page_title: Hazel Creek (Great Smoky Mountains)
section_title: Horace Kephart, 1904–1907
hierarchical_section_title: Hazel Creek (Great Smoky Mountains) / History / Horace Kephart, 1904–1907
caption_attribution_description: The Calhoun House in the Proctor section of Hazel Creek, located in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Built in 1928 by George Higdon, the house was purchased by hunter Granville Calhoun. Calhoun was one the locals who accompanied Horace Kephart on the "Bear Hunt In the Smokies" recounted in Kephart's book, Our Southern Highlanders. Calhoun's father, Joshua, was a minister who settled near Bone Valley in 1886.
context_page_description: Hazel Creek is a tributary stream of the Little Tennessee River in the southwestern Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. The creek's bottomlands were home to several pioneer Appalachian communities and logging towns before its incorporation into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Hazel Creek is now a back country campsite and historical area.
context_section_description: In 1904, Horace Kephart, a librarian from St. Louis, arrived in Hazel Creek with plans to study the wilderness areas of the Southern Appalachian highlands.  Kephart moved into a cabin at the old Adams mining camp just above Sugar Fork, about two miles (3 km) from Medlin.  Kephart gave the following description of Medlin:
  Medlin itself comprised two little stores built of rough planks and bearing no signs, a corn mill, and four dwellings.  1.5 miles (2 km) away was the log schoolhouse, which, once or twice a month, served also as a church. Scattered about the settlement were seven tiny tub mills for grinding corn..."
  Kephart's book Our Southern Highlanders (published in 1913) was the first widely read study of Southern Appalachian culture.  The fourth chapter of the book, "A Bear Hunt In the Smokies," recounts a typical bear-hunting excursion to the crest of the Smokies.  Three members of the hunting party— Granville Calhoun, "Little John" Cable, and "Doc" Jones— were children of early Hazel Creek pioneers.  The hunting party stayed at a herding shack built by Jesse "Crate" Hall along the crest near Chestnut Bald.  Kephart was fascinated by the crest of the Western Smokies, which in the early 1900s was a giant grassy bald.
  Although Our Southern Highlanders gives invaluable descriptions of several aspects of life in the Smokies in the early 1900s, the book has been criticized for focusing too much on the more sensational facets of mountain life, such as moonshining and those families living in extreme poverty. And while Kephart claimed he received positive feedback from the mountain people, former Hazel Creek resident Duane Oliver recalled that the book angered many of the creek's residents for the stereotypical way in which it portrayed them.
caption: Granville Calhoun's house at Proctor. Calhoun was Kephart's guide on Hazel Creek, and was part of the bear hunt Kephart documented in Our Southern Highlanders.
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