“Now, all is quiet in, and around Parch Corn, except the noise of the river, the stamping of the buck or a chant from some distant point, of an owl — even of an eagle, once in a while. If it were not for these old memories of the past, all, except for the virgin timber that has been removed, would be today as it was when the first white man set eyes on the place.” — H. Clay Smith, circa 1960
One of two fields along Parch Corn Creek
Today was a great day to go wilderness exploring. The destination was Parch Corn, deep in the heart of Big South Fork country. While our last destination — Honey Creek, on the other end of the park — is noted for its sheer, natural beauty, the places in and around Parch Corn are beautiful in a far different way. Encased deep within the river gorge, if the day is peaceful enough and you put your imagination to work, you can almost imagine life as it was a century ago, when folks carved out a life farming along these creeks.
Like Station Camp upstream and No Business downstream, there was once a community along Parch Corn . . . if you could call the small settlements along those creeks communities. They didn’t have much, but they did have one-room schools, stores and even a post office.
The post office that served the area was actually built at the mouth of Parch Corn Creek, on the banks of the Big South Fork. It was established by Lewis Burke shortly before the start of the Civil War, and called Elva. Mail was carried by horseback from Oneida to Elva once a week.
The first settler along Parch Corn Creek was probably Armpie Blevins, in 1820. The entire 3-creek area became home to the families who populate much of Scott County’s 7th District still today: Blevins, Burke and Slaven.
According to H. Clay Smith’s Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, I.N. King — who called himself The Lone Owl (writing “The Lone Owl hoots again” in his columns that appeared in the Scott County News) — moved to the area in 1920s to run the Elva post office, teach school, run the store, look after the Stearns Coal & Lumber Company’s lands in the area and represent the area as a squire on the county court.
By the 1930s and 1940s, folks were leaving the rugged country to move closer to “civilization.” Interpreters at the National Park Service blame the two world wars: As young men left Big South Fork country to fight and were exposed to modern conveniences of “city life,” they no longer wished to live in such rural settlements when they returned. Whatever the reason, Parch Corn had been completely vacated by the time World War II began, and No Business was nearly vacated within a decade after the war ended.
One of the greatest travesties of local history and culture is that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and NPS did not preserve (and are not preserving) the old farms and homesteads in the Big South Fork. No Business could’ve been our own Cade’s Cove. Though settlers had left the area, pictures taken in 1979, when lands were bought to establish the Big South Fork NRRA, show many of the No Business farms intact at that time. Today, they have disappeared as nature has reclaimed them. The same is true along Station Camp Creek and Parch Corn as well.
Walking through the wilderness and suddenly popping out into the old fields near the mouth of Parch Corn Creek is an amazing experience. And on a hot late spring day like this one, you can sit beneath one of the walnut trees in the field and watch the grasshoppers hopping among the wildflowers and almost imagine that it’s a century earlier. Soon, though, that field — like all the others — will be reclaimed by nature.
Every time I visit these areas, I find myself wondering why folks would have been enticed to settle here. The water powered their grist mills and sustained their crops, but there was plenty of water on either side of the gorge that encases these rural communities where they put down their roots and made history.
Its cliche, but this picture cannot do justice to the sight of the gorge wall towering over this old field on Parch Corn Creek
Wildflowers grow in the field
The grave of Hellen Terry Blevins (b. 1836), who died in 1913 and was buried near her home. Her husband was Armstead Blevins (1820-1897), who is buried in the Katie Blevins Cemetery near Bandy Creek. Blevins was the son of Jonathan Blevins, a well-known settler in the area, and Sarah Minton. (Interestingly, Minton was Jonathan Blevins’ second wife. His first wife was Katy Troxel, who was supposedly the daughter of Big Jake Troxell and Princess Cornblossom, leaders of the Indian tribe slaughtered by some of John Sevier’s “Indian hunters” in the incident at Yahoo Falls, in the northern section of the BSFNRRA in Kentucky. Accounts of the attack say that the Indian women and children were hiding beneath the falls when Sevier’s men trapped them inside, killing them all. As they were finishing up their work, Big Jake and Cornblossom returned, along with other Indian warriors, and killed most of the “hunters.”)
Parch Corn Creek just upstream of the old Blevins farm
The chimney is all that remains of Armstead Blevins’ cabin on Parch Corn Creek. The cabin was one and a half stories and was built for the Blevins in 1891 by John Litton (of the “Litton Farm” near Bandy Creek). Litton also built several other cabins in what is now the BSFNRRA. They’re all gone now. The Blevins cabin was the last to go. It was burned in 1998.
The morning sun shines around an old stone wall on the Blevins farm
Later settlers to the farm enjoyed the “modern convenience” of an outhouse
The water temperature of the Big South Fork was perfect for a swim after the hike to Parch Corn
Chase Nelson, #97
The fifth in Dean Koontz’s series about his popular fictional character, Odd Thomas, a 20-year-old short-order cook who possesses certain psychic abilities and is able to see the dead.
(Odd Thomas was released in 2003, followed by Forever Odd in 2005 and Brother Odd in 2006. Also in 2008, a prequel to Odd Thomas, In Odd We Trust, was released.)
Rae Sykes, #98