For centuries,
Native Americans used a footpath in the southern Unicoi Mountains to travel from one side of the southern Appalachian range to the other. Known as the
Wachesa Trail (after a later Cherokee who lived at its eastern terminus), the path stretched from modern
Cowee to a halfway point near Beaverdam Creek and descended through Unicoi Gap to
Great Tellico. Present-day Joe Brown Highway roughly follows the ancient trail. By the time Euro-American explorers arrived in the region in the late 17th century and early 18th century, the Cherokee had established numerous villages in the outlying areas of the Unicoi Mountains. The Middle towns— located in the Robbinsville vicinity— included Tassetchee, Elijay, and
Nequassee. The
Overhill towns included
Tallassee,
Chilhowee,
Citico, and numerous other villages in the Little Tennessee Valley at the range's northern extremes,
Great Tellico along the Tellico River in modern Tellico Plains, and
Great Hiwassee along the Hiwassee River at the western base of Starr Mountain. Excavations conducted at Citico (at the mouth of Citico Creek) revealed that it is a multiphase site, with periods of occupation stretching back thousands of years.
Early Euro-American history 16th-century Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to see the Unicoi Mountains. In 1540, the
Hernando de Soto expedition passed just west of the mountains en route from the
Chiaha villages in East Tennessee to the
Coosa chiefdom in northern Georgia. In 1567, the
Juan Pardo expedition visited the villages of "Chalahume" and "Satapo" (later Chilhowee and Citico) in the Little Tennessee Valley while attempting to find a route between Spanish settlements on the Atlantic coasts and Spanish settlements in Mexico. While English explorers and traders were probably using the Wachesa Trail as early as the 1690s, the first documented crossing was that of Colonel George Chicken in 1725. Chicken, a South Carolina emissary travelling to the Overhill towns in hopes of obtaining their support in the colony's ongoing struggles with the
Creek tribe, left Little Tellico in the Middle towns at 10am on July 24, 1725 and proceeded approximately across the southern Unicois to a campsite "about five Miles Short of a place called the Beaver Dam." Chicken's party departed at 5am the following morning and arrived at the village of Great Tellico at 3pm, having travelled another . In 1730, Sir Alexander Cuming, a flamboyant Scottish emissary, travelled from
Charleston, South Carolina to the Overhill town of
Tanasi in the lower Little Tennessee Valley in hopes of gaining the allegiance of the Cherokee for England (although Cuming's trip was part of an attempt to scam the people of Charleston). Cuming followed the same trail Chicken had taken five years earlier, departing from Tassetchee in the Middle towns and proceeding to a campsite "3 miles from Beaver Dam Creek." The following day, Cuming's party passed over "Ooneekawy Mountain" and proceeded another to Great Tellico.
19th century Although the
Unicoi Turnpike— which closely followed the old Wachesa Trail— was completed in 1816, the Unicoi Mountains remained largely devoid of all but a few mountain families. The family of John Stratton (1799–1862) settled in the area now known as Stratton Meadows (atop the main crest near where Cherohala Skyway crosses the state line) in the 1830s. John's father, Absolum, died while visiting his son in 1852 and is thus buried at Stratton Meadows. John's son, Robert "Bob" Stratton (1825–1864) eventually moved a few miles north of Stratton Meadows to the mountain that now bears his name,
Stratton Bald. Stratton lived just west of the mountain's summit in a meadow now known as "Bob Bald" until 1864, when he was ambushed and killed by
bushwhackers at the height of the
U.S. Civil War. Sometime after the Civil War, the family of John and Albertine Denton moved to Little Santeetlah Creek, where they built a log cabin. According to family lore, the Dentons lived in a hewed-out giant
chestnut tree log while they were building their cabin. The log had a diameter of over and housed the entire family of seven in two rooms. The Denton family remained in the area until around 1900. The cabin was dismantled by the
Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and today only a chimney fall remains.
20th century Around 1911, George Gordon Moore— an official for the Whiting Manufacturing Company— attempted to establish a
boar hunting reserve atop Hooper Bald in the southeastern Unicois. The reserve consisted of a enclosed lot stocked with Russian blue boars imported from Europe. Most of the boars were able to escape from the lot, however, and fled to the remote slopes and stream bottoms. The introduced boars continue to thrive in the Appalachian environment to this day. The boars are considered a nuisance by forest officials due to the erosion damage they cause to the local watersheds. Moore attempted the same feat at his
Rancho San Carlos in
Carmel, California which had the same results of invasive wild boar escaping and devastating the local landscape. In 1915, the Babcock Lumber Company began a massive logging operation in the northern Unicoi Mountains. The company logged nearly two-thirds of the Slickrock Creek watershed until 1922, when the construction of
Calderwood Dam along the Little Tennessee River threatened to flood the railroad tracks leading into the area and forcing an end to the company's logging operations in what is now the Joyce-Kilmer Slickrock Wilderness. That same year, however, Babcock began logging the Citico Creek watershed on the Tennessee side of the mountains. This operation continued until 1925, when a massive forest fire destroyed the company's logging tramways and wiped out nearly half the forest. The company continued low-scale logging in the Doublecamp area until 1929. The logging practices of Babcock and other logging companies proved extremely detrimental to the forest environment of the Unicoi Mountains, and the U.S. Forest Service began buying up the land in the 1930s. The forest service's policy of letting natural processes heal the forest has allowed the forest to recover to a great extent. In 1958, Sam Williams— a resident of Tellico Plains— led a well-publicized covered wagon train across the Unicoi Mountains to Murphy, North Carolina, which became an annual event to promote the construction of a highway linking the Tennessee and North Carolina side of the Unicois. The original path of the highway would follow the ancient path of the Wachesa Trail and Unicoi Turnpike, although organizers chose a more feasible route over the Unicoi crest to Robbinsville. The highway— named "Cherohala Skyway" (a fusion of "Cherokee" and "Nantahala")— was completed in 1996. ==Protected areas within the Unicoi Mountains==