Toxaway Inn. Colorized photo courtesy of John Nichols III
By Lauren Stepp
Neil Bowman, a logger working in a quiet Transylvania County community called Cane Break, heard the water before he saw it. Those 5 billion gallons growled and howled like a beast finally let loose from its cage.
Thinking fast, Bowman cut his mules loose from a wagonload of logs and ran. But one of the animals—a poor, blind plodder who didn’t know up from down—walked toward the torrent. It’s said that Bowman’s mule was the only casualty. But plenty more was lost on August 13, 1916—the day the Lake Toxaway dam burst.
“The dam bursting in 1916 was a major event,” says Laura Sperry, a local history librarian at the Transylvania County Library. “The subsequent flood did an incredible amount of damage, and many property owners were never compensated.”
The flood also marked the end of an era that began in 1895 when a group of stakeholders led by Pennsylvania industrialist J. Francis Hayes established the Toxaway Company. In the ensuing years, Hayes and his men bought huge swathes of mountain property with hopes of extracting virgin timber, extending railway lines and building a tourism enterprise.
And that they did. In July 1903, the company completed a 500-foot-wide and 60-foot-tall earthen dam along the Toxaway River. The Toxaway Inn, a five-story hotel with ornate trimmings and modern amenities, was built on the mile-wide lake not long after.
As described in a 1998 edition of The Transylvania Times, the inn “featured French cuisine, tennis, boating, fishing, horseback riding, 20 miles of bridle paths for carriages, a steam launch for ‘less energetic guests’ to enjoy boat rides, and a mineral spring.” There was also electric lighting, steam heat, refrigeration and long-distance telephones.
Such lavish accommodations attracted the likes of Harvey Firestone, J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Henry Ford. Even Thomas Edison sojourned at Lake Toxaway.
“It was a private, exclusive resort built to cater to wealthy clientele,” says Sperry, noting the hotel rates were about $10 per night—a fourth of what a local teacher would make in a month.
This affluence brought opportunity to the mountains. Locals worked at the inn and sold goods and services to visitors. But all that changed in the summer of 1916.
In July, a Category 3 hurricane hit the mountains. A week later, a Category 2 hurricane barreled up the coast, causing significant flooding. However, it wasn’t until August, when a third hurricane dumped more than 20 inches of rain in less than 24 hours, that the Lake Toxaway dam gave way.
“When the dam broke, more than 5 billion gallons of water went crashing over Toxaway Falls, creating a solid wall of water 30 feet high that thundered down the 16-mile gorge toward South Carolina,” historian J. Robert Ferrari wrote in a 1997 booklet.
The deluge destroyed homes and businesses, causing a cascade of lawsuits. Unable to pay for the damages, the Toxaway Inn closed its doors. In 1947, the building was dismantled.
In the decades since, the reservoir and surrounding community have been revived. But certain aspects of life—Bowman’s blind mule, for instance—were washed away for good.
To learn more about the history of Lake Toxaway, visit HistoricToxaway.org.
