(828) 526-0173 | [email protected] | Copyright 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Monte Vista, Part II
Written By: Jane Gibson Nardy - Cashiers Historical Society | Issue: 2016/10 - October | Photograph By: Elizabeth Millis
Beyond the dining room was the kitchen with a wood burning stove, the kitchen sink, and above the sink was the “pie shelf,” a screened alcove to the outside where vegetables could be kept cool. Upstairs were additional bedrooms and half way up the stairs was a shelf where the oil lamps were stored.
No bathrooms and no plumbing; water was bought to the house in buckets from a spring down the hill. The dishes were washed in a basin and the dirty water was thrown out the back door. Each bedroom had a chamber pot and a slop jar. Both were kept out of sight in a washstand made of rough boards with a fabric drape across the front. The top held a large porcelain bowl and a pitcher of water for washing your face. These objects and often the chamber pot were beautifully decorated with roses or other flowers.
Later there were many improvements made including an addition to the bathrooms and the side porches where they were located. A pump was installed to haul water from the spring to a large storage tank which sat on a high platform beside the kitchen, thus allowing gravity flow. The two-room cabin was changed from a storage place into two bedrooms. The addition of these two rooms made it possible for 21 people to sleep at Monte-Vista if they happened to be the right sex and didn’t mind sleeping together in a double bed.
Not surprisingly, the multiple family ownership of the old house and property became a problem that was finally solved when agreements were made that ended with Lillian Norwood Moore and her brother Wilkins Norwood the sole owners of Monte Vista. Wilkins built himself a separate house nearby for him and his family.
One night in 1979, the old house, unoccupied at the time, was totally destroyed by fire, probably caused by faulty wiring. It must have been a spectacular sight. By the time the fire truck arrived, the road up the hill was so clogged with sightseers that the volunteer firemen couldn’t get to the burning house in time to save it. Lillian and her husband built a smaller, more modern house about where the old Monte-Vista had sat and all that’s left of the beloved old house are a few pictures and vivid memories.
