The Blue Wall

Photography by Thomas Wyche, Text by James Kilgo.

1996, Westcliffe Publishers

Sponsored by Duke Power Company in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy of South Carolina.

This is a very pretty, coffee-table kind of book. It was published before Duke Power had announced its intention to sell the Jocassee Gorges lands, but one might wonder if part of the reason for the book might be an effort by Duke Power to help get the public acquainted with the land.

The book provides a modicum of new information on the Jocassee Gorges area, mostly some interesting history of Lake Jocassee itself, along with a more comprehensive description of the native flora than I’ve encountered elsewhere.

The real contribution of the book, from my perspective, is an excellent map on the inside cover detailing the different refuge areas of the Blue Wall – Nantahala National Forest, Ellicott Rock Wilderness, Table Rock, Mountain Ridge Wilderness, and Poinsett Watershed, in addition to the Duke Power Company land, and a breakdown by acreage, showing just what is at stake in terms of the property transfer: Duke Power held 50,000 of the 154,600 acres depicted as the "Blue Wall."

In addition, there are, among the pretty pictures, the best pictures to date of Windy Falls and Toxaway Creek Falls (both taken from a helicopter).

There’s also one good section, "In the Heart of the Gorge," where Kilgo recounts the difficulty one encounters when trying to traverse the Horsepasture River gorge.