DuPont Forest: A History

by Danny Bernstein

Overview

DuPont Forest protects thousands of acres of trees, five lakes and more than one hundred miles of multiuse trails. It attracts hikers, equestrians and mountain bikers from all over the United States, and its six waterfalls have been featured in movies like The Hunger Games and The Last of the Mohicans. All of this natural beauty is easily accessible, increasing its appeal. It took not only the generosity of a multinational company but also Southern Appalachian grit and self-reliance and local activism to make these benefits available to all. DuPont Forest is young, and its future is still unfolding. Author and hiker Danny Bernstein traces the past of DuPont State Recreational Forest and shows its potential.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439671023
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	09/07/2020
Series:	Natural History
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Danny Bernstein is a hiker, hike leader and outdoor writer. She's written two Southern Appalachian hiking guides, The Mountains-to-Sea Trail Across North Carolina (The History Press) and Forests, Alligators, Battlefields: My Journey through the National Parks of the South to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. In her previous life, she worked in computer science, way before computers were cool, first as a software developer and then as a professor of computer science. Her motto is "No place is too far to walk if you have the time."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 11

Cast of Major Characters 13

Part I Exploring the Forest

Why DuPont Forest? 15

Recalling a Buck Forest Childhood 18

What Is in DuPont Forest Today 22

Part II Settlers and Land Barons

Meeting the First Settlers 25

Visiting the Land of the Sky 29

Kingdom of the Happy Land 32

Finding Cherokee Petroglyphs 33

Growing Up in Cedar Mountain 35

Creating Buck Forest Lodge 37

Hike: Three Waterfalls in Three Miles 42

Who Was Alex Guion? 47

Appalachians Make Good Workers 49

Part III DuPont Corporation Goes to Work

Immigrant Irénée Starts an Empire 53

DuPont Corporation Comes to Western North Carolina 56

Channing Hubbard, the First Site Employee 61

Making Hyperpure Silicon 64

What to Do with All This Land? 66

Moving on to X-Ray Film 72

Earle Johnson Remembers 75

Exploring the Twists and Turns of Cascade Lake Road 79

Lewis Staton Gets a Road 82

Hike: Spring in DuPont Forest 84

Brevard, Past and Present, with Stuart English 88

The DuPont Plant Was a Good Place to Work 91

Part IV Summit Camps

Summer Camp, the Best Part of Childhood 93

Airstrip Trail 100

Buck Forest Development 102

Part V End of an Era

Growing Up DuPont 105

DuPont Corporation Sells the Plant 109

Hike: Midsummer Walk from Guion Farm 112

Fight for the Falls 116

Alan Hirsch Remembers the Fight for the Waterfalls 119

Aleen Steinberg, Environmental Activist 121

Fauna and Flora in the Forest 124

Jeff Jennings Saves a Forest 127

The X-Ray Plant Closes 129

Part VI The Forest Grows Up

Dave Brown, First Forest Supervisor 133

Hike: Bewildered on Sheep Mountain Trail 135

Studying the Forest Management Plan 138

Creating a Recreational Forest 142

We Can All Get Along 143

Speaking with Forest Supervisor Jason Guidry 148

Hike: Walking Joanna Road from Both Directions 150

Blockbusters in the Forest 153

Visiting the Donut Hole 156

Holmes Educational State Forest: DuPont Forest's Smaller Friend 160

Part VII The Future of DuPont Forest

Pay to Play in the Forest? 165

Kiwi Gelato in Brevard 167

Marielle DeJong Comes Home 170

Contemplations and Speculations 172

DuPont Forest Continues to Grow 174

Bibliography 177

Index 187

About the Author 191

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the "Award of Excellence" from the NC Society of Historians

"At the heart of Bernstein's book are stories. Not stories pulled from a textbook or a magazine or even from old letters and journals, but rather stories gathered one by one from personal conversations with the people who lived them." Smoky Mountain News

From the Publisher