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Arthur understood the great wealth that could be obtained from extracting the abundant natural resources of the
Southern Appalachian Mountains, but even with million-dollar financing, the lack of technology and inaccessibility of the region proved too much to overcome. It was not until the invention
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By 1890, Arthur and
American Association, Ltd. had spent twenty million dollars on the Cumberland Gap operation, and Arthur's British backers, among them the British Steel Syndicate, began to grow skeptical of Arthur's grand schemes and outrageous spending. They grew even more concerned when the ore
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east of
Knoxville. While these mountains contained one of the richest timber stands in the eastern United States, their general remoteness and rugged terrain had left them mostly untouched by loggers for much of the 19th century. Arthur's plan called for harvested logs to be floated down the Pigeon
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in
England. In 1888, Arthur built a large house for himself in Harrogate, and American Association, Ltd. spent two million dollars developing the area. By far the most lavish feature of the new community was the Four Seasons, a 700-room resort hotel believed to have been the largest hotel in the
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in the latter half of the 19th century. Flamboyant, charismatic, and energetic, Arthur used his prominent
American and European financial connections to fund numerous business ventures, most of which were overly ambitious and ultimately failed. A proponent of economic advancement in what became
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Arthur advertised the Four
Seasons resort far and wide, but the hotel's remote location and distance from the railroad made it less desirable to the nation's wealthy. At times, the hotel's large staff outnumbered guests by a 15 to 1 margin. After the collapse of its parent company in 1893, the
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Arthur built a large house in
Newport— known as "The Mansion"— and made plans to redesign the rough frontier village as an ideal community, complete with parks, clubhouses, hotels, a new town hall, and a college. However, Arthur underestimated the volatility of Appalachian Mountain
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that large-scale logging of the mountains' timber became profitable. In the early 1900s, firms such as the Little River Lumber
Company and Champion Fibre saw enormous returns logging the timber stands Arthur had attempted to reach decades earlier. Likewise, by the time of Arthur's death, the
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dumped torrential rains into the upper Pigeon Valley, and the river flooded, threatening the boom that held the company's stock of logs. Arthur spent 12 hours in the pouring rain directing efforts to save the boom, but it eventually collapsed, and the logs scattered for miles downstream. An
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304:. The following year, after gaining major funding from London, Arthur's investment group was reorganized as the American Association, Ltd., and Arthur continued purchasing land in the region, eventually acquiring upwards of 100,000 acres (40,000 ha).
269:... he rode, lord and master, on a shiny black stump-tailed horse over his domain, never settling the bulk of his weight into the saddle, but always standing in the stirrups as if personally overseeing in the wilderness the birth of empire.
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used Arthur's
Newport house for decades after his departure, and Scottish Timber's Newport office became a notorious saloon known as the "Last Chance/First Chance." The old Arthur, Tennessee post office is currently on display at the
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Believing
Middlesboro would one day grow into a great industrial center, Arthur decided to establish a suburb for the city's future elite on the Tennessee side of the Cumberland Gap. He named it "Harrogate" after the resort town of
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in establishing an iron production operation in the area, but after failing to do so, he took the initiative himself. In August 1886, he and several investors formed the Gap Associates, and purchased 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) in
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to build a spur line to Middlesboro which would transport the pig iron and coke out of the valley. To house the workers needed to build a railroad tunnel through a mountainside near the Gap, Arthur set up a work camp at
336:, W. W. Woodruff, and Frank Hockenjos. Just outside Knoxville, however, the train derailed, killing six, including Andrews, Reeder, and Hockenjos, and injuring several others, including Arthur, Kern, and Woodruff.
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before immigrating to the U.S. city of Boston in 1879. After the death of his first wife, Arthur married Boston socialite Nellie Goodwin, who introduced him to numerous New England financial connections.
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in 1879, and accepted a position as the general manager of the Scottish-Carolina Timber and Land Company's American operations. In the early 1880s, Arthur identified a rich stand of timber in the upper
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on what remained of the Four Seasons property in Harrogate. The school set up a conservatory in Arthur's house, although an observation tower is all that presently remains of the structure. Affluent
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in early 1888. The railroad's inaugural train ran on August 23, 1889, with several prominent Knoxvillians on board, among them Knox County judge George Andrews, Sheriff Andrew Reeder, attorney
253:, near where the Pigeon River exits the high mountains and enters the upper Tennessee Valley, as a base for his logging operations. Company employees and specialists from as far away as
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along the railroad south of Cumberland Gap, but the lack of financing in the mid-1890s doomed any real chance of obtaining the success Arthur desired. In 1897, Arthur travelled to
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While he never experienced great financial success, Arthur's endeavors were a harbinger of the great logging and mining operations that became major economic forces in Southern
406:, however, he moved back to Middlesboro, where he decided to live out his remaining years. He died March 4, 1912, and is buried in a family plot in the Middlesboro Cemetery.
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brought about a total collapse. American Association's assets were liquidated, with tens of thousand of acres around Middlesboro selling for just fifteen thousand dollars.
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investigation by Scottish Timber blamed Arthur for the loss, determining that he should have foreseen such a flood, and the entire operation folded shortly afterward.
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deposits in the Cumberland Gap region, and established a multimillion-dollar iron production operation in hopes of making Middlesboro the "Pittsburgh of the South."
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For a discussion of logging and coal mining in the Appalachian region, see Jack Hurst's introduction to the Business, Technology, and Industry section,
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as an agent for the Glasgow-based Scottish-Carolina Timber and Land Company, concocted a plan to harvest the dense, virgin forests of the
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system to extract the timber from the difficult mountain terrain. Later in the same decade, Arthur identified the abundant
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arrived to begin building the booms, and by 1884 the company had begun accumulating logs in its boom reservoirs. Historian
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in 1891, Arthur's British financiers backed out of American Association. The company struggled forward until the
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His Middlesboro project in shambles, Arthur nevertheless sought to begin anew, and established his small
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deposits in the Yellow Creek Valley were determined to be of low grade, and after the failure of
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streams, which swell to many times their size after heavy rains. In Spring 1886, a
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described Arthur during this period as the "epitome of elegance," moving about in a
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Power and powerlessness : quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian valley
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In 1885, Arthur travelled to Cumberland Gap (at the junction of Tennessee,
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Photograph of Alexander Arthur and wife Nellie Goodwin Arthur on horseback
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After spending his early life migrating back and forth between Scotland,
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Arthur established a new company town— named "Middlesboro" after
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542:(Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis State University Press, 1981), pp. 44–49, 73.
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hotel was sold for just twenty-five thousand dollars and dismantled.
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United States at the time of its completion. The hotel included a
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area, and in the course of his endeavors established the cities of
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623:(Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee, 2006), pp. 441–447.
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From the Shadow Side: And Other Stories of Knoxville, Tennessee
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River in a controlled fashion using a series of logging booms.
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482:(Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), p. 35.
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Photograph of Arthur family in front their Harrogate home
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along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, and devised a
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The Historic Cumberland Plateau: An Explorer's Guide
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321:Knoxville, Cumberland Gap, and Louisville Railroad
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431:and Reverend A. A. Myers established
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522:(New York: Rinehart, 1955), 167–174.
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610:(Tellico Books, 2003), pp. 17–20.
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704:Claiborne County, Tennessee
433:Lincoln Memorial University
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621:Encyclopedia of Appalachia
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480:The Kentucky Encyclopedia
478:"Alexander Alan Arthur,"
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326:Cumberland Gap, Tennessee
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402:. After suffering a
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243:Great Smoky Mountains
150:Middlesboro, Kentucky
121:Alexander Alan Arthur
443:Museum of Appalachia
235:Knoxville, Tennessee
178:Blue Ridge Mountains
160:, is named for him.
156:. The community of
154:Harrogate, Tennessee
16:American businessman
293:Yellow Creek Valley
239:Pigeon River Valley
632:Carolyn Sakowski,
396:Klondike Gold Rush
332:, and businessmen
330:William F. Yardley
263:Prince Albert coat
171:, Arthur moved to
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62:(1912-03-04)
719:1912 deaths
714:1846 births
374:community.
169:Scandinavia
88:Engineering
68:Middlesboro
678:Categories
567:0252009851
453:References
382:Later life
368:sanitarium
334:Peter Kern
276:cloudburst
204:Early life
193:Appalachia
42:1846-08-30
363:Harrogate
356:Harrogate
199:Biography
142:New South
111:Parent(s)
400:New York
313:pig iron
289:Virginia
186:iron ore
129:engineer
125:Scottish
84:Business
72:Kentucky
576:6194316
421:skidder
415:of the
251:Newport
94:Spouses
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410:Legacy
404:stroke
392:Alaska
222:Sweden
218:Norway
173:Boston
167:, and
165:Canada
127:-born
74:, USA
572:OCLC
562:ISBN
317:coke
220:and
182:boom
152:and
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57:Died
36:Born
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