Freeing Fonta Flora

Nestled within the verdant tapestry of towering pines and dense underbrush, atop rushing waters and deep cliffs, folktales echo the resilient heart of Burke County’s mountainous woodlands. These 20th-century legends represent a prosperous and diverse agricultural community where Lake James now lies, a place that—despite the Jim Crow era––flourished with racial harmony. The name Fonta Flora is plagued with idyllic dreams of harmony during turbulent times, shackled exclusively to the laws of its 5000-acre land. However, such fairytales seldom last forever. Today, if you ask residents about Fonta Flora, they will point to the skeletons of its watery grave beneath the man-made lake, lost to tides of progress and development.

Fonta Flora to Burke County

Fonta Flora’s ties to broader Burke County have lasted longer than when the community was called by its original name, Linville River, in the early 19th century. Located by the mouth of the Linville River, Fonta Flora was isolated relative to its surrounding communities, relying on neighboring Burke County towns for post, certain crops, livestock, timber, crafts, and moonshine. When the community submerged, many residents relocated to familiar Burke County towns, where much of the folklore was passed down over time. The namesake is everywhere around Burke County today, from the famous Fonta Flora Brewery to the far-flowing Fonta Flora State Trail extending to Asheville.

Fonta Flora in History

Fonta Flora’s clouded history surfs the blurred lines between fact and fiction. Preceding the Fonta Flora community, the natural beauty lured a Cherokee population as its inhabitants. Many clues of what proceeded are found through documents of the United States Postal Service. Some tales say the name Fonta Flora is inspired by the Fonti Flora Plantation in South Carolina, which shared a strong past with the community. Others argue it is the thought child of a postmaster, who decided to sign with the Fonta Flora title merely because he deemed it fitting.

The community was small, with the population being ~50 in 1896 and ~100 in the early 20th century (Norman and Page). The first recorded evidence of the Fonta Flora community was found to be during 1827 when Joseph L. McGimsey became the first postmaster of the Linville River township. Early 20th-century settlers consisted of the Alexander, Conley, McGimpsey, Moore, Parkses, and Wakefield families; it is important to consider the slaves these families owned among this population.

Fonta Flora in Culture

The dreamy folktales of Fonta Flora are attributed to the practices and traditions of the community, but many of its ideas were fiction. Legendary agrarian achievement happens merely to be a folktale. Fonta Flora was on sinking land with absentee landlords and the timber industry causing floods and erosion. Neighboring Linville and Shortoff Mountains were regularly experiencing forest fires, which residents of Fonta Flora would help fight. The community, notorious for being socially progressive, did contain ideas of racial acceptance, but it certainly was not harmonious. Most of the African American population were descendants of, or were, previous slaves who once farmed for the families of Fonta Flora. This population continued helping on farms for the landowners until they received enough money to purchase their own land on the outskirts. General camaraderie between white and African American populations was seen through hunting, fishing, and working together; “sources reveal respect by the white community for the older generation of black men and women and time spent soaking up their stories of the past” (Norman and Page). However, this respect was purely conditional, typically when an African American stuck to assigned behavior and stations. Reports of Klan assaults were high in the woodlands, where one African American resident wrote in the local newspaper during the turn of the century about his experiences with racial epithets.

Southern Power Company

Fonta Flora’s precarious position at the mouth of the Linville River attracted many agents. James B. Duke of the 1904 Western Power Company, a subsidiary of the Southern Power Company, was convinced the South was too agriculturally dependent, calling for a hydroelectric system in the area. Varying stories are told about the following acquisition, usually claiming the company used force or manipulating tactics to fulfill their desires. The truth? There is no evidence of forceful buyouts, as all landowners were handsomely paid. The last stubborn residents, the McGimseys, were drawn out by a malaria scare in 1919. The Southern Water Company became Duke Energy in 1997 (Duke Energy Co.).

Lake James

To understand the impact of the Southern Water Company, you must understand the spatial dynamics of Fonta Flora. Centric to post and farming, the community encompassed a fair amount of physical territory: intruding upward into the Linville Gorge, northward into Fish Hatchery Road, westward to an African American community on Hayden Ridge, and southeastward into the island of Conley’s Knob. Today, 1200 ft above sea level, Lake James is a popular state park and “a significant statewide recreational resource” (Division of Parks and Recreation). To Burke County, Lake James is a vision of environmental stewardship, where families can swim, boat, fish, hike, and camp. Dark tales are told of deep flooded remnants of those below.

Long Term

Lake James may be central to Burke County culture, but so was Fonta Flora. It is common to believe the 500 acres of Fonta Flora are all beneath the lake, but fortunately, that was not the case. Only six known home sites and one store of Fonta Flora were submerged. It can be assumed these houses were dismantled before the completion of the lake. Schools, churches, and cemeteries all seem to be located around the floodplains and not inside of them, likely as a safety measure against floods. Haney’s Island and the Sip Conley African American cemetery are the exceptions, with Sip Conley (1872), Clarise A.V. McGimpsey (1889), Selane Moore (1854), and Martha Moore Parks (1854) resting there without headstones (Norman and Page). Ultimately, there was never a certain or compact village to begin with. Fonta Flora existed as a far-reaching rural farming community over a large lush land.

Fact or Fiction?

The true fabrics of Fonta Flora are difficult to sort. For starters, Fonta Flora was a sparse small community dependent on agriculture, which had been struggling for years prior. Fine orchards and notorious cabbages were Fonta Flora’s strengths, but flooding rendered most of the fertile bottomland useless. Stories illustrate Fonta Flora as a fantastical place of natural beauty within Appalachia, where equality thrived and communities were maintained before it was all terribly washed away. These misleading tales likely come from the limited ideas the last generation had of its community when the town was already in decline and heavily relied on its storied havoced post office. Fonta Flora is imagined to be entirely submerged, but Lake James occupies 100 acres out of the 500 the community used to own (Norman and Page).

Conclusion

As folktales of Fonta Flora echo through the verdant woodlands and over the cascading waters of Burke County, they weave a complex tapestry of fact and folklore. The community, once perched amidst lush landscapes and rushing rivers, now lies submerged beneath the serene waters of Lake James as a symbol of progress and loss. The real narrative, while steeped in idyllic remembrance of a diverse and prosperous agricultural haven, is mired in the harsh realities of racial strife and environmental challenges. The enduring bonds of Fonta Flora to Burke County reflected in its diaspora and its commemorated namesake in local enterprises, highlight a significant connection that continues to transcend its destruction. Today, we navigate the varying narratives of Fonta Flora, from its inception as a sparse rural community to its development into a vital recreational resource. The story is not just simply about what was lost, but a beacon for what can be learned about resilience, community, and the enduring power of seeking heritage.

Morganton native Om Patel is a first year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, working towards dual degrees in Geography and Neuroscience. 

Works Cited

Duke Energy Co. “History - Our Company - Duke Energy.” Duke Energy, www.duke-energy.com/our-company/about-us/our-history. Accessed 22 Apr. 2024.

Division of Parks and Recreation. “Camping.” Home | NC State Parks, www.ncparks.gov/state-parks/lake-james-state-park. Accessed 21 Apr. 2024.

Parks, Bob. [maps of Fonta Flora and Lake James, North Carolina]. Place of publication not identified: publisher not identified, 1914.

Norman, Helen, and Patricia Page. Glimpses of Fonta Flora. , 2011. Print.