\[Editor’s Note: This is a historical perspective of the old Waynesville Hatchery, which has been converted into offices and a depot for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. Heading west on the Great Smoky Mountains Expressway, the site is outside of Waynesville on the right just before reaching the Blue Ridge Parkway.]

During my 26-year career with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, I have met many people who have told tales of going to the state fish hatchery outside Waynesville at Balsam Gap as children and as adults.

Gordon Smathers is a wealth of such tales, having worked at the hatchery in 1932 and 1933 for 15 cents an hour and living in the vicinity of the hatchery his entire life. In the beginning, the site was as much a zoo as a hatchery, he recalled. Animals kept on the hatchery grounds included two monkeys named Herbert and Joe, a mountain lion, deer, black bear, prairie dogs and snakes. The black bear was the first known bear in the area to have a cub in captivity, Smathers said.

Before any of the other attractions in Maggie Valley and Cherokee were created, many folks enjoyed trips to the hatchery on Sunday afternoons.

Jeanie Rector of Clyde remembers going to the hatchery as a child in the 1930s to look at the animals. One Easter, she was walking the railroad tracks from her grandfather’s house in nearby Saunooke. She was wearing her Easter dress and was looking at the bear when it reared up on the cage and threw mud all over her dress.

David McClure, a local outdoor equipment shop owner, remembers how cold the hatchery waters were after falling in one of the raceways as a child. Fifteen years ago, an elderly gentleman stopped in and was looking around the grounds. He commented that he helped plant the several 200-foot tall Norway spruce and hemlock that now watch over the site.

Many a youngster — and a grownup or two — could not resist trying to grapple one of the slick trout in the raceways. Some had ingenious ways of luring in the fish. One enterprising boy had a fish line rigged inside his pants running down and out the bottom of his pants leg. Baited with a red worm, he would put his foot up on the raceway, dangle his lure in the water and pull a fat rainbow up his britches leg. This worked fine until a hatchery worker noticed the boy’s leg twitching uncontrollably.

Before the use of manufactured trout feed, raw meat was ground and mixed with grain to feed the hungry fish. Often during those years, anglers complained and some would not eat the trout because of the taste after being raised on the raw meat mixture.

The “rearing station,” as it was called years ago, was one of several constructed during the 1920s and 1930s. The 12-acre site was bought from J.R. Morgan and his wife in 1919 for $1,200 by the Fisheries Commission Board, the precursor to the Wildlife Commission. The initial hatchery was built in the 1920s and improved in the 1930s by the Works Projects Administration, which built the hatchery’s concrete raceways and round ponds as well as nearly a mile of water lines that brought water to the site from Winchester Creek.

The hatchery’s first superintendent was Leo Reiger; his son Leo Jr. followed him. Johnny Byrd came on board in 1963, with Jerry Hodge managing the hatchery until it closed in 1983.

The Waynesville Hatchery ceased operation as a hatchery in 1983 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service turned over operation of the Pisgah hatchery to the state. Today, the site is home to offices and depot for Inland Fisheries, Wildlife Management, Engineering Services and the Enforcement divisions.

(Paul Pittman is a fisheries technician for the Wildlife Commission’s Division of Inland Fisheries.)