Autumn Splendor from Tathum Gap by BiggDevo

Photography • Historical • posted on Sep 21, 2009

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Description

This picture was taken in the Autumn of 1999, with a cheap little hp 1.5 mp camera and postworked with PS 7. This shot has been DE-SATURATED, because the colors were too intense. I'll never catch a scene like this again, now that I have an expensive digital SLR. Tatham Gap / Rockpile Ridge Trail On June 21, 1838, North Carolina troops escorted three hundred Cherokee prisoners from Fort Montgomery (now Robbinsville) across the Snowbird Mountains on the first leg of their thousand-mile trek to Oklahoma. They crossed the Snowbirds on the military road built on the long-familiar Cherokee trail between the Cheoah community and the Valley Towns (from present-day Robbinsville to Andrews.) One can walk or drive along this route, today, finding in some places the wagon ruts made by the Army as they transported the Cherokees in their first stage along the Trail of Tears. [See sidebar on Removal of the Cheoah Cherokees] The Tatham Gap/ Rockpile Trail was significant in Cherokee history even before the events of the Removal, and it figures in legends and oral history. Like other ancient trails made by game and by early people, it could be thousands of years old. It takes a direct route from the watershed of the Valley River (in Cherokee, Gunahita, or "long") into the valley and watershed of the Cheoah River. Both of these river valleys stand at about 2,400 feet elevation, but the surrounding peaks rise above 5,000 feet. The trail makes its way through the 4,500 foot high gap, a relatively easy way between the two valleys, and one that avoids traveling through the Nantahala Gorge