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Hey this is Elizabeth with Great Smoky Mountains Association and today we're going to take you on a really cool trail.
Its the Gabes Mountain Trail. We're going to go part way in to Hen Wallow Falls.
You come from Gatlinburg and you follow 321 out this way and this is a great map that you can get at the visitor centers in the park.
Anyway, you take a right toward Cosby right up here and then we're gonna park near the campground.
STEVE KEMP: A right at the picnic area and the entrance to the campground.
So if you want to go camping that would probably be a great place to go.
STEVE KEMP: Oh, yeah. Cosby campground rarely fills. Very large campground. Kinda off the beaten path.
We're really lucky today because we've got a special guest star.
Steve Kemp is with us. Hi Steve.
STEVE KEMP: I am and happy to be here?
So you've always worked for the Association ever since you've been here.
STEVE KEMP: Twenty-one years. A lot of changes, yes, though the park fortunately remains the same. It just gets better every year.
Well, we ought to remember that we are in bear country, so whenever you're hiking, just be sure that you don't leave any food along the trail.
Never feed wild animals and pack everything out with you. Then you'll be pretty safe.
We're in a hardwood forest here aren't we? I'm seeing a lot of hardwood trees.
STEVE KEMP: We are, and old-growth means that some of the trees are very old, some are young.
STEVE KEMP: A lot of trees lying down, dead, ancient trees. A lot of new trees coming back up.
This is a beautiful tree, Steve. What are we looking at here?
STEVE KEMP: It's a yellow birch you can see with the fall colors.
STEVE KEMP: According to lore, sphagnum moss was used for diapers for infants and perhaps, if you didn't have anything better, for bandages for wounds.
This is a cool little bridge.
STEVE KEMP: Yeah, these take a lot of work. Park crews keep busy on these trails. So many foot logs.
So a lot of the area around Cosby and Greenbrier here used to be old settlements and there were a lot of farms and a community around here.
STEVE KEMP: There's a whole network of old farm roads here they would have used to take their apples to market.
STEVE KEMP: Yeah, it was all *** forest when they came, so just clearing the trees was a horrendous undertaking.
STEVE KEMP: When that was done and then there were all the boulders and rocks to move.
And they really couldn't use wagons on these roads, could they?
STEVE KEMP: No, a lot of times they used land sleds which kind of look like snow sleds with wooden runners.
STEVE KEMP: But since the roads were so poor, they would break the wheels on wagons. They would just drag these sleds with firewood or produce on them.
We're standing next to a sourwood tree, right Steve?
STEVE KEMP: Yeah, it's got the bright red foliage. In the autumn, one of the first trees to change colors in the fall.
I know that they were used for the runners on the sleds that we were talking about.
So, here we are at Hen Wallow Falls, and like all my hikes, I always take one of the guide books along because they have great information and some funny stories in here.
This one is Day Hikes of the Smokies.
So, this particular falls has a pretty funny story attached to it.
So, back in the day, there was an unnamed small community where a family bought 100 baby chicks in the spring.
And they were hoping of course that they would grow up to be hens,
and they would have some eggs to keep and some eggs and chickens to sell and eat, and all that stuff.
Well, come to find out, they ended up having 95 roosters and 5 pullets.
So a nearby community who thought it was pretty funny started calling the initial community "Roostertown".
So they got pretty upset about that, so let's have a little reenactment here.
ELIZABETH: Oh yeah, you want to call us "Roostertown"?
STEVE: Yeah, you Roostertowners!"
ELIZABETH: Oh yeah? Alright, well we're gonna call you "Hen Waller"! Ha!
STEVE: You callin' me a "Hen Waller"?
ELIZABETH: "Hen Waller"!
STEVE: A Roostertowner callin' me a "Hen Waller"?
ELIZABETH: "Hen Waller"!
And, of course, the name stuck, so we still have Hen Wallow Falls and Hen Wallow Creek, but there's no Roostertown.
But there's a sign, right, there's a Roostertown Road still?
STEVE: There still is, to this day.
And you probably can hear some roosters around Roostertown road.
(laughs)