One outcome of the quest of Jean and I to hike all the trails in the Big South Fork is that we discovered some great campsites and hiked some nice, but out of the way trails. We enjoy backpacking the BSF for its scenery and wildflowers, and there’s no doubt we also appreciate its uncrowded nature, especially compared to popular places like the Smokies or Appalachian Trail. So, when we were looking for a spot for a spring backpacking trip, one of the campsites we used to finish our map lured us in.
On this
particular trip we had stayed just off the O&W Railroad Grade up one of the
BSF’s many Laurel Creeks. This Laurel Creek happened to be just west of the
historic site of Gernt, and just below the park’s East Laurel Overlook. To
reach it we parked at the Gar Blevins Trailhead off TN 297. We started west on part of the Cumberland
Valley Loop Trail which is a well-used horse trail. However, the trail was in
decent shape except where it crossed the upper right fork of Groom Creek. We also
found that there was much less horse use beyond an unsigned spur trail leading
north from the northern most point on the trail, and speculated that might be
an unofficial horse trail leading north from here to the park’s West Entrance
TH.
Near the
Cumberland Valley TH off TN 297 we turned south onto a gravel, multi-use
segment of the Cumberland Valley Loop. Though open to vehicles, we saw none and
this smooth road was pleasant, quiet walking. We found the East Laurel Overlook
in great shape and paused to enjoy the view over the canyons of Laurel and
White Oak Creeks. Curiously, the horses weren’t using the NPS from the overlook down to the O&W RR
Grade making us wonder if another unofficial bypass existed. As we descended to
the O&W along Groom Branch, we could hear what we assumed was a large waterfall
in the steepest section. We hadn’t seen many flowers up on the plateau, but as
we descended we saw wild geranium, bluets, dwarf crested iris, foamflower, and
wake robins.
Dwarf Crested Iris.
While the old townsite
of Gernt was located where our trail joined the O&W Trail, we could see no
obvious sign of it now. Instead, there is a large campsite with a picnic table
located next to a giant boulder just to the west. We walked just a bit further
west where Laurel Creek joins White Oak Creek. There is an old, presumably
pre-park, “no vehicle/foot travel only” sign at the junction. 
East Laurel Overlook
Just beyond the
mouth of Laurel Creek we found the remains of an old coal mine. Though Jean and
I had stayed here before, that had been a decade ago, and neither of us
remembered seeing the mine. I’d bushwahcked about a mile further up the creek
on our previous visit, but apparently hadn’t explored much around the campsite.
The debris included a pile of brick, some long troughlike pieces of steel, and
most tellingly, four small, and two large, concrete footings by a round pond,
which we suspected was an old mine shaft with the footers having been for a
hoist. We couldn’t find our exact campsite from 2009, but likely camped close
by. Down in the campsite we saw may apple and woodland anemone.
S.C.M. Brick Pile.
Concrete Footings for Coal Mine.
After dinner I
took a short walk to a bluff that was barely in view from the old road near the
campsite. I went up the left side of the bluff to a small saddle on the top. The
bluff was too brushy on top for any views, but it looked like the ridge might
extend all the way up to East Laurel Overlook. I started down the opposite side
of the bluff and found a small opening through the arch just below a layer of thin-bedded
sandstone. The opening was wide on this right or eastern side and measured
about 2-4’ high, 5-6’ wide and about 10 feet long. I took Jean up to look at it
the next morning and she was impressed.
Arch above our campsite. 
The narrow end of the arch.
We hiked out the next day starting by retracing the Cumberland Valley Loop. Based on the daffodils and other flowers we found, we spotted at least two old homesites along the road. The topo map shows three structures along the road, so maybe there is still more to find.
We ate lunch again
at the Cumberland Valley Trailhead, then decided to press our luck and try to
finish the hike out by following the unofficial horse trail from the northern
point of the trail. It ended at a paved pullout on TN 297. We walked the road a
short distance to the West Entry TH, then walked the Collier Ridge Mountain Bike
Trail back to a point where we could bushwhack directly south to end the hike
at the Gernt TH. After all the walking we had done on the horse trails, the
nice smooth bike trail was a godsend.
At home, after
downloading our GPS data we estimated we hiked 6.3 miles into the campsite and
5.9 miles on the hike out. We also noted that the mine we’d “found” was shown
on the Honey Creek topo map along with a structure that had sat at the mouth of
Laurel Creek. We hadn’t observed the structure, or the trail the topo showed
that led from the mouth of the creek up to the rim of Laurel Creek just past
both the arch and the below the East Laurel Overlook. We found the same
structures and trails on the older 1952 map, indicating that they were at least
that old.
With the trails and old mine so close, presumably the arch we had also visited was well known in the past. However, we did not see it on Tom Dunigan’s BSF section of his Tennessee Landforms website.
End markings on the bricks.
We also researched
to find out more about the bricks we had seen at the mine site. Several were
marked with “S.C.M. Robbins” which we suspected that might be related to the
town of Robbins, located just south of the park. We found some information on
the brick plant from Tom DeJean, the archeologist at the BSF on the TNGenWeb
website. As with so many things in the BSF, the story of the brick pile came
back to the early days of mining in the Cumberlands.
In the 1880s a
4’ thick seam of clay and overlying coal bed was found near Robbins by a
railroad worker. The association of clay below coal was common to the
Glenmary/Poplar Creek seam that was a major coal producer in the region. At
Robbins, coal mining began in 1886 and brick making in 1889 with bricks being
shipped to Chattanooga for street paving. The company was sold in 1902 to the Southern
Clay Manufacturing Company, the same year that the town Robbins was
incorporated. Southern Clay turned the Robbins plant into a major industrial
operation with peak employment of 300 people. At the height of production there
were 16 kilns with a maximum production of 12 million bricks a year. The brickyards
prospered until the 1920’s when bricks became less frequently used for road
paving. Production declined through the Depression and the last bricks were
made in 1937. The 11,000 acres of land, including the buildings and ponds, were
purchased by G. C. Pemberton of Scott County.
The various
markings on the bricks are useful for dating their age of production, and the
age of the structures made from them. Apparently the SCM end stamp on the
bricks we saw was used from 1902 to 1937, giving us a rough idea of the age of
the mines and structures. The O&W railroad was driven up North White Oak
Creek about 1913, so that is the earliest likely date of mine opening. The coal
mines just upstream in Zenith were reported to operate until 1941 and the rails
were removed from the O&W in 1955. The article indicated that some
structures from the brick plant still remained as of the late 1980s. As of the
2010 census, the population of Robbins is 287.
