins in 1962, Ranger John Morrell, Paul Adams, and Harvey Broome told him  that this lean-to was the first habitable structure on the mountaintop. It became the base camp for the federal national park commission that Adams hosted in 1924. And the year before that, Schantz' soggy hikers spent a Saturday night there. 

 Our book includes a shadowy photo of the lean-to, but it is better illustrated on this poem by Professor Schantz. 

Click to enlarge. (Appalachian State University archives)

 Jennie and Gertrude composed lengthy reports that are enclosed in the Professor's scrapbook. They described the 600-mile journey from Chicago, starting June 16, including 30 miles from Knoxville to Sevierville on a rail-bus called an interurban and 15 miles to Gatlinburg in Andy Huff's Ford. As they waited for a break in the weather, they explored the valleys and delighted in the mountaineers' accent, the fireflies and the luxuriant rhododendron. One day they were amused to find a swimming hole with a sign that said: "When bathing here, you must wear a bathing suit or other clothes, if you have none you must stay out." On one trip to Elkmont, their driver was 19-year-old Jack Huff.

 "The trip up LeConte* was postponed from day to day on account of weather conditions," Jennie wrote, "but one morning we decided that as our time was growing shorter, we had better risk going or we might miss it entirely."

*The Professor spelled "LeConte" without a space. That's also how Huff painted it on the original lodge sign, which explains why LeConte Lodge is spelled differently than Mount Le Conte.

 

 Here's how Gertrude headlined the hike in her journal:

THE NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN
--June 23rd and 24th, '23.
The Hiking Shoes can tell a story-

 

 "The Jolly Four," as Professor Schantz called them, trudged through the rain up the road to Cherokee Orchard, took shelter in a deserted cabin, and then proceeded up Mill Creek (now the Rainbow Falls route). At the waterfall, they climbed a makeshift ladder to the top of the cliff, and pressed upwards past suppertime. "The twilight was deepening," Jennie wrote, "when we saw the black outline of the lean-to just ahead. The guide soon had a roaring fire made and our supper cooked." The ladies were too tired to eat much.

 "We laid on the sweet-smelling balsam bed with the stars very near and bright," Jennie wrote. 

 Gertrude wrapped herself in a blanket. At one point she reached for her flashlight and was surprised to feel a bristly patch of bear fur that Wiley had put there as a prank. A mouse scurried under the bed frames, and in the morning they found it had chewed up Gertrude's hat.

 In the morning, they freshened up at the Basin Spring, ate breakfast, and climbed up to Cliff Top. "The government had put a tablet in a rock at the summit indicating the height as 6,685 feet," Jennie wrote. They registered their names in a notebook—perhaps the same one that C.L. Baum had placed in a Prince Albert can in 1922. Rainclouds spoiled the sunrise view and then poured torrents as they climbed down the slippery path. When they got down to Cherokee Orchard, they found that someone had sent two horses for the ladies to ride the final miles into town. 

 "When we arrived at the hotel, all of the guest were on the porch to greet us," Jennie wrote. "They were mildly astonished as the two girls of our party ate their supper as usual. Their astonishment increased when they appeared the next morning for breakfast. It had taken the last young woman who climbed Le Conte three days to recuperate."

 The ladies' hiking boots were casualties. "Our hiking shoes came to a sorry end, soaked and marred, we were unable to wear them again while in Gatlinburg," Gertrude wrote. 

 "Le Conte shall never be forgotten by the 'Jolly Four,'" the Professor said. "A tale we can be proud to tell our grandchildren."

 Presumably, Wiley told Jennie and Gertrude that women had made this climb before. Back in 1916, he had guided Maisy Graves and Mollie Kimball up the old Bear Pen Hollow Trail. They also got soaked and, lacking a cabin, slept under a ledge.

Wiley Oakley's children at his cabin on the slopes of Mount Le Conte. (Appalachian State University archives)

"Long may you stay, Leconte, unspoiled as now" —Professor Schantz