The South Riding RV Travels

298

01st June 2007 - Harrogate TN

When the road tunnel was opened in 1996 the original road over the gap was returned to nature emulating what would have been the state when the first emigrants crossed in the mid 1700s. It was called a cycle track on the map but I have to say this was a mountain bike track and was hard going to us.

We did find a lot of wildflowers and butterflies along the way. They were large but still very hard to get close enough to to photograph.

There were lots of these with a brilliant yellow coloration but they just never stopped moving.
The flowers were easier to photograph but the path was quite overgrown. I don't think many people walk or cycle it these days. The path was poorly marked from the campsite and we had quite a job finding the beginning.
We travelled along the way and found a car park and information centre near Cumberland Gap township. These statues are just steel plates surrounding a covered area in which they play the sounds of the people travelling with their carts, horses, oxen and dogs. But uphill they mostly walked.
Cycling down the road we passed this turtle crossing the road. It reminded us of last year when we ran over lots on a road not far from here which was just covered in turtles. They move very slowly and stop when startled. They are very colourful with more red than shows in the photo.
In Cumberland Gap are the remains of the old Newlee iron furnace alongside the river which would have been used to power a bellows. The ore would have been smelted with wood in this area. It was in use from the 1820s to 1880s. Every day they used 625 bushels of charcoal, 6.25 tons of iron ore and 1563 lbs limestone to make 3 tons of iron in 150lb ingots. These would have been used locally or shipped down the Powell river to Chattanooga.
In order to protect the fragile track, bicycles were not allowed beyond the Gap car park. But the old disused railway line which runs across this covered bridge has been surfaced and turned into a cycle track to Harrogate. It was not clearly marked but we managed to find the way.
There are a number of covered bridges in different parts of the country. The most famous are probably those in Madison County, Iowa because of the film, but we have found some in other parts. I think this one had been refurbished.
The track also makes use of a tunnel which runs under the interstate interchange and part of the new tunnel. It does have some lighting and was a joy to cycle because it was cool in comparison to the heat of the day outside.
On one side of the interstate is the city of Harrogate, on the other side is the Lincoln Memorial University, a small regional college. Lincoln had wanted to help the people of the area after the ravages of the Civil War, but he was assassinated before he could do anything. We had seen Harrow school in Cumberland Gap which was a precursor of LMU from 1890-1907 in the basement of the Congregational church. It now also houses a museum dedicated to Abraham Lincoln and contains many original papers and artefacts associated with him.
There were many statues of Lincoln including some in groups like this one made by a sculptor called John Rogers ca 1868. The others in the group are Edwin M Stanton (secretary of war) and Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant at a meeting in 1864. They are discussing plans for the general advance against Confederate forces. In those days a copy of this group would have cost $15.
The museum also displays many items from the Civil War, including some soldiers' bibles marked as issued for the use of the army of Oliver Cromwell!

There are several dioramas, this one showing the town of Richmond VA under occupation during this period.

This is the plaster scale model made by sculptor Daniel Chester French in 1914 as a prototype for the Lincoln memorial in Washington. The eventual sculpture was 19ft high and made from Georgia limestone.
This is a later casting and shows him as he is most remembered. Abraham Lincoln never visited Tennessee although his grandfather after whom he was named did travel through the Cumberland Gap from Virginia en route to Indiana and Illinois where Lincoln grew up.
This is another popular sculpture showing Lincoln as a young man with the wood axe, bible and faithful hound thus epitomising the American virtues of independence, self reliance, hard work and adherence to the good word.
And so we travelled on through the new Cumberland Gap Tunnel which is approx 1.4 miles long. When the original 2.8 mile paved road was built in 1908, there were only 680 miles of paved roads in America.
It was a well constructed set of tunnels (there are three, one as a pilot, and two road tunnels). They link the city of Harrogate (pop 1600) to the city of Middlesboro (pop 6000) In contrast their namesakes in England are both only towns with populations of 65000 and 160000 respectively. It helps us understand why Toronto is sometimes called a 'village'.
Both Middlesboro (originally spelt Middlesborough) KY and Harrogate TN came into being in the 1890s as a product of land speculation and Alexander (1846-1912) and Nellie Arthur's dream to build an industrial centre. He was a mining prospector and entrepreneur who found coal and iron ore and founded some major businesses to capitalise on them. He was instrumental in the development of the area  although it never quite realised the potential he felt it had. Today we would probably class it as a scam since building land here was being sold at prices to rival those in Manhattan - over $400 a frontage foot. They built their own house called Craig Neuk on a 10 acre plot in the more fashionable Harrogate. Eventually the bubble burst and a number of people went bankrupt. Today these communities still live in hope that they will grow and become prosperous.

The Cumberland Gap main visitor centre has a shop selling beautiful craft work. Jan had to stop and admire this display of glasswork is just outside.