Clyde Smith - Trailblazer

Issue:

06/2022

Hilda, "Mickey," and Clyde Smith, mid-1930s, Mt. Cardigan.

Clyde F. Smith built and blazed some of Western North Carolina’s favorite hiking trails, marking them with masterfully routed signs for local trail clubs.

When Clyde Smith discovered Western North Carolina, he found himself drawn to the meadow covered grandeur of the Roan Highlands shown here, and the rugged beauty of Grandfather Mountain, both reminiscent of alpine White Mountain peaks in his native New Hampshire.

In their winter and summer back-and-forths between tourism jobs in South Florida and fire tower spotting in New Hampshire, the Smith’s discovered the Southern Appalachians where they settled in winter by the early 1940s.

Grandfather Mountain’s first auto-accessible attraction, Observation Point, had opened in the mid-1930s and would attract Smith’s trail building attention before the Swinging Bridge came along in 1952.

As a 1940s Parkway Ranger, Smith knew this primitive, early view tower on Mount Mitchell. Before the Parkway was finished in 1987, Yonahlossee Road (now US 221) fed tourists to Linville from Blowing Rock. Stack Rock was an attraction. So was Smith’s trail to Calloway Peak and Hi-Balsam Shelter.

Trail man Smith blazing a sapling on the Boone Trail (note his basket style pack).

The same old arrow on a bigger tree in 2015.

An original tin can Boone Trail blaze.

The modern Chastains on Calloway. "There's something magical about setting foot on that mountain," says Richard Chastain, nailing the peak's enduring family appeal.

The trail still runs the clifftops where boys cluster. The rock leaning leftward down below them teeters to this day.

From his perch on Attic Window, a hiker gazes at MacRae Peak. The face of MacRae is now ladder-festooned.

Smith’s Scouts opened the first practical route across Grandfather, to Attic Window Peak and Calloway Peak beyond.

Alpine Meadow Campsite hides between cliffs above these hikers

October snow dusts the now closed Shanty Spring Trail.

The explorer pictured here climbs a ladder in 1913, a few years after the hike Margaret Morley raves about in The Carolina Mountains.

The Smiths escaped New England’s winters only to revel in the snow, as perhaps the first Nordic skiers on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Clyde’s signs led hikers on Grandfather Mountain's trails in the 1940s, and after the debut of the Swinging Bridge in the 1950s, back when today’s modern Top Shop was barely a souvenir stand.

Smith’s AT signs referenced local trail maintainers. The sign pictured here, near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, includes the Carolina Mountain Club logo.

This sign is near Roan Mountain, credits Tennessee Eastman Hiking Club.

Smith gazes from the southern bald summits he loved.

By the start of the late 1970s, a program to reclaim Grandfather’s trails found the paths blocked with walls of lush vegetation and briars that would have defied even weedeaters (had they not yet been invented). With trail signs and markers gone or invisible, the task took years.

In 2021, CMC trail maintainer Randy Tarpley installed a modern memorial to Smith below the last fragment of Mickey and Hilda Smith’s 1977 marker.

The father and son trail duo gaze over Maine on their last backpacking trip together.

RESOURCES:

Photographs (portarit) Clyde and Hilda Smith Photo Collection, courtesy of Randy Johnson; (scenic shot) by Sam Dean; (family portarit) Appalachian Mountain Club Archives; (Roan Highlands) by Dave Allen; (Observation Point) by Nelson MacRae; (postcard) courtesy of North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, NC. Curt Teich Postcard; (2) Clyde and Hilda Smith Photo Collection, courtesy of Randy Johnson; (modern day markers) Randy Johnson; (family portrait) Chastain Family Collection; (grandfather ladders) Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University, D.R.Beeson Papers; (2) randy johnson; (grandfather picnic) North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill. Photo by Hugh Morton; (2 historic images) Clyde and Hilda Smith Photo Collection; (Clyde Smith Memorial sign) courtesy of Randy Tarpley

ISSUE DATE:

Summer 2022

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Clyde Smith - Trailblazer

Clyde Smith - Trailblazer

Clyde Smith - Trailblazer