Program will take place March 20
Author and local historian James Stehlik will speak at the Lanier Library on Tuesday, March 20 at noon. The program is free and everyone is welcome.
As a young engineer, Stehlik worked in Hendersonville and fell in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains. After 30 years of domestic and foreign manufacturing management assignments with General Electric and Alcoa, Stehlik and his wife, Lee, returned to retire on the southern edge of the Blue Ridge Escarpment in Landrum.
A fascination with the history of the Dark Corner led Stehlik to spend considerable time studying and researching the region and sharing his knowledge by making history presentations to local community organizations. Hogback Mountain, the tallest summit in Greenville County, S.C. has a history all its own and its unique, and mostly untold, story led Stehlik to write “Distilling the Mysteries of Hogback Mountain.”
The book explores more than 200 years of Hogback Mountain’s history, its ownership by wealthy industrialists and speculative developers, and its primary source of income and employment, the manufacturing of moonshine.
Stehlik describes his work on the book as a labor of love and donates the proceeds of sales to The Nature Conservancy’s Jones Gap State Park Expansion Project. The books will be available for purchase following his presentation.
This program is part of the Lanier Library’s Brown Bag Lunch series and the audience is invited to bring their lunch. Coffee will be available.
– article submitted by Frances Flynn