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; "Mountain Fever")
Mountain Fever chronicles one man’s love affair with a region, its unique and vanishing human culture, and its verdant natural history. Spanning the 1920s through the 1960s, it recounts Tom Alexander’s early adventures as a government ranger and forester in Western North Carolina, where he dealt with arsonists, poachers, and bitter winter storms, plus his own experience as a stockman in battles with government authorities over sheep- and cattle-killing bears.
From his many years in the backcountry as a hunter, fisherman, hiker, and pack tripper, Tom distills firsthand observations of wildlife, geography, and mountain sociology. We hear the droll talk of mountain men riding out storms in remote stock-hunters’ cabins and anecdotes about city slickers in their first encounters with the wild.
After operating a primitive fishing camp in the heart of the Smokies in the late 1920s, Tom and his wife, Judy, went on to create the original Cataloochee Ranch on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It continues as one of the Southeast’s most renowned resorts and historic ski lodges.
Equally important as the text are the photographs, which are beautifully reproduced here. Mountain Fever is illustrated with well over 120 photographs, either collected by the Cataloochee Ranch over Mr. Alexander’s lifetime or chosen from professional photos made during that period. Leading regional photographers of the day — Herbert Pelton, Margaret W. Morley, R. Henry Scadin, and Tom’s friend George Masa — recreate a sense of a time and place fast disappearing. Enjoy this unique source for many unpublished Masa photographs.
"But no one who delights in the outdoors and visits Cataloochee can come away without an appreciation for the serenity and natural beauty that lured Tom Alexander, Sr. to spend his life there and write so movingly about his experiences." — Joe A. Mobley in the North Carolina Historical Review
"Illustrations for the book combine some of the best photographers of Western North Carolina and the Alexander family.
These photographs, including the classic images made by George Masa, make the book a delight. This well-designed little volume is
quite charming. Mountain Fever is valuable as a supporting source for anyone reading about the complex history of the Southern
Appalachians in the twentieth century."
— Philip P. Banks in North Carolina Libraries
; "Tom Alexander")
In the early 1920s, Tom studied forestry at the University of Georgia, where he developed many of his outdoor skills. He left school due to a lack of money and took numerous jobs, mostly with the U.S. Forest Service, which led him to the mountains of Western North Carolina. He worked there as a forest ranger and also found jobs in land surveying, trail construction, fire prevention, and, of particular importance at the time, timber sales.
In 1926, Tom was hired as a timber estimator for the James D. Lacey Company, which was contracted to appraise the timber value on land the federal government was planning to buy for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While working for the Lacey Company, Tom was invited to join a group of Asheville businessmen at a hunting and fishing lodge in Pisgah National Forest. He met Judith Barksdale there, and they were married in 1929. Four months after the wedding the Depression hit, and the Lacey Company went bankrupt. Tom lost his job, and Judy was pregnant.
The Lacey Company still owed Tom $600. He asked to be paid with the company’s camping equipment at Three Forks Creek, and the company agreed. Tom later wrote, "I suddenly found myself in the tourist business, the owner of an outfit of tents, cots, mattresses, and cooking equipment, already in place beside one of the finest trout streams in the Southern Appalachians, even if only the most dedicated fishermen could actually get to it." Seizing the opportunity, Tom began leading camping and fishing expeditions into Three Forks.
; "Tom and Judy Alexander")
Three years later, Tom and Judy leased a farm in the Cataloochee Valley inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They opened the original Cataloochee Ranch there in 1933. The government proved too restrictive, and the second Cataloochee Ranch emerged in 1939, this time on Fie Top Mountain, outside the park boundaries.
Tom Alexander died in 1972, followed by his wife Judy in 1997. The Cataloochee Ranch, famed for its home cooking, square dancing, horseback riding, and skiing, is now operated by their descendants.
The basis for Mountain Fever was an unfinished manuscript written by Tom Alexander, Sr. His son and daughter-in-law, Tom and Jane Alexander, edited and expanded that manuscript, inviting sisters Alice Aumen and Judy Coker to contribute memories of their parents. After retiring from distinguished journalism careers in the late 1980s, Tom and Jane Alexander moved back to the Cataloochee Ranch, to a log house they built from timber hewn on the property.
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