In April 2012, the Transylvania Times published a feature on a video documentary project about Lake Toxaway history undertaken by John Nichols III of Charlotte and Lake Toxaway.

With the dam construction complete, Lake Toxaway Company employees, many of them locals, got to work on the lakebed clearing trees in advance of the refilling water and/or around the lake on road construction projects.

Darnell "Donny" Boyd and Reginald Heinitsh Sr. are generally considered the catalysts for the revival of present-day Lake Toxaway. Here's how they got started.

After the Lake Toxaway dam burst in the flood of 1916, the property sat abandoned for many years, with only caretaker Tolvin Miller and his family nearby.

For a number of financial reasons, the resorts in the Sapphire Country changed management leases frequently in the years following the opening of the Toxaway Inn.

With early success, the Toxaway Company investments in the Sapphire Country resorts seemed well-founded. The region—and specifically the Toxaway Inn— was “the” place to see and be seen!

The Franklin Hotel was built in Brevard by the Toxaway Company as a gateway stop for their guests to the Sapphire Country, and in repayment to Brevardians for investment help to build a railway between the two.

Sapphire Inn and Cottages were built in 1897 on Lake Sapphire by the Toxaway Company and enjoyed a decade of lively operation. Unfortunately a fire in the summer of 1906 destroyed the inn.

Just how did Western North Carolina become “the” resort venue in the late nineteenth century? It was largely due to the efforts of the Toxaway Company, a collection of industrialist entrepreneurs who built five great inns of the time.