The Narrows at Green River Cove

This story about Western North Carolina history is more about a location than it is a particular historical event. The location is the Narrows at Green River Cove. The Green River winds through Henderson and Polk Counties in North Carolina and beyond I am sure. When I was growing up, the Green River Cove was at the bottom of this long, winding dirt road and had originally been settled by several families before the turn of the 20th Century and before the great flood of 1916, had been a thriving agricultural community.

One of these families that settled the Green River Cove was the family of Posey Henderson and he was just one of the great characters that my father knew. A lot of my summers were spent in Green River Cove fishing and hiking and exploring the vast wilderness. The Green River was not that wide at any point but the Narrows is these two massive rock formations on either side of the river about six feet across from each other and the waters of the Green River are funneled between these two rock formations on either side of the river. The Narrows are a Geologists dream as thousands of years of glacial deposits, erosion, and the forces of nature are still hard at work.

My father was a volunteer fireman with the Blue Ridge Volunteer Fire Department for over 30 years, starting in the early 1960's and eventually became a "lifetime member" and is honored on a plaque at the Hendersonville Fire Department in downtown Hendersonville. Early one Sunday morning when I was about 13 or 14, my father came to me and asked me if I wanted to take a trip down to Green River Cove to the Narrows to look for a young man's body. The young man had been wading in the water up above the Narrows and had fallen in and had gotten swept down stream. We had a lot of rain that summer and the Green River was very swollen. Searching for bodies was one of the more unpleasant tasks that was often asked of the local fire departments but it still needed to be done to help provide the families of the victims with closure.

Legend has it that the rapids were so rough at the Narrows that you could throw a full sized log in above the Narrows and when it came out the other side, the log had been so beat up and chopped up, it was the size of a match stick. It was a recovery mission but it was an adventure for me, something along the lines of Stephen King's "Stand By Me." One of my father's friends, a man named Gene, went with us.

Green River Cove is still a very rural area and it was some tough hiking along the river bank and when we ran into a tributary, we had to go through the water. We saw a few snakes and some other wildlife along the way. The hike took us about four hours and it was very slow going. I slipped and fell in one time but it was hot that day, the cold water felt good, and I dried off really quickly.

The Narrows was the most impressive, natural phenomenon I had ever seen. We got to within about a mile away and you could hear the roaring water of the Narrows. It started out as a low sounding roar and the closer we got, the louder it got. I remember asking my father "What is that noise?" His response was "Wait until you see it."

We finally arrived at the Narrows and it was so loud, I had to scream at my father standing right beside me just to be heard. I remember creeping up to the edge of the Rock without getting too close so I could peer over the edge of the rocks and down into the river. I was very nervous easing up to the edge and I just wanted to take a quick look. The water from the Green River was being forced through a space way too small for the volume of water. The rocks had been worn smooth from centuries of erosion.

The young man's body that we were looking for was found several days later. The body had snagged way up in a tree because the water level was so high. When the water finally started to recede, the body washed up in a tree. I haven't been back to the Narrows since that day but seeing the Narrows was well worth the hike and a day I will never forget. It was valuable time that I got to spend with my father.