Before this was US-129, before it was the Dragon, before it was anything with a number, these mountains had a name and a people, and they still do. This is Cherokee country — and I don't mean only in the history-book, long-ago sense. I mean right now, today, all around you.
You've likely heard of the Trail of Tears — that terrible removal in eighteen thirty-eight, when the U.S. Army forced the Cherokee out of these southern mountains and marched them a thousand miles west to Oklahoma, and thousands died along the way. It's one of the darkest chapters this country's got. But here's the part folks forget: not everyone went.
Up in the coves and hollows around here — the Snowbird Mountains, just southwest of where you're riding — bands of Cherokee slipped away from the soldiers and hid. They knew this country the way you know your own house, every laurel thicket and hidden branch, and they melted into it and would not be moved. And their descendants are still here. The Snowbird community, over in Graham County, is one of the most traditional Cherokee communities anywhere — folks who still speak the language, still carry the old ways, on a piece of the very homeland their ancestors refused to leave.
So this isn't a road through empty scenery. It's a road through somebody's home — an old home, a held home, a home defended by hiding in the hills when the whole force of the government came to take it. Ride it with a little respect. The Dragon's an American legend, sure. But the mountains it coils through belonged to somebody long before, and in a real and living way, still do.
Photo: Jsayre64 · CC BY-SA 4.0
