EDITOR’S NOTE: Everyone has a story — some more well-known than others. Across Western North Carolina, so much history is buried below the surface. Six feet under. With this series, we introduce you to some of the people who have left marks big and small on this special place we call home.
Author of “Our Southern Highlanders” and advocate for the creation of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Horace Sowers Kephart (1862-1931) became the permanent scholar on both camping and the people of rural Western North Carolina before his tragic death in a car accident in 1931.
Life before the mountains called…