A century ago, the French Broad River swallowed my hometown. Now, my community is learning to make amends.
Courtesy of RiverLink
Thought to be one of the world’s oldest waterways, the French Broad River existed long before dinosaurs walked the earth.
Lauren Stepp stands near the French Broad, where she grew up.
I grew up in Horse Shoe, a sleepy-eyed North Carolina hamlet tucked into a loose elbow of the French Broad. My hometown’s name has nothing to do with equines and everything to do with the river. Up near Etowah, the ancient waterway veers east and then northwest, making what my people would say is a “damn near perfect” horseshoe.
Despite being our community’s namesake, I remember the river being feared more than she was loved. As a kid, I would go down with my daddy to the hardware store, where we bought bait and talked to a parrot perched near the cash register. One day I overheard a barrel-chested farmer saying a bright-eyed river monster had bit off his pinky toe last summer while he was swimming. That monster slapped her tail on the chocolate milk-colored water, grinned a mouthful of razor blades and then disappeared into a dark eddy.
“I ain’t never going back in that dirty river,” he said, shaking his head real slow. “No way in hell.”
I didn’t get a good look at that man’s feet, so I can’t say for sure whether his story was true or some kind of tall tale crafted to help keep a girl out of a dirty river. But I will say that my neighbors had good reason to avoid the water. You see, more than a century ago, two tropical storms drenched North Carolina’s mountains. Rain fell hard and fast. Timid brooks turned into seething streams and the mild-mannered French Broad into a hot-tempered tyrant.
Courtesy of Steve Pope
Back in the 1800s, Andy and Dave Davenport ran the cornerstone of Horse Shoe, Davenport General Store.
Like most Horse Shoe residents, Dave and Andy Davenport weren’t ready for the deluge. A few decades prior, the brothers had opened Davenport General Store, a successful two-story shop where townies could swap eggs for dry beans and crackers.
The men owed their prosperity to the railroad, which was chartered in 1895 and brought guests to the mountains from South Carolina cities like Charleston and Anderson. Seeking cool reprieve during summertime, guests would stay at the Maplehurst Hotel—also owned by the Davenports—and spend days picnicking by the French Broad. Some out-of-towners even got lucky enough to hitch a ride on the Mountain Lily, a 90-foot-long steamboat docked in Horse Shoe.
But in July 1916, everything changed. After record-breaking rainfall, the river crested at 21 feet. Chaotic and foaming, the dame devoured homes, the railway and the general store. The total number of human casualties in Horse Shoe is unknown but it’s estimated that at least 80 people were killed in Western North Carolina at large.
Though the Davenports would rebuild, many wouldn’t. Instead, they would move to higher ground, scorning the river for taking what little they had. Neglect soon gave way to misuse. What was once pristine water became a slurry of sewage, trash, chemical runoff and landfill seepage. Alas, the French Broad emerged as an ex-lover of sorts—a bitter but beautiful reminder of what once was.
Courtesy of Steve Pope
Tucked into a bend of the French Broad River, the town of Horse Shoe has always been a sleepy-eyed hamlet.
But in 1955 a woman by the name of Wilma Dykeman wanted to make amends. Raised further north in the Beaverdam community of Buncombe County, Dykeman had watched the French Broad turn into a cesspool of industrial and household refuse. She addressed the waterway’s slow, untimely death in her evocative text, “The French Broad,” arguing that the only way forward was for everyone to “shoulder his share of the responsibility.” Because, “just as the river belongs to no one, it belongs to everyone and everyone is held accountable for its health and condition.”
A revolution ensued. In 1974, Transylvania County added a tax to the county budget to be used for cleaning up river trash. In 1975, Buncombe County began a river cleanup project using public works impact funds administered through the Tennessee Valley Authority. That same year, Madison County followed suit.
Then, in the mid-1980s, a collective took shape in Asheville. Led by Karen Cragnolin, the nonprofit group called itself RiverLink and aimed to revive the economic and environmental vitality of the French Broad River and its watershed.
Courtesy of Steve Pope
Locals traded eggs for dry goods at the Davenport General Store.
In the years since, RiverLink has pulled literal tons of abandoned tires, derelict mattresses, dented beer cans and other debris from the waterway. They have also built greenways and parks where families can experience the river firsthand. Their efforts, combined with that of other local groups, have reimagined the French Broad into something unrecognizable, even from my childhood.
Today, I still live in that loose elbow of the French Broad. But I now see a community that’s really trying to love the river, even if loving this ol’ gal isn’t easy. Estimated to be 325 million years old, the French Broad was here before Africa collided with North America. She was even here before dinosaurs walked the earth. This is her world and she doesn’t let us forget that.
Public Domain
No one was prepared for the deluge of 1916, especially not the residents of Horse Shoe.
Just like when I was a kid, farmers still stand in the gas station parking lot, spitting chaw and lamenting how that white-capped witch washed their soybeans away. Singlewides in the swampy bottomlands still get flooded. And novice kayakers still get sucked downstream, past the one-lane bridge near the Methodist church and the farm with the tawny milk cows. They surface, breathless and cold, somewhere near Asheville. And when their buddies hear the news—a life taken too soon—they hit the water because it’s the only way they know how to grieve.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that mountain folk have finally accepted the French Broad for who she is: a beautiful yet indomitable force. I see this acceptance—this love—each day.
Last week, I walked the double-yellow from my house down to the Horse Shoe boat slip. From the shore, I watched kids in banana-yellow life jackets bob around in canoes. Their guide, a bearded 20-something from an outfitter upriver, explained that the headwaters weren’t far from here. That they spill from Courthouse Falls in Transylvania County, tumbling over ancient granite, before uniting with other tributaries to form a 219-mile-long waterway that actually flows north—not south. The kids shared wide-eyed looks and then squealed with delight when a great blue heron erupted out of the bramble beside them.
Courtesy of D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville.
In the late 1800s, Horse Shoe residents and visitors could hitch a ride on the Mountain Lily, a 90-foot-long steamboat on the French Broad.
Below the kids, deep in the green-hued waters, I have been told that there are Appalachian elktoe—a freshwater mussel that has been on the endangered species list since 1994, but that’s finally returning to the French Broad. Biologists have found the copper-tinged mollusk in the river between Long Shoals Road and Amboy Road. This is good news, reports say. Since mussels are very sensitive to water pollution, this is a sign of progress.
But more indicative of progress is the collective attitude shift toward the river. In Horse Shoe, people have been volunteering to help build the Ecusta Trail, a rail trail that will be loosely contiguous to the French Broad. My neighbor, a man in his late ‘60s, is excited about maybe getting to see a kingfisher while listening to the lulling lap of the French dame.
“This is our river,” he tells me.
And then there are the artists, who paint al fresco on the banks studded with trumpet creeper and swamp pink. And the brewers, who use water from the French Broad to make hoppy porters. And the historians, who say hog drovers from Tennessee once ushered swine along the river to South Carolina. And the Cherokee, who call the waterway the Long Man and its tributaries Chattering Children. And the educators, who believe a day out on the water is just as important as a day in the classroom.
Courtesy of River Link
More than 100 years after the Great Flood, mountain folk are once again recreating in the French Broad.
These people are all loving the river in the best way they know how. As for me, I’m loving by forgiving. My daddy’s kin goes back several hundred years in Henderson County. And though I have no records to prove it, I reckon that the French Broad took something from my family in 1916. If not property or brethren, then peace of mind—the ability to sleep without dreaming of a watery demise.
But the river has since apologized. I’ve stepped into her cool, slow-moving waters and she has embraced me like a doe-eyed mother. She has caressed my head and nipped at my cheeks, and made me understand that nothing was ever out of malice—that she was just yearning to be seen and heard.
The story above first appeared in our July / August 2022 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!