Jessica Webb
editor@thesmokymountaintimes.com
There are several pull-offs along Hwy 19 that follows the curves and sways of the Tuckasegee River through Swain County, and it’s not uncommon for visitors to stop to snap a few pictures of the river—for its clean water, the Canadian geese, Great blue herons and the occasional Bald eagle that call it home. But a sight along the riverbanks that can be equally puzzling and intriguing for visitors is the old car bodies stacked up along the cuts of the riverbanks.
There are some areas where the antique cars are buried, some areas where they are more exposed but tangled over with plants. The old cars were stacked along the curves of the river where it was flowing and eroding against the banks in the early 1950s to prevent erosion. It later has been coined “Detroit riprap” and can be found in some waterways across the United States.
Frank Hyatt, who grew up in Swain County, remembers when the practice was put in place. In fact, he did it himself to protect his family’s property at the Hyatt Creek intersection.
“There had been flooding issues before, yeah, oh yeah, that helped with it,” he recalls. “I made a fill in there and needed something to hold it, the cars were used as fill.”
The experimental recycling practice at the time served as a win-win situation.
“There were plenty of junk cars,” Hyatt recalls. “We’d go pick ‘em up and crush ‘em and bulldozer them in to hold the water.”
He doesn’t remember where the practice originated, but Jim Gray thinks it was likely the state highway department that did it. Some private property owners followed suit.
“They piled those cars in there to take the force of the water off the banks. Otherwise, they’d have gone in there and built walls,” Gray said. “It was a good way to get rid of old cars that were sitting around in the neighborhood.”
He agrees it was an effective form of riprap and was considered cost-effective at the time.
Hyatt said they took the whole vehicle-engine and all-and crushed it before it was piled into the cuts of the river.
“I had trouble of more people going in and looting the parts out of ‘em,” he said.
In fact, there are some areas that the old cars weren’t just used as riprap but were used as fill to build up the land along the water.
You’ll notice how it’s a dip down toward the riverbank where the Swain Schools bus garage is located. Years ago, the entire riverfront was that low. The cars were used as fill where the Valley Village shopping center and BP Local gas station are located now. In fact, some remember when that area where the shopping center is now was a junkyard.
There's also one example of the practice on lower Deep Creek, on the east side of the stream immediately underneath the Lackey Hill community.
The Clean Water Act passed in the 1972 and stopped the practice of using old material like junked cars to fill along waterways.
Verna Kirkland with the Swain County Genealogical and Historical Society recalls the sight of the old car bodies along the waterway caused a stir in the late 1970s-early 1980s when environmentalists came to the county, drawn here over the debate over the Road to Nowhere.
“The environmental groups wanted them removed,” she said.
It wasn’t until decades later, in the early 2000s, when just one vehicle was removed as an experiment, according to Roger Clapp, who was the executive director for Watershed Association of the Tuckasegee River for many years.
“The car was located along the toe of a steep bank on Route 19, about half a mile up from the bridge near Darnell farms. The site was covered with kudzu,” he said by email. “There were other restrictions. In particular, the habitat of federally protected Appalachian Elktoe mussel could not be disturbed. Mark Cantrell of the US Fish and Wildlife snorkeled the affected length of the river and none were found.”
That allowed the experiment to pull a vehicle out to happen. “It was summer and water levels were low. They crossed the creek with a trackhoe and pulled out the car,” Clapp said.
It turned out to just be a one-time thing, though, when funding was cut.
“At that time, I worked with the Army Corps of Engineers out of Nashville. They pushed to have the smashed cars covered with cobbles and boulders. I recommended pressure grouting. Funding was cut off, and the demonstration ceased.”
G. Landon Davidson with Division of Water Quality said by email he wasn’t aware of any studies by his office on the removal or impact of the riprap.
Today, he explained, the US Army Corps of Engineers issues permits for fill along waterways in the United States and things like car bodies are no longer allowed.
Although the old car bodies along the riverbanks isn’t a common sight, it’s certainly not unique to Swain County. Detroit riprap was used in other areas of the country or the same purpose, particularly out West. A similar method was used in Woodfin along the French Broad River.
Other news outlets have reported on such practices along riverbanks near Durango, Colorado and along riverways in Northeast Ohio, Michigan and Boise, Idaho.
There’s even an extremely dry site in Utah near Mt. Zion known as Catsair Rip Rap, where there is a stack of crushed cars beneath the highway that was put there to prevent erosion on the sandy hills during storms, according to visitor websites.
At this point, some 70 years after they were put in, the old cars seem like they are they to stay, remaining a point of interest and a nod to the past.
At the Swain County Visitor’s Center, people occasionally ask about the old cars.
Tuckasegee Fly Shop guide Mike Hodge said they don’t get a lot of questions for people who take fishing trips on the river with them.
“It’s a landmark for me to use,” Hodge said of the cars in the curve upriver from Naber’s Drive-In that he refers to as “The Mustang Hole.”