Wilson Creek is located in the Grandfather District of the

Pisgah National Forest Pisgah National Forest is a United States National Forest, National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. It is administered by the United States Forest Service, part of the United States Department of Agriculture. The P ...

, in the northwestern section of Caldwell County, North Carolina. Wilson Creek has a water system that originates near Calloway Peak and stretches for before joining with John's River. It was added to the Wild and Scenic River System on August 18, 2000. The Wilson Creek area contains places to fish, hike, camp, and mountain biking.

History

The Wilson Creek

Wilderness area Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural) are Earth's natural environments that have not been significantly modified by human activity, or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally ...

was once used by the

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

Native Americans as a summer hunting ground. The area was settled in 1750, and logging began in the forest. Mortimer, once the largest community in the Wilson Creek area, was the site of the Ritter Lumber Company sawmill. This sawmill was destroyed by a storm that produced over of rain in 24 hours in July 1916. The week before, torrential rain had already saturated the ground and heavy lumbering aggravated the speed of the water rushing through the gorge. After a year, efforts to rebuild brought back the sawmill and a

textile mill Textile manufacturing or textile engineering is a major industry. It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn, then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful good ...

. The community was also served by a new railroad line. The Mortimer community provided enough jobs to sustain around 800 residents. However, it flooded again on August 13, 1940, with Wilson Creek reaching over a flood stage. This event ended all efforts to bring in industry and left the area virtually deserted. The concrete shells of the old facilities are visible in a park area. Only a few residents and homes remain upstream at Edgemont, with most of the downstream area maintained for public use by the US Forestry Service. In 1903, the Caldwell & Northern Railroad extended the line up Wilson Creek. You can still see evidence of bridge piers in some places. In addition, most of roads in the area were once actual paths that the railroads in the area used. There were two other railroads in the area, a narrow gauge railroad that Ritter Lumber used for logging and the other was the Hutton-Bourbannis Company railroad.

References

External links

{{authority control Rivers of North Carolina Protected areas established in 2000 Pisgah National Forest Protected areas of Caldwell County, North Carolina Rivers of Caldwell County, North Carolina Wild and Scenic Rivers of the United States Tributaries of the Catawba River