THE STORY OF DEAD MAN’S RUN

By Marshall McClung
Graham Star Correspondent -- October 24, 1991

A copper plate engraving in a small block of anchored concrete at the grave on Big Huckleberry Knob tells the story:

It was a bitter, cold day with snow and fog, December 11, 1899.  Paul O’Neil, and Andy Sherman from Mill Hall, Pennsylvania, employees of the Heiser Lumber Company left the mouth of Sycamore Creek on the Tellico River in Tennessee bound for Robbinsville, North Carolina.

On September 6, 1900, Forrest Denton, who was deer hunting with others found their remains three fourths of a mile from the present gravesite near a small stream, then unnamed, but since known as Dead Man’s Run.

The men had apparently missed the trail down Hooper Ridge between Hooper Bald and Horse Pen Gap.  A jug containing moonshine whiskey was found near their bodies.  The sheriff and coroner of Graham County were summoned and an inquest was held.  The jury found that both men were frozen to death while lost and intoxicated.  The jury directed that O’Neil’s skeleton be given to Doctor Robert J. Orr in Robbinsville as a medical exhibit, while the remains of Sherman, badly mangled by wild animals were buried in an unmarked grave on Big Huckleberry Knob.

A copper plate telling the story was erected by Robert B. Barker, a retired attorney from Andrews, North Carolina, who made it a point to mark many graves in western North Carolina and erecting monuments that tell their story.  A metal cross was added many years later by a group also from Andrews that visits the area every year.

In early 1988, The Heartland Series became interested in the story and sent a film crew to Big Huckleberry Knob and filmed a short story entitled “Dead Man’s Run”.   It was shown on national television in February, 1988 on CBS and was carried locally by WBIR Television Station from Knoxville, Tennessee.