The elk reintroduction program initiated by Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials in Cataloochee Valley has been, as it should be, all the rage in local, state and national media outlets. Accordingly, it’s surprising that a previous elk “reintroduction” at Hooper Bald in Graham County near Robbinsville has been neglected in this spate of coverage. It’s one hell of a story that involves elk, wild boar, bears, buffaloes, and lots of other critters.

The primary sources for this tale are a 29-page pamphlet by Perry Jones entitled “The European Wild Boar in North Carolina” (North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, 1959) and Alberta and Carson Brewer’s “Valley So Wild: A Folk History” (East Tennessee Folk Society, 1975). Michael Frome’s “Stranger in High Places: The Story of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park” (Doubleday & Company, 1966) is also worth consulting, as is the “Graham County Centennial (1872-1972)” memorial publication.

In the early part of the 20th century, Hooper Bald (named for Dr. Enos Hooper, who cut trails in the area) was about as remote as one could get in the southern mountains, excepting, maybe, some of the higher portions of the Smokies range to the immediate northeast. Hooper Bald, as the name implies, is one of the mysterious natural grassy balds that are found in the southern mountains from southwestern Virginia into north Georgia. At that time the grassy area atop the mountain at 5,529 feet above sea level was an irregular triangle about 15 acres in extent.

Situated about a mile east of the state line with Tennessee, Hooper Bald is 10 air miles from Robbinsville to the east and 12 from Andrews to the south. It’s not all that accessible today, and back then it was plumb remote.

In 1908, an English timber-investment concern, the Whiting Manufacturing Company, purchased a vast amount of land in the region that included Hooper Bald. The company decided to float a loan of $2 million dollars, and George Gordon Moore, one of their advisers, agreed to be their financial agent.

Moore — described by one local to the Brewers as “a plunger” and by another as “rich today and poor tomorrow” — was successful in this regard and was rewarded with the right to establish a game preserve of 1,600 or so acres in the Hooper Bald region. His objective was to wine and dine and otherwise entertain wealthy friends and potential clients with a little hunting so to encourage them to invest in his various companies located in the United States and abroad.

The scenic grassy bald area was a natural spot to locate a lodge and the pens for grazing animals. A road was initiated to the bald in 1909 and by the winter of 1911, construction on a large fenced game lot began. Two locals, Walt Wiggins and Will Engle, hauled 25 tons of wire to Hooper Bald for one dollar per 100 pounds. The fence, nailed to trees and exceeding 10 feet in height, was completed in 1911. Surrounding the bald, “the buffalo lot” as it was called, lacked just 250 feet of being a mile in circumference.

A smaller lot of 550 or so acres called “the boar lot” was located farther down from the lodge. It was encompassed by a fence of split rails 9 rails high. There were also smaller game enclosures, elaborate dog kennels, a horse trail, and a telephone line strung through the woodlands that connected the lodge with the outside world via a connection at Marble, North Carolina, west of Andrews.

Beginning in 1912, the preserve was stocked with eight buffaloes, 14 elk, 6 Colorado mule deer, 34 bears (9 of which were Russian brown bears), 200 wild turkeys, 10,000 English ring-neck pheasant eggs, and 13 wild boar. For good measure, Moore also purchased 150 sheep and 150 turkeys locally.

These animals were shipped from around the world to railhead at Murphy. Capt. Frank Swan, a local drover, was employed to meet the train and move them to the preserve with his train of 6 wagons that utilized two yoke of oxen per wagon. It was 25 miles across some of the roughest terrain imaginable from Murphy to the preserve at Hooper Bald.

“We headed out over a dirt track for Hooper Bald by way of Hanging Dog and the old Jap Fain place,” recalled Swan. “It took us three days” for each trip.

Ah yes! ... does the George Gordon Moore game-preserve scheme sound all too familiar to those of you who have lived here in the mountains for a lifetime or for a good while? ... such schemes arise and the they fall ... they come in on the wings of wild dreams and the greased tracks of big money ... and then, ever so frequently, they crumble and fall in the wink of an eye ... here we go.

“Almost immediately,” Jones writes, “blows of adversity began to strike the preserve. Some of the big bears promptly climbed out of the wire stockade, and since several of them had come from zoos, they would proceed to the clubhouse for food. The thought of a large bear appearing at any moment made sleeping extremely difficult. In order to return a bear to the lot, two men would have to lasso each of his front feet, pull him around a tree, and securely bind both pairs of feet together on the opposite side of the tree. Next a pole was placed across the back of his neck, and his chin was pushed up firmly against the tree. While two men would hold this pole, another would put a collar securely around the bear’s neck. Two chains were then snapped on the collar. The pole and ropes were then removed, the bear was ‘collared,’ and the two men at the extreme end of the chain would hold the bear off each other. This procedure was described as ‘spread-eagling’ a bear. The bear quickly fell prey to sharpshooting mountaineers and all the other animals rather quickly faded away in an environment they couldn’t cope with ....”

All, that is, except the elk and the wild boar. Area residents have long referred to the wild boar as the Russian (or “Roossian”) wild boar, but Jones speculates that they actually came from Germany. At any rate, they were the only ones to escape from the preserve and survive, to this day, in the surrounding mountains. Established in 1934, the 520,000-acre Great Smoky Mountains National Park has become their prime sanctuary despite extended shooting and trapping campaigns by the park service to eradicate them due to their destructive habits.

Although one can’t really claim that the Hooper Bald elk were properly “reintroduced” — after all, the ultimate objective was to shoot them, not to allow them to reproduce and thrive — the elk nevertheless “survived” for awhile on their own; however, the exact circumstances are unclear. It’s probable that some were penned and others roamed the general area.

All sources agree that the original elk “herd” at the bald was comprised of 14 animals. Some sources maintain that the herd reached a maximum of just over 30 head ... others maintain that the number reached 75 head. As is often the instance, it was probably somewhere in between.

Twenty-five elk were rounded up by Cotton McGuire — Moore’s longtime foreman who was deeded the preserve in the mid-1920s — and sold to the North Carolina Game Division. Some of these animals were released on Mt. Mitchell. Sportsmen also paid McGuire $75 for the right to come to Hooper Bald and kill an elk. McGuire lived on Hooper Bald for 30 years with his family. They often dined on wild boar and elk. Jones reports that the last elk “was killed by Claude Hyde, now living in Robbinsville,” but he doesn’t provide a date. The Brewers suggested that they “lasted until about 1935.”

So ends the saga of the original elk “reintroduction” project in the Smokies region.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com