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Wahoo History On CanvasArtist Robert Baker stands in front of the old Dunlap School with his rendition of it.By MARGY CLARK Tlmes-Ncws Staff WriterSmith Shoals is a modern subdivision at the south end of Colonial Heights, but the settlements across the Holston River from it have a lot of history—and memories for pe ople like Shirley Gothard. She grew up in a little community called Wahoo, where her great-grandparents’ and grandparents' homes still stand.As a sort of “Bicentennial project,” Shirley and her husband, Bill, got to digging into the area’s past. Bill even detected sections of an old railroad bed, near where U.S. 23 now runs, which was never completed.It had been Shirley’s dream to have the scenes of her ehil dhood—the old Wahoo post office and store, Dunlap School, and the old Beulah Church—along with homes in which she lived or visited, “preserved in some way for future generations to remember.”So, she commissioned Robert Baker of Route 10, Blakely Drive, to paint some of the structures before they disappear forever. Baker, an oil painter who does scenes and landscapes as a hobby, is largely self-taught and doesn't have a lot of time to paint. But he took kindly to the idea.Baker did some sketching on location and look photographs to job his memory, and came up with six paintings that hang in the Gothards’ contemporary home. Meanwhile, Shirley talked to old-timers, Louis Milhorn in particular, who helped fill in the pieces of the historical puzzle.Milhorn dates the Wahoo post office, now in a state of dis repair, to around theturn of the century. The mail was brought there from Indian Springs, but in 1902, Wahoo got its first rural mail carrier. Jim “Tack” Bowery The store and post office were operated by Johnny and Ellen Bowery Smith.The Dunlap School was built in 1896 and closed in 1936, but Mrs. Gothard’s family attended it. The iron bridge across the Holston, linking Wahoo with Colonial Heights, was built in 1912. The story goes that it was built under two jurisdictions from either end. When it was to meet in the middle, the two sections didn’t exactly jibe, accounting for a crook that remains to this day.Baker captured on canvas the bridge and the high cliffs across the river. Milhorn filled in with stories about the rope tow ferry used to cross the river before the bridge was built. The name Smith Shoals derives from a shallow section below thn bridge toward Kingsport, where the Holston couid be forded at times of “low tide.”Actually, things have changed surprisingly little, as the Gothards, Baker and I spent a delightful autumn afternoon driving up hill and down around Wahoo. visiting the sites Baker had depicted.Vegetation has overgrown the post office and store and the abandoned schoolhouse, so Baker's paintings are idealized renditions. Still, they mean a great deal to Mrs. Gothard, as do the paintings of farmhouses where she played and visited relatives.As for Baker, he’s enjoying the project, happy that they’re pleased with the results, and remarked philosophically, “these places aren’t going to be here forever.”In Olde IVest holiday hit
Newspaper Details
Kingsport Times News
Kingsport, Tennessee, US
Sun, Nov 23, 1975
Page 62
Full Page
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VA, USA 08 Dec 2019
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