By Henry P. Scalf

(published in the Floyd County Times on June 21, 1956)

This is the story of a mountain estate and a blasted dream. It is the story, too, of Ivy Creek, which at one time was on the threshold of greatness, but never made it because the price of eggs went down. Most of all, it is the story of Colonel James Hatcher’s unusual agricultural enterprises.

It is said that one of the very few things that the late James H. Hatcher, steamboat man, timberman, mine operator, and farmer, ever lost money on was his venture in chicken raising on Ivy Creek. He bought the entire five-mile-long valley over half a century ago from the Layne family and dreamed at first of a cattle ranch or perhaps sheep. Anyway, with 3,200 acres he hoped to develop a manorial mountain estate where his talents would find full expression.

He put a crew of men to work on a huge poultry house, built the foundations and a large part of the walls from native stone. The barn, still bigger, was constructed to hold a herd of Herefords or hundreds of sheep. Up went a fine residence at the mouth of Ivy Creek, its foundations on the exact spot where Colonel Andrew Jackson May, Prestonsburg’s Rebel leader, sat upon his horse and directed his green troops in the Battle of Ivy Narrows. “Uncle Jim” had a deep appreciation for the history of the place.

He raised 5,000—many say 10,000—White Leghorn hens in the vast poultry house. Oldsters recall now the white-flecked landscape when the flock was turned out. Many died, and Bee Hunt and others picked them up, cremated them in a coal-burning Burnside heater. But matters went along fine for a while. The hens layed, but then overproduction set in. The price of eggs went down and down and finally sank to the refusal level. Jim Hatcher didn’t have eggs to sell—he had’em to give away. Then coccidiosis attacked the flock. Pestering, too, were the red foxes and a species of homo sapiens, described by a tenant as “two-legged foxes.”

Hatcher got out of the chicken business—quick. ”He told people to come and get ‘em,” says James Trimble, the present-day overseer. “He told everybody to take the chickens, but to take only what they needed, no more. I was a boy then, and several of us would go possum hunting. We always took us a hen and cooked her back on the mountains.” When you do it that way, you can get out of the poultry business very quickly.

That phase of activity on Ivy Creek was soon relegated to the past by Hatcher, and he turned his facile mind to other things. Somebody told him of kudzu, the long, trailing legume that has to be propagated by the setting of the vine crowns and which makes succulent feed for cattle. He procured a large supply of crowns and put men to work. When they were through, a vast bottom area started to grow in kudzu. In fact, it grew too well, for when the mowers went at their task, machines got clogged with the tangled masses. They swore and sweated but utterly failed to harvest any profitable amount. Colonel Hatcher, disgusted with the vine, had it turned under. It made a fine green manure crop, anyway. Today, around the Trimble residence near U.S. Route 23 and alongside the road up Ivy Creek, kudzu clings to life, a reminder of Hatcher’s interest in unusual aspects of agriculture.

Chickens and kudzu. Many wondered what next. They hadn’t long to wait. A voracious reader of agricultural literature, Hatcher learned about mule-footed hogs. The basic differences between this breed of swine and the conventional hogs are the hooves, which don’t fork, and their slim proportions. Long and straight, like a Florida Piney Wood Rooster, they run at the sight of a man and feed well on oak and beech mast. Hatcher had plenty of the wild feed falling on his Ivy Creek acres. He ordered several head, then turned them loose.

The mule-footed hogs were the genesis of his interest in artichokes. This tuber-like feed makes excellent hog-rootin’, he learned. The fields once luxuriant with kudzu were planted in artichokes. In the late fall and winter the mule-footed swine came down out of the hills and rooted in the artichoke bottoms. Things went along all right for a time, until Colonel Hatcher found out that nobody was willing to buy a hog that “doesn’t fork the hoof.” After that he lost interest. He liquidated the animal with the help of poachers and a few “two-legged foxes.” For several years afterwards, hunters would occasionally flush out a stray, wild mule-footed hog feasting on oak or beech mast on the high ridges of Buzzard Roost Fork or the head of Drappin’ Lick.

In between these ventures into odd and picturesque agricultural pursuits, Hatcher logged the timber on Ivy Creek. At the forks he built a large boarding house where again his whimsicalities found full expression. The sides of the house were covered with boards riven from native trees, and the porch posts were sections of logs standing upright. On this porch he sat many evenings when the loggers returned from the hills. He ate and slept with them.

In a few years the vast virgin acres were logged out, and he turned again to farming. He had tried chickens, kudzu, artichokes, and mule-footed hogs. Most people knew that when Uncle Jim talked of farming, strange plants and animals would find their way to Ivy Creek, and so they were not surprised when he introduced Johonson Grass. It grows as luxuriantly as kudzu and makes excellent feed at the right stage of growth. He learned later that it’s the worst pest any farmer can become afflicted with, for it survives under the most adverse conditions and creeps, with roots burrowing several feet deep, to laces where it is wholly unwanted. Mr. Hatcher eliminated all the other crops he found unprofitable, but he was never able to get rid of the Johnson Grass. The present-day tenants and James Trimble, one of his heirs, are still battling the stuff.

In a few years, Hatcher, cured of odd adventures in agriculture, turned his attention to mining and the erection of a hotel at Pikeville. Into the hostelry went a chunk of his fortune—and many innovations. There was no elevator, for he often remarked that a man too lazy to walk didn’t deserve a bed. From the mouth of Ivy Creek, where the Rebels and Feds had fought, he collected cannon balls and other mementoes of the struggle. He gave them conspicuous display in the lobby. He painted the hotel walls with earthy maxims and odds and ends of local history. Afraid of the taste of his heirs, he specified in his will that these mural adornments were never to be erased or removed. They are there yet.

Hatchr grew old, but his love for Ivy Creek never flagged. He went back there often from Pikeville and pondered upon the history and legends of the place. He could point out with exactitude the military dispositions of the Union general, William “Bull” Nelson and the Confederate captain, Andrew Jackson May. “Here sat May upon his horse just before the battle opened,” he would say, pointing to where his residence stood.

If you had traveled up the valley with him, he would have pointed out the Drappin’ Lick, where early settlers lay in wait for deer to come down and lick the mineral waters. Farther up the road, he would stop beside a huge stone that decades ago had rolled down the mountain side and plopped itself in the middle of a bottom. You would listen to the legend he told.

Years ago, so long ago no one now living remembers when, a woman with a babe in arms was walking along this road. It was late in the evening, when the shadows were falling across the leafy trail. She was seen by someone, nobody remembers whom. When she was midway across the bottom, there was a roar from the mountain side, and the giant rock came crashing down hill. Suddenly there was long, piercing scream, and after that silence filled the twilight. People say today that the woman and her baby are buried under the giant stone. Some say that even today, on certain evenings, a woman draped in black can be seen walking around the eternal rock, looking for her child. Others say that each year, on the anniversary of her death, screams can be heard.

The Battle of Ivy Narrows is history, and the story of the rock is legend. Jim Hatcher loved both.

Men live and dream, like Hatcher did, maybe of chickens or Herefords and sheep, then die. He succumbed in 1939. Before he died, he sold the timber to the Northeast Lumber Company, which logged it. He installed Pem Layne, an uncle, in the big house where Colonel May had sat on his horse. Uncle Pem, a white bewhiskered patriarch, died there, grateful to the nephews who sheltered him.

Hatcher’s own agricultural pursuits having ended in failure, the valley was divided into parcels and given to tenant farmers, who usually built their own houses, farmed pretty well where they pleased, and stayed on for decades. Taulbee Lewis, the oldest tenant, was raised there. At one time there were twenty-one sharecroppers. Today only eight remain. “Most of them have gone to Ohio,” Trimble says.

Jim Hatcher willed Ivy Creek to the seven sons and daughters of Andrew Trimble, a favorite nephew. James Trimble lives in the big house at the mouth of the creek, conducts the varied affairs of the estate. Young Trimble came back from the Navy in 1943 and persuaded the Board of Education to build a school house. It is said to be the only school district in the state comprising only a single farm. The school house doubles as a mission for the Irene Cole Memorial Baptist Church in Prestonsburg. Phil Schroeder, Prestonsburg church layman, goes up Ivy Creek every Sunday. In winter weather, when the road is impassable, he parks his car at the mouth of the creek and walks up. Part of the time he can use a jeep. Right now an untenanted house is being renovated farther down the creek for mission use, since it is more centrally located.

Today the big barn and the huge corn crib that once held thousands of bushels are gone, having been torn down by Trimble, overseer and one of the heirs. The chicken house is windowless and shows evidence of age and neglect. Artichokes, mule-footed hogs, kudzu and Johnson Grass are staple products no more. Trimble directs modern farming. Thirty-two acres of corn grow, as do clover fields and other profitable crops. Thirteen gas wells have been sunk on the big farm. One of the overseer’s many duties is to look after their production.

Ivy Creek is now being divided among the heirs. Soon the section’s biggest single landed estate will be broken up and smaller farms will emerge. But the valley remains now much as Colonel Hatcher knew it—filled forever with history and legends. He was a bit of history himself, and, being the man that he was, he will be a legend, too, some day.