The Stecoah community and nearby Robbinsville — old Cherokee ground, mountain music, and the Appalachian Trail crossing at Stecoah Gap on the connector road.
You're passing through Stecoah now, an old mountain community on old Cherokee ground — the name comes from a Cherokee word, and the people here have held onto their heritage tight. The heart of it is the old Stecoah schoolhouse, a handsome native-rock building from nineteen twenty-six that the community saved from the wrecking ball and turned into an arts center. On summer evenings it fills up for bluegrass and old-time music — 'An Appalachian Evening,' they call it — some of the finest mountain music you'll hear anywhere.
Just south of here, a connector road climbs to Stecoah Gap, where the Appalachian Trail crosses on its two-thousand-mile journey from Georgia to Maine — so somewhere out in these woods, right now, there are hikers walking the spine of the whole Eastern seaboard.
And the county seat nearby, Robbinsville, punches well above its weight: it's the hometown of Ronnie Milsap, the blind country-music giant with three dozen number-one hits, born right here in these mountains in nineteen forty-three. There's a lot of music in this hard, beautiful country. Roll on toward the Nantahala.
Photo: Warren LeMay from Cullowhee, NC, United States · CC0
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