The Building of Lake Toxaway and the Toxaway Inn
The local buzz about the Toxaway Company’s biggest venture – the creation of another, larger lake with an even more elegant hotel, the Toxaway Inn, on its shores – started long before either one of these became a reality.
Eventually, though, news accounts of activity on the Toxaway lake, dam, and hotel project began to appear, like this one from the Asheville Citizen-Times, May 1902:
“Visitors to the Toxaway region return with stories of extensive improvements in that section. Among the most important projects are the extension of the railroad ten miles into the mountains, the building of a large hotel, and the making of an immense lake.
One million and a half dollars* are to be spent on these improvements, and when complete the place will be superb…
The contract for the new section of railroad has been awarded to J.R. Oates…He also has the contract for excavating the lake. He will have a force of 1000 men on the roadbed and lake in 29 days; it will take about 12 months’ labor of the big gang to complete the work.”
*For a little perspective — that’s what a million and a half in today’s dollars would be.
By that time, the Transylvania Turnpike had been engineered and developed, so that transportation of workers and materials to the area, while still difficult and costly, was at least easier than it had been for those working the Fairfield project some years earlier.
A few months later, the Charlotte Observer noted:
It was also reported that a sawmill was being erected on the construction site, where lumber for the 300-room hotel would be cut directly.[2] On that topic, the Toxaway Company was praised for its resourcefulness:
“It is interesting to note that in all of the 30,000 acres of land owned by the Toxaway Company there is no waste. Though they have no forester of their own as have many of the American lumber firms, the cutting of their timber and the preservation of that left standing is a matter of keen concern to the company. Their work is a lesson in economy practiced on a gigantic scale. The dead timber and best fallen lumber and undergrowth are cut and stored for firewood for the inns, and the various plants and engines used on the estate.
The mature hemlocks, oaks, and poplar are cut and sawed in the company mills and shipped to Asheville as a general distributing point; the larger boughs and small trees cut in the necessary thinning of the forests are shipped to Asheville as cordwood, and the smaller boughs go to the charcoal pits to make charcoal for broiling purposes. Whole poplar logs are shipped direct to Germany to be sawed and manufactured there.
The mountain highway is at present the big artery of trade down which the continuous tide of lumber and wood goes to the markets. The logs are dragged from the woods to the mills by yokes of great, patient oxen; the cut lumber is hauled on wagons to the sides of the big road and piled there, awaiting the wagons which go in almost a continuous stream toward the shipping place at Toxaway. When the railroad is finished the lumber interests will be increased to a phenomenally higher percentage.
The timber cleared from the ravine where the great lake is to be made will more than pay for the cost of the lake.”[3]
Photographer R.H. Scadin, who had been employed by the Toxaway Company to document the project, made frequent diary entries throughout the summer of 1902 of having gone to the “lake basin to make views” [presumably, take photographs]. The accompanying photo at right shows what he was seeing.
Scadin further notes in early September that he and his wife “went up on Rainy Knob to see the reflection and light from fires in the Toxaway lake basin.”
An invited visitor to the build site at around the same time also noted that:
“At a point some nine or ten miles from leaving the train, we come down to the bed of the new lake. In fact, the road at present passes through the site of the lake, having the dam, now under construction, some miles to the right… On its eastern side, Mt. Toxaway drops somewhat abruptly down to the ‘shining levels of the lake,’ to quote the Morte d’Arthur and [to] anticipate somewhat the course of events. For at present the lake lacks one important ingredient of a lake, namely the water; but imagination can to some extent supply the deficiency and fill the vast lake bed – extending below for miles, and now being prepared…”[4]
Asheville Citizen-Times, Nov 28, 1902
On October 30, Scadin writes that “the water [at the new lake basin] was stopped back just a week ago today and there is quite a little lake started.” A week or so later, he remarks that “Hiram [Glover] and I… stopped at the new lake basin at noon to take a look.”
One source says that it took four months and seventeen days to fill the lakebed [5]; if true, the lake was not fully realized until early the following spring.
It seemed the Toxaway Company was on full court press with their project. A news account in November 1902 (left) prophesied completion of the roadbed by year end.
n January 1903 it was noted that “The large hotel at Lake Toxaway is being pushed to completion, about one-third of the framework being completed.” Scadin reports in his diary that “the mud [in that area] is the worst I ever saw it.”
Among the news accounts were reports of frequent travelling in and out of the area by Toxaway Company principals, particularly General Manager J.F. Hays, who was an exceedingly busy man during this timeframe.
Amidst the bustle, he was no doubt involved in addressing a number of setbacks:
- In late 1902, an outbreak of smallpox required a quarantine of Toxaway railway workers.[6]
- In early 1903, a fire broke out in the Toxaway general store, with most of its merchandise lost.[7]
- For a brief period in the spring of 1903, it was much debated whether the Toxaway Inn should be allowed to serve liquor to guests in an otherwise ‘dry’ county. Despite call-outs of ‘class legislation’ – i.e., why should the rich be allowed to drink, when the rank and file could not – Toxaway prevailed in the argument.[8]
- In “one of the severest windstorms…in ten years,” a washout was reported on the Toxaway Company’s turnpike bridge, as well as the destruction of a new trestle on the Transylvania Railroad, causing several hundred dollars’ damage [9]. Photographer Scadin’s diary account of Saturday, Feb. 28, also mentions the incident: “The storm of rain and wind was terrific during last night. The wagon bridge and new Ry. Trestle at Toxaway was washed away.”
In early spring of 1903, Scadin notes that he walked to Lake Toxaway “to make views about the new hotel works” and that the new hotel was going to be “a fine house.” By May he futher commented that “the view looking over the new lake is very fine.”
During the summer of the same year, two larger issues also loomed and were quickly addressed:
First, there was a false report of a dam break at Toxaway, causing much consternation – not surprising given that the destructive 1889 Johnstown, PA flood was still fresh in collective memory. Calling the story “a baseless fake,” the article below refuted the rumor [Editor’s note: perhaps demonstrating that “fake news” is not necessarily an invention of the current generation!]
Scadin noted in his diary on June 6 (and other sources confirm) that “the dam to the lake at Sapphire broke yesterday evening and the water all ran out.” — no doubt the source of the rumor.
Some weeks later, several minority Toxaway Company shareholders expressed their displeasure by asking that the company be put into temporary receivership. In particular, they argued that “Mr. Hayes [sic] and others have combined and conspired to usurp control and management of the corporation, and have kept the minority stockholders in ignorance of the company’s business. Exception is taken to the methods employed in constructing the railroad through the Sapphire country, inasmuch as timber is being removed from property in which all the stockholders are interested, in making cross-ties, etc.”
The case was settled quickly, with the majority shareholders buying out the stock ownership of the minority plaintiffs the following day, and normal company business resumed.
To great accolades, and despite obstacles, the enormous Toxaway Inn project was complete enough to open toward the late part of the 1903 summer season. Scadin describes it this way in an August 5 entry: “Went to Lake Toxaway this forenoon and have been making some views today. This was opening day at the new Inn, but it is far from finished yet.”
It’s believed this photo by R.H. Scadin shows some or all of the work crew at the Toxaway Inn as the build neared completion. Courtesy of the Transylvania County Library Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room.
Future installments will go into more detail about the property and its luxurious amenities and celebrated guests, as well as the Inn’s unfortunate demise after the Flood of 1916.
The Rutherfordton Tribune, June 18, 1903
SOURCES:
[1] Asheville Citizen-Times, June 9, 1902
[2] The Charlotte Observer, July 27, 1902
[3] Charlotte Observer, Jan 25, 1903
[4] Western North Carolina Times, November 7, 1902
[5] French Broad Hustler, September 1905
[6] The Charlotte Observer, December 17, 1902
[7] The Asheville Weekly Citizen, January 6, 1903
[8] The Charlotte Observer, February 12, 1903
[9] Asheville Weekly Citizen, March 6, 1903
