• Photo

Contributed photo/The old Ellendale School

Sphere IT

Save This Page

Reader Reaction

digg it

Possum Philosophy: Lost communities

By ROBERT “ROCKY” CAHILL/Columnist

I found an article in Thursday’s paper interesting. I was reading the Bristol Herald Courier, the daily sister to the Smyth County News & Messenger, when I read a piece about “lost towns” as the article referred to them. These are communities that were once bustling small, rural towns and now either no longer exist or are hardly more than a wide spot in the road.
I have always found this subject fascinating, especially since there are numerous ones in the immediate area that fit the description well. Some I know a bit about, some little more than their name.
A couple of these come to mind quickly. The community known as Asbury is one. I have seen it on maps of the area where Smyth County abuts Tazewell County. I feel sure I have driven through the community at one time or another, yet all I can say is at one time, it was obviously a community, settlement, whatever you may wish to call it, large enough to gain designation on maps.
Another such is Attoway, which if I am correct, was over around Sugar Grove somewhere. The same basic facts apply to it as to Asbury, at one time it was enough of a community to earn a spot on maps. I do have one additional fact, one of my favorite school teachers, Viola Clear, is purported to have come from Attoway. Unfortunately, I was unable to contact Mrs. Clear in time to verify this, but it did come from a reasonably knowledgeable source. However, as I said, I do have more knowledge of other spots. The top two that come rapidly to memory are Ellendale in Smyth County and Clinchburg in Washington County.
Ellendale is a now just a spot with a few homes along Rt. 610 in the Rich Valley area. At one time however, it was a bustling community. Many of the earlier patriarchs of the area’s Buchanan families came from Ellendale. It had its own industry.
A large cave in the community was filled with unknown centuries of bat droppings. This was and in many areas still is the primary source of potassium nitrate (commonly known as saltpeter), an ingredient vital to the manufacture of gunpowder, especially during the Civil War.
The Buchanan Saltpeter Caves, as the area was known, produced large quantities of this explosives’ ingredient. A community complete with a large company store, school, post office and other businesses soon grew there, not only the support service-type business needed for the production of useable saltpeter, but various amenities as well. One of the earliest photography studios in Smyth County existed there. It was operated by C. L. Totten, the originator of the vast Totten Collection, which photographically documents life in this area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
My Grandfather Robert E. Smith Sr., a fellow I never had the pleasure of getting to know, but about whom I know a good deal, grew up in a cabin down a nearby hollow on the North Fork of the Holston River. He went to school at Ellendale. My great-grandfather Patrick C. Cahill married one of the local Buchanan women.
A drive up Rt. 610 will take one through the middle of the once flourishing community. A few homes and the obvious foundations of what were once businesses can be seen. The old Ellendale School still stands, although the last time I passed through this area, it was being used to store hay.
Another once busy “almost” town was Clinchburg. This community sits just outside Saltville, along Rt. 745 in Washington County. It was once home to a large sawmill, the Holston River Lumber Company, a large milling and lumber business that operated there from about 1916 to 1934. Numerous businesses existed in this thriving community as well. At one time, Clinchburg had its own bank, boarding house/hotel with restaurant, lodge hall, various stores, post office and even its own medical facility with a doctor who maintained an office there.
My good friend Charley Borders Sr. lived there as a boy. He remembered the bank closing due to the Depression. He once told me that one of the bank officials was so demoralized by the banking crash that he committed suicide in the bank office. He said he could remember the local mortician coming to pick up the body. It made quite an impression on a boy of about 13.
Again, I have more than a passing interest in this community. My Great-grandfather Booth is buried in the cemetery that surrounds the Mahaniam Methodist Church. I assume he was from that area originally by his being buried there.
Today it would seem impossible for a thriving small town to just, as they say, “dry up and blow away.” But with all the manufacturing jobs going offshore to South America and Asia, it could happen. I would be willing to bet that young Charley Borders would have never believed that a community with all the business and such that the Clinchburg of his day had to offer would ever be just a small housing community by the time he retired.
By the way, much of the Totten Collection is on file at the Museum of the Middle Appalachians in Saltville. Copies of many of these photos are available for a small, reasonable fee. For more information, contact Harry Haynes at the museum (tel. 276-496-3633).

A freelance journalist, Robert “Rocky” Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger.