“Sugar Mountain” is a great name, isn’t it? Lines of Carolina, Georgia and especially Florida vacationers have been driving the 100 to 500 miles up into the Blue Ridge all summer and the “village,” which is adjacent to Banker Elk, N.C., still has three autumn festivals to go. Then begin preparations for the winter fun.

If for nothing else, the delicious mountain air is worth traveling up for. Many tourists visited its forest-covered mountainsides cut with narrow, bolder dotted streams long before skiing began in the winters, then golf came right on its heels.

Cataloochee, the first Carolina ski area, came into being in 1966. Word got around fast and Beech Mountain followed in ‘67. Five investors from various states bought and combined 2,900 acres, began construction and opened the slopes of the Sugar Mountain Company in December of 1969.

When the owners realized that a crazy stunt might be a good way to get publicity, the son of an owner, Davis MacRae, suggested that he find a real-looking gorilla suit, put on skis, ride one of the lifts to the top then slush down into several of the groups watching the first skiers. He would grab and hug some of the women then slush on. Thirty years later, the tale relates that the spectators were so surprised to see a gorilla on a ski slope, they fell down laughing on the snow.

For more attention, Jean Claude Kiley, the French Olympic skiing medalist, was invited to come for some downhills, and in a few years, condo and vacation home buyers arrived in a growing stream. Nearby mountainsides are now spotted with attractive residences in 50 architectural styles, from cottages to mansions.

Sugar’s 18-hole golf course at the base of the village opened for play in 1973 with several dozen new condominiums ready for them. Thus the growing facility began drawing an older, summer crowd. Many more courses soon stretched on dozens of mountain escapes across North Carolina.

In 1981 the US Capital Corporation announced construction of Sugar Top Resort. The result, on top of Sugar, a 10-story, 320-unit concrete structure that forever changed the landscape of the mountain range. Finally completed in 1985 amidst a controversy that gained national attention, it prompted the 184th N.C. General Assembly to pass the first, and still only, zoning legislation to ban such unnatural changes to the skyline. But to the present condo owners, it offers a fabulous view.

In the next decades, more fame and interest came to “Sugar,” attracting streams of Orangeburgers, Aikenites and Columbianos. Also, Floridians, good and ready to escape the summer sweat. Today the Sunshine State makes up a big segment of population.

Back in its early days, a curious lady guest asked Tom Fisher at the inn’s front desk where they got the name “Sugar” for a mountain. A young guy, Tom loved to kid around so he told her that in the early 1900s, a local lady began selling homemade maple syrup down in the valley (now State Highway). This was the truth, but then he embroidered the story: people built a tram car to get to the mountaintop where they collected sugar crystals from a mine, then melted them down into syrup. She like telling the tale and it began to circulate widely. It went on for decades even though it was a far cry from the cabbage raising and lumber cutting that had earned much of the income for the area since the 1850s.

The progress for Sugar Mountain did not always prove good. For various reasons, owners and executives left the resort in the 1970s. The company suffered a bankruptcy, closing its doors for the first time in 1977, and even sold several of its assets to other investors. Nevertheless, Sugar Mountain kept growing. Today 1,000 to 2,000 skiers often fill up all its rental rooms and condos on weekends between November and March. All the elegant vacation homes that line the paved mountain streets stay full most of late spring, all summer and early fall.

The 1800 and 1900 ways of making a living have vanished. Local people now build homes, operate stores, maintain motels and cook in restaurants. Every kind of tourist desire from pretty bedrooms to good seafood platters is now on hand. Shopping abounds. One store sells of chairs, pictures, etc. that warm hunters’ hearts because every one has a bear or raccoon woven or carved onto it. Strange, isn’t it, that in this very modern recreation area two or three antique shops operate on every village street.

In recent years, Sugar has reached out to the other non-Sugar residents by opening the golf course to all golfers in the area. Recently, the Sugar Mountain Community Association, after five years of hard work, dedicated the 40-acre J. Douglas Williams Park to the public for recreation and pleasure. The $25,000 in funds to develop the hiking trails, recreation grounds and picnic areas was donated by numbers of Sugar’s residents. Robert Ragin of Charleston, whose wife is a member of Orangeburg’s Culler family, was instrumental in the development.

Now, from April 1 to Oct. 31 the public has a beautiful, well-maintained place for future picnics, hikes and other outdoor pleasures. It looks as though Sugar Mountain is going to be a great place for a long, long time.

Note: Our thanks to Dedey Traver, longtime Sugar Mountain resident who has worked for and with the good causes in the area for many years.

Retired editor and public relations executive Thomas Langford’s column is titled “Some Edisto stories.” Let him know if you have stories to share: 803-534-2097.

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