Old-timey Touring

Written By: Carol M. Bryson | Issue: 2020/09 – September

Accommodating tourists was always paramount in the minds of the local citizens of the highest elevations of the Blue Ridge Mountains, from Highlands to Toxaway.  

Running boarding houses quickly became a main source of income for its citizenry as far back as the 1840s.  Indeed, except for looking for the county government to appoint overseers and road crews to improve the Indian trails to accommodate wagons, all you had to do was make a sign and make your place presentable. 

In Cashiers Valley, James McKinney’s boarding house became known as a great destination for trout fishing because of its close proximity to multiple fine trout rivers, deep in the cool woods of aged virgin hardwoods. 

Hiking to wondrous views atop Whiteside Mountain added to the visitor’s relaxation and opened their channels of inspiration.  A pleasant day in our mountains would be ended by a generous table spread of southern cooking by Mrs. McKinney, and then sitting on the front porch listening to tall tales from Squire McKinney about how Cashiers got its name.          

Alexander Zachary had just previously opened his home and mercantile supply store to travelers and gold miners above McKinney’s place on a ridge where the old Indian trail traversed.   

His settlement was only a few steps from the new 1839 Cashiers Valley post office that was named for Alexander as he was known as the “Cashier.”  His brother, Mordecai Zachary, foresaw the opportunity of offer a grander boarding house than either McKinney or his brother Alexander when the Tuckasegee & Keowee Turnpike was in the planning stages to run from the north end of the county, cross Cashiers Valley and continue to the South Carolina line.  The road was to have the best improvements and be safer, although it was just a wider dirt road for horse, wagon and buggy travel.  In his twenties during the mid-1840s, Mordecai Zachary constructed his two-story frame boarding house that is still standing today known as the Zachary-Tolbert House on the grounds of the Cashiers Historical Society.  

Stanhope Hill in Horse Cove catered to tourists coming by taxi wagon from the railroad depot in Seneca, South Carolina.  This was 27 years before Highlands was born in 1875.  James Wright and his wife, Jemima Norton Wright welcomed travelers to their Shortoff Mountain hide-a-way as far back as 1868.  Riley Hooper, a Civil War veteran of the Confederate Army, who switched to the Union Army, and had a reputation of violent attacks against Confederate-leaning young men of the county, opened his boarding house in 1875 during his middle aged years.  It was near McKinney’s place in Cashiers Valley.  By that time, McKinney’s boarding house had been purchased and renamed The Bryson House Hotel by the early feminist Lizzie Bryson as its proprietor. 

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ccommodating tourists was always paramount in the minds of the local citizens of the highest elevations of the Blue Ridge Mountains, from Highlands to Toxaway.  

Running boarding houses quickly became a main source of income for its citizenry as far back as the 1840s.  Indeed, except for looking for the county government to appoint overseers and road crews to improve the Indian trails to accommodate wagons, all you had to do was make a sign and make your place presentable. 

In Cashiers Valley, James McKinney’s boarding house became known as a great destination for trout fishing because of its close proximity to multiple fine trout rivers, deep in the cool woods of aged virgin hardwoods. 

Hiking to wondrous views atop Whiteside Mountain added to the visitor’s relaxation and opened their channels of inspiration.  A pleasant day in our mountains would be ended by a generous table spread of southern cooking by Mrs. McKinney, and then sitting on the front porch listening to tall tales from Squire McKinney about how Cashiers got its name.          

Alexander Zachary had just previously opened his home and mercantile supply store to travelers and gold miners above McKinney’s place on a ridge where the old Indian trail traversed.   

His settlement was only a few steps from the new 1839 Cashiers Valley post office that was named for Alexander as he was known as the “Cashier.”  His brother, Mordecai Zachary, foresaw the opportunity of offer a grander boarding house than either McKinney or his brother Alexander when the Tuckasegee & Keowee Turnpike was in the planning stages to run from the north end of the county, cross Cashiers Valley and continue to the South Carolina line.  The road was to have the best improvements and be safer, although it was just a wider dirt road for horse, wagon and buggy travel.  In his twenties during the mid-1840s, Mordecai Zachary constructed his two-story frame boarding house that is still standing today known as the Zachary-Tolbert House on the grounds of the Cashiers Historical Society.  

Stanhope Hill in Horse Cove catered to tourists coming by taxi wagon from the railroad depot in Seneca, South Carolina.  This was 27 years before Highlands was born in 1875.  James Wright and his wife, Jemima Norton Wright welcomed travelers to their Shortoff Mountain hide-a-way as far back as 1868.  Riley Hooper, a Civil War veteran of the Confederate Army, who switched to the Union Army, and had a reputation of violent attacks against Confederate-leaning young men of the county, opened his boarding house in 1875 during his middle aged years.  It was near McKinney’s place in Cashiers Valley.  By that time, McKinney’s boarding house had been purchased and renamed The Bryson House Hotel by the early feminist Lizzie Bryson as its proprietor.