Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 63

CLOCKWISE
FROM LEFT:
Present-day
Lake Toxaway is
beautiful in the
fall.
The Toxaway Inn
(colorized) was
built in 1903 and
hosted socialites
from around the
world.
Lake Toxaway was
calm before the
flood of 1916.
E
xactly what happened on August
13, 1916, in Lake Toxaway,
North Carolina, is still unclear.
Some say that after days of driving
rain, the lake's dam exploded,
letting loose a torrent so fantastically ferocious
that its roar could be heard from miles away.
Others say the reservoir's five billion gallons of
cold mountain water was released more slowly,
over several days.
John L. Nichols, III, a board member with
the Historic Toxaway Foundation,
isn't sure
which narrative is closest to reality. " We're trying
to find an original account of the dam
breaking, " he says, " but everyone has a different
story. "
However, Nichols knows one thing to be true:
When Lake Toxaway went dry, the surrounding
community dried up, too. What was once
described as " America's Switzerland " -a place
where Vanderbilts and Rockefellers spent crisp
mornings boating and languid evenings dining
on highbrow fare-disappeared in a flash.
" Everybody got on the trains and left, " says
Nichols. They knew, as the Greensboro Daily
News so keenly predicted just three days after
the emptying, that " Toxaway without the big
lake will not be Toxaway. " And so, it became
a ghost town.
Thanks to Nichols' grandfather, a South
Carolina real estate developer by the name of
Reginald Heinitsh, the reservoir and eponymous
town were revived from the dead some 60
years ago. In the decades since, Lake Toxaway
has reclaimed its position as a high-elevation
refuge. But the history of Lake Toxaway's heyday-the
glorious era before the flood-continues
to haunt its shores.
JULY/AUGUST 2024 63
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
VISITNC
COURTESY OF JOHN NICHOLS III

Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024

Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 4
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 5
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 6
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 7
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 8
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 37
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 46
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 47
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 49
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 50
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 57
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 62
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 63
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 65
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 66
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 67
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 81
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 82
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover4
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