Celebrating 150 Years in 2025
The Founding Fathers of Highlands
It is often said that the Town of Highlands was founded by two men - Samuel Truman Kelsey and Clinton Carter “C.C.” Hutchinson - in 1875. History would argue that four men bear primary responsibility for the founding as Kelsey and Hutchinson would never have had the knowledge or opportunity without the efforts of two others - William Dobson and Silas McDowell.
William Dobson had inherited over one thousand acres of land on the Highlands Plateau from his father who had acquired the land through state land grants. The land included 839 acres that make up most of the town limits of Highlands today. Dobson used the heavily forested land to run sheep and cattle and had cleared small tracts to plant apple orchards. The only residents within the current town limits were Hugh and Mary Ann Gibson, caretakers for Dobson, who lived in a rough-hewn log cabin near Main and First Street today.
Silas McDowell was a self-taught geologist, zoologist and botanist who lived down the mountain in Sugartown, an old Cherokee village near the current Cullasaja Community just east of Franklin. For years, McDowell had been writing of the “Sugartown Highlands” near the headwaters of the Surgartown River, which is today’s Cullasaja River. In various horticultural publications and the Smithsonian Reports of 1856, McDowell was the first to describe “a vast green ribbon” running through what he termed the “thermal belt” in which early frosts failed to affect the mountainsides between certain elevations throughout western North Carolina.
For over thirty years, McDowell sought to promote Sugartown Highlands as both an agricultural wonder and a health resort due to its unique climate. McDowell’s writings attracted the interest of famous botanists like Dr. Moses Ashley Curtis and Asa Gray, who in turn, further added to the promotion of Highlands as an area rich and diverse in botanical offerings.
Hutchinson and Kelsey had both been born in the east, lived in Illinois for a time, and ended up in Kansas by the mid-1860’s. Hutchinson was a cartographer, businessman and politician. Kelsey was an agriculturalist who specialized in the cultivation of fruit trees. The two met at Ottawa University in Kansas, which had been established by Hutchinson, when Kelsey was hired to plant over 15,000 trees on the campus property.
Hutchinson was the first to be attracted to the environment described by McDowell due to health problems which he ascribed to poor climate and he traveled to the area to witness the conditions firsthand. Making the decision to move his family to the mountains of North Carolina, Hutchinson enlisted Kelsey to join him. On March 6, 1875, the two were joined by a local guide, Charlie Jenks, atop the summit of Satulah Mountain where they laid out a crude survey of the town that would become Highlands. The compass that they used that day remains in the archives of the Historical Society.
Kelsey and Hutchinson began negotiating with William Dobson and, on March 26th, they purchased the 839 acres of land for the price of $2 an acre. For the first year, the two men lived in the cabin previously occupied by the Gibsons as they fenced acreage for pasture and planted some of the few acres that were cleared. They did not begin laying out the streets until 1876 when Main Street, Laurel Avenue and sites for churches and a town hall were located.
The task of developing and promoting the town fell to Kelsey. Hutchinson left town for good in 1878, having spent less than a year total in the area. On the other hand, Kelsey worked diligently to promote the town, declaring in pamphlets that “there is no better place in the world for health, comfort and enjoyment” and, in a later pamphlet published in 1887, that Highlands is “the Greatest HEALTH and PLEASURE RESORT in the United States.”
Kelsey lived in Highlands until 1890 when, discouraged by the lack of growth, he left for the new town of Linville at the base of Grandfather Mountain. Less than ten years later, Highlands had more than doubled in population with an influx of summer residents and the trend of enjoying Highlands as an escape from the heat of summer began.
Today, the Town of Highlands looks far different than it did at the time of its founding. Primeval forests have come and gone. Businesses and residences have been built and torn down. However - thanks to the vision and efforts of these four “Founding Fathers” - Highlands remains a place of cool beauty and tranquility for generations of people who have enjoyed a respite from the busyness of life down the mountain.