Hiking to the Most Remote Ghost Town in Appalachia

Today I'm in North Carolina, hiking in to what might be the most remote ghost town in all of Appalachia. Oh, here we go. This is a town that at one point in time had over 100 residents. There was a school, there was a church, there were sawmills, and all sorts of things. But in the town's entire history, there was never electricity. Do you think you could live out a place like this? And there's never a real road into the town. It was a place settled by soldiers who were just tired of fighting their brothers, and they survived off moonshining, logging, and a lot of self-reliance. Imagine getting all this out here, all the building materials. This was home. The town is called Lost Cove, and the hike to get there is no joke. So we can get on the trail and learn some history. As they say, if these walls could talk, huh? The trail reports online say that this hike is really hard, and I think my morning started off a little bit more difficult even, because the Forest Service road that gets you to the trailhead was locked about two miles and 600 feet in elevation before the trailhead. So I got a warm-up in, so I'm already moving and grooving here on this hike. And it's cool. I don't know exactly what I expected, but so far it's still lush, even though it's wintertime. So we're going to keep hiking along here, kind of tell the history of this place, and see what's left of it. Lost Cove sits high above the river, tucked into the mountains, right along the North Carolina-Tennessee border. Even today, it feels hidden. 160 years ago, it must have felt like the edge of the world. So the story of Lost Cove begins in the 1860s, around the Civil War. That was a period of time that was pitting brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor. Were you Union? Were you Confederate? And some people were kind of just fed up with that decision and that forced hand that they were having to do. And so there was a guy named Stephen Morgan Bailey that decided, you know what, I've had enough of it. I'm going to go out into the woods and make my way there. And he came out here, kind of established a plot of land, started farming it, making it his home. And you know, word got out. Relatives, blood brothers, friends, different people started slowly moving out here. And as the town developed, then they were able to get into industries like moonshining, later on sawmills. And that saw the town expand even more to eventually have a population somewhere around 100. You know, they built a church that they used as a schoolhouse. They built sawmills. The railroad would go by. And as the railroad was going by, they'd hand them the mail and they'd keep going. You know, they'd keep their milk cold down in the river. And they just found a way to survive. You know, it was a very self-sufficient community out here. That's inspiring, you know, in a lot of ways to think that these woods, people kind of carved out their own life. And unfortunately, you know, the world progressed past them, even if they were hidden out here in the woods. And that would eventually lead to the town's demise. But we're just about to the town. So we're gonna get into there, check out some of the buildings that are left. I'm excited to see that and maybe learn a little bit more about each individual building and kind of the story of this place as it developed. This wasn't land people came to for comfort. Winters were cold, summers wet, and getting in and out was never easy. There were no roads, just trails and whatever conditions nature decided to give you. But for families looking for quiet, for safety, or just for a place to live on their own terms, this cove offered something rare. Isolation and enough land to survive on. It's hard to imagine walking the trail now that Lost Cove wasn't just some campsite, it wasn't a retreat, it was a town where people lived their daily lives. They were born there, they died there, they worked at the mill there, and for the almost 100 years that the town existed from the 1860s into the 1950s, there was never electricity there, there was no real road there, and the only way to get there was hiking on a trail, following the railroad tracks, or going on a river. And for the longest time people living there didn't even know if they lived in Tennessee or North Carolina. This area that I'm in is right on the border and it's so remote that for the longest time neither state wanted to take ownership of it. It was too remote to send their people out there, it seemed like a big headache, and because neither side wanted to claim this spot, that allowed a legal loophole for moonshining to happen. And that was one of the big industries out here for the longest time was moonshining. And as the railroad was developed and went by Lost Cove, they had a market to sell their moonshine. And eventually they would set up a lumber mill out here. So there was a mill or two that were set up, and that became the industry. But I think as I'm going out here, it's not even just what's left, it's why it existed to begin with. And that story's really fascinating. And so we're getting closer to it, dive into the more of the history, but the sun's about to hit, which is a nice break because it's pretty chilly this morning. And I'm liking this, this is a really cool hike. For this town to survive and become more than just, again, a campsite far away, it needed something, you know, something that could become an artery for people to come, go, get supplies. That was the railroad. So the railroad came in the gorge below me, and that allowed families to come and go, get supplies to sell their wares. You know, most of the families out here were making a lot of their own food. They had chickens, a little farm, that could be everything. And the railroad allowed this town to become more than just a hideout in the woods. And eventually it would be the reason that the town died as well. And jumping a little further ahead, the townspeople out here eventually petitioned for a road. That road petition was denied, and that was kind of the death wish. But the thing I'm thinking about the most walking out here is how many times have you thought, man, if me and my friends could just get a plot of land and we'd make our own community. And hey, maybe this story could be a little inspiration for you because back in 1860, they did it way out here in the woods, North Carolina. Oh, I see some stacked stones. And so that makes me feel like we're getting close, going through a little river. Nature doesn't leave too many straight lines out in the forest, and they definitely don't stack rocks like that. So we must be getting close and I'm excited. Check out some buildings. Oh, we've got some more foundations of other buildings because we might've been on the old main street. What first comes to my mind too is when I see these building materials is getting all this out here. You know, using rocks makes sense. You know, that's why a lot of remote areas I've been to, you'll see rocks used as the building materials, cause that's where you are. But the metal and all of that, as somebody who's been building a hotel in the middle of nowhere, California ghost town, that's where my mind goes. Looks like we've got a little chimney up ahead. I found as I've been exploring a lot of ghost towns on the East is when you come across buildings, this is mostly what remains, a chimney and nothing around it because the environment has caused the wood to rot or it was reused. Whereas in the West where I live out in the desert, California, Nevada, the whole building's usually there. And here just kind of shows the heartbeat of it. Here you go. Here's the first remnants that we've seen of the lost town of Lost Cove. Oh, and here we go. We got our first structure out here in the woods. Looks like it was made over the railroad ties. This is always the moment that kind of changes it for me. When I see a structure, it goes from just black and white photos to a hometown. You know, I think that we like the abandoned and the historic because it's kind of a link between the past and present. You know, you can think about people living their lives here. They're coming out, they're doing their morning tasks, feeding the chickens, nothing dramatic, just, you know, life repeating itself over and over again. And then you can jump to the future and imagine your house that you live in looking like this or torn down. So I think it's a great connector going to places like this. You know, I spend a lot of my time hiking to old ghost towns or taking my truck on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. And a huge game changer for me has been an app called Onyx Offroad. Onyx is an off-road navigation app that allows you to do just some amazing things. You can build your route ahead of time and save it offline. So you have a detailed map and navigation of wherever you're going. If you want to know if you're gonna have cell service or not, they have cell service maps for wherever you're going to head. There's the cool trails that are around you. If there's cool off-roading trails for your truck, there's reviews, there's recent photos. It's absolutely amazing and it has been a lifesaver for me out here on this road trip. And if you want to give it a shot, they're giving 20% off your first year's membership. All you have to do is use the code BRENT at checkout or scan this code on the screen. Again, Onyx Offroad, an amazing tool. If you spend any time in the backcountry, I hope you check it out. Here's more of the town tucked away in the woods. A hundred years ago, imagine people just saying this is gonna be it. This is my spot. And this house was Chester Bailey's way back in the day. And Chester was a relative of the guy who set up the town. And it's a shame that all the way out here people still want to draw stuff on it. You figure, is this hard to get to? It's a self-screening situation, but that doesn't seem to be the case. But just try to imagine this is it. This is where in the mornings you're waking up. Civil war's happening. You're tending to your chickens this winter time. You're kind of insulated from all the news. And I relate to that because that's Cerro Gordo where I live. Sometimes news takes a while to get to me, even with the internet. Or at least there's not people yapping your ear off about the news all the time. By the early 1900s, Lost Cove had reached its peak. Around the 1920s, close to a hundred people were living up here. More than you'd ever guess walking through it now. The railroad was running along the river and everything changed. The old Clinchfield line connected the Cove to the outside world, bringing jobs and timber, a way to trade goods and extra income for when the times were hard. You can see down below the river and the railroad running along it. And that was, again, the reason this place was able to exist back in the day. Access. And there's tons of downed trees around here. I think this must have been from the hurricane that came through what a year or two ago now. Maybe just a year ago. Just absolutely wrecked this place. All sorts of big trees overturned. We're gonna make our way down to the river. And now we're getting down to the lifeblood of this place. The railroad and the river. And originally it was a commuter train that would go by here and it would stop and allow passengers on and off. And that was a way that this town could survive. And eventually it was replaced with a commuter or with a freight train that didn't make those stops. And when the train passes by a town, much like a highway misses it, bad things happen. That's what happened to Lost Cove too. By the 1950s, things started to change. The timber was mostly gone. Passenger trains stopped running. And the isolation, which once felt like protection, started to feel like a trap. In 1952, the county decided that a road into Lost Cove was too expensive to build. That decision quietly sealed the town's fate. Around the same time, the school was pressured to send older kids miles away for board. For families who already lost steady work and reliable access to the outside world, that was the breaking point. These steps right here, this is all that remains of the Cove's church. So this is where the community would have congregated. This is also the school. You can tell like nothing was ever there. Once again, someone's home. What do you think? Do you think you could live out in a place like this? Out in the middle of nowhere peaceful? Kind of living off the land? Something you're interested in? Something I'm interested in obviously. And same with the people that were out here too. The fancy one. They even had their drywall up. And there it is. Mother Nature reclaiming what was once hers. I like these buildings. You know, I, like I've said, am restoring an abandoned mining town. I'm always looking at not just what I can learn, but also the building techniques, the wood being used, the materials being used. Metal roofs are obviously pretty common. I don't love the drywall. But again, this town was a town until the 1950s, which is crazy. There's their kitchen, their stove. One by one, people packed up and left. Not because they wanted to, but because staying no longer made sense. And after that happened, town kind of slowly dried up. The school here closed in 1957 and families were left with a choice. You know, they asked for a road into here, just a three mile road, and they couldn't get it. So New Year's Day, 1958, the last family walked out of Lost Cove. And one of the last residents, Velmer Bailey, wrote on the church wall, school closed forever at Lost Cove. Very sad. He later told newspaper, we don't want to leave, but we got no choice. Here's the part that gets me is they didn't set all this up thinking they were going to leave. You don't build a family, build a store, build a church, build a school house if you think you're going to leave. But those families had to. That was just what was forced upon them. For decades up here in the woods, Lost Cove sat waiting. Maybe they'd come back one day. In 2007, fires burned down most of what's left. And it's a reminder, you know, that this place wasn't abandoned because resources left or the people that lived here didn't care anymore. They disappeared because the connections broke. What drove them out here eventually ended the town.