Boone Merrick here, and I have been looking forward to this one. Because this road, friend, is my kind of country — outlaw country. These deep, folded, hard-to-reach mountains you're about to drive through were, for the better part of a hundred years, some of the finest moonshine country in America. And moonshine means stories: outlaws and revenue men, midnight runs and buried stills, a whole hidden economy running through these hollows in the dark.
So here's how we'll do it. Quinn keeps you safe and tells you what you're looking at. I'll fill the miles with the tales this road was named for — why these coves ran with white liquor, the outlaw they called the King of the Moonshiners, how running 'shine on roads just like this one gave birth to stock-car racing, the towns they drowned to build the great dam, and a thousand-year-old Cherokee mound with a miracle attached to it.
So settle in, keep it between the lines, and let me tell you about the shine. Eyes up, friend — here we go.
Photo: Washuotaku · CC BY-SA 4.0
