FLIGHTSUIT by Tom Deaderick, is set in a combination of the Lost Cove and Bumpas Cove, Tennessee.

​

Excerpt from Blue Ridge Country magazine, May/June 1997, “The Ghost Town of the Nolichucky” by Frank Elliott…

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

“There were rattlesnakes, and there were wildcats – bobcats – ’cause we were out in the wilderness. There was nothing but mountains and wilderness.”

​

“By this time (1930) Lost Cove was a real community, with a school house and church. A post office and general store operated out of one of the houses. Income from the logging operation gave the residents the means to acquire “modern” creature comforts brought in on the train – new wood cookstoves, linoleum for the floors, wallpaper for the walls.”

​

“But the train couldn’t bring electricity, and the cove – miles from anything and surrounded by rugged mountains – never made it on any rural electric cooperative’s plans.”

​

“Anna Damcroft remembers visiting the cove in 1952 when she was in her mid-20s. Her husband, Walt, was a photographer for the Ashville Citizen and she accompanied him when he hiked in to take some pictures of the cove and its self-reliant residents.

​

When she made it to the top they offered her something cool to drink – and then pulled a jar out of a wire cage set in a frigid mountain spring.”