Many folks like to travel far and wide so as to enjoy themselves and renew their perspectives. That’s OK. But I’m not like that at all. Give me the choice of an all expenses paid vacation to Kenya or New Zealand or Ducktown, Tenn., and I’ll pick Ducktown every time. It’s a no-brainer. I’m a local guy and I like local attractions. The funkier the attraction the better. The 19th century Bristish naturalist and essayist W.H. Hudson described himself as “a traveller in little things.” That’s me.

My latest excursion “in little things” was to Tallulah Falls, which is situated down U.S. 441 from Franklin, N.C., a few miles south of Clayton, Ga. I first saw Tallulah Falls in the late 1940s when I was 8 or 9 years old. My father had an uncle living in Abingdon, Va., who owned a getaway cabin in Florida. Every year or so six to eight of us piled into his station wagon and made the long winding trip southward to the Sunshine State. My most vivid memory of the those excursions is that we always stopped at Tallulah Gorge for ice cream and a view of “The Chasm” from Tallulah Point, the only business that afforded a direct view of the gorge from its decks

As a child I was impressed by the scenic grandeur of Tallulah Gorge. I still am. It’s the oldest natural gorge in the United States, second in depth only to the Grand Canyon. The only quartzite-walled gorge in the southern Appalachians, it ranges in depth from 200 to 1,200 feet and is two miles long. The width varies from 200 feet to a half mile across. Traversing and creating the gorge, the Tallulah River — prior to the completion of a dam in 1913 — dropped 650 feet in a half mile in a series of truly dramatic waterfalls.

The mid-20th century film star Tallulah Bankhead was named after the site, not vice versa. It was the Cherokees who first called the river “Tallulah.” Early travelers provided glowing descriptions of the area — especially of the raging river and its dramatic waterfalls — that soon drew members of Atlanta’s elite and plantation owners from the coast. North Georgia’s first genuine tourist attraction was born, drawing thousands each year after the Civil War. Then, with the arrival in 1882 of what would become the Tallulah Gorge Railroad, that number turned into thousands a week. At peak periods during the summer, five daily railroad excursions brought upwards of 2,000 people a day. Situated around the rim of this natural attraction, the town of Tallulah Falls featured 17 hotels (most with house bands) and countless bars that lined the streets, which were paved with wood. Those were the glory days.

Shortly after the turn of the century, work on Tallulah Dam project was initiated. Completed in 1913, the dam diverted the river through its powerhouses so that electricity flowed for the first time over wires to Atlanta to operate trolley cars.

With the raging river “tamed,” reduced to a trickle, the decline of Tallulah Gorge and the village of Tallulah Falls as a tourist attraction was inevitable and swift. Some hotels closed and most of the others were burned down in 1922. Two years later, the construction of U.S. 441 bypassed the town altogether. The glory days were over, for awhile.

They have returned, in a sense, in the form of a state park first announced by Zell Miller, then governor of Georgia, in the early 1990s. The plan, unique to this park, called for shared management responsibilities on the part of the state and Georgia Power. In 1996 the Jane Hurt Yarn Interpretive Center opened its doors on the far side of the gorge. The facility is excellent, featuring comprehensive displays on the site’s natural and human history. It also provides direct access to dramatic-but-safe overlooks on the rim as well as to an intricate trail system that traverses the gorge.

I returned to Tallulah Gorge this past Monday with a definite “research” project in mind. I’ve always regretted that I didn’t witness Karl Wallenda’s fabulous crossing of the gorge on a high wire in July 1970. I was in graduate school at the University of South Carolina in Columbia at the time. I read about it in the newspapers and could easily have driven up for the event. But, alas, I didn’t.

As far back as 1780, in the cafes of Old Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ancestral Wallenda family was a traveling circus troupe consisting of acrobats, jugglers, clowns, aerialists and animal trainers all in one family. Karl Wallenda was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1905. In America he became the most famous high wire walker in history. His most widely quoted observation was “Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting.” This comment inspired musician Juliana Hatfield to write the song “Become What You Are” that contained the memorable lyrics “Karl Wallenda said it right/Walking a wire is the only life.”

It’s generally acknowledged by those who know about such things that Wallenda’s most daring walk ever was his 40-minute, 1,200-foot long trek across Tallulah Gorge, where thousands once again assembled to watch in awe as the 65-year-old aerialist performed two separate headstands at a height of over 700 feet in the air. At the conclusion of this incredible feat he was handed a plaque by then Gov. Lester Maddoux (remember him?) and invited to a reception at the Heart of Rabun Motel in Clayton. Oh, what a day.

The Wallenda crossing of the gorge has been well documented. But a previous, equally astonishing, crossing by a “Professor Leon” way back in 1886 has received little attention. That long-ago event was the object of my recent excursion “in little things.” I had garnered from an Internet source that “On July 24, 1886, a crowd estimated at 3,500 to 6,000 people assembled to watch Professor Leon walk across the gorge on a tightrope. His historic feat began on the north rim at Inspiration Point, the highest point in the gorge at 1,200 feet. When he was near the center, one of his guy lines broke and the professor fell. Luckily, he caught the cable and sat on it for 25 minutes, before completing his walk.”

But who was “Professor Leon” and why had he undertaken this venture? After poking around the exhibits in the Interpretive Center and talking with old-timers in Tallulah Falls, here’s what I found out.

“Professor Leon” was the alias for an aerialist named J.A. St. John. The owner of the Grand View Hotel in Tallulah Falls, Y.D. Young, had seen “Professor Leon” make an impressive high rope walk between two buildings in the Five Points section of Atlanta. As an early venture in tourist attraction, he contracted the aerialist to make a double-crossing of Tallulah Gorge, for which he would be paid a goodly sum upon completion.

Utilizing over 20,000 feet of rope, “Professor Leon” almost single-handedly constructed a spider web of supporting guy wires to stabilize his main rope, which extended 1,440 feet across the chasm. To balance himself, he used a 46-pound pole that was 30 feet long.

Things went well, at first. But when he was about half way across, two guy wires broke and “Professor Leon” immediately “dropped to a sitting position.” Some minutes later, “visibly shaken and talking to himself,” he managed to get back up on the rope and finish a one-way crossing.

But the hotel owner, who had contracted for a two-way crossing without a slip, promptly canceled his contract with the distraught aerialist, whose only compensation for months of work and placing his life in imminent danger high above the gorge was $250.

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