Locals concerned about impact gun range could have on environment

SALUDA — Soon, the bear and the deer, the raccoons, the foxes and the bobcats may have to find another place to live. 

If Henderson County moves forward with a training center and shooting range on Macedonia Road in Saluda, the homes of these and untold others will ring with the sound of semi-automatic weapons fire.

A fence will go up around the 99 acres at 2823 Macedonia Road, preventing the animals from passing through to the game lands. The waterways will be rerouted and watering holes that have been there for thousands of years will dry up and be paved over.

A building will replace the blueberry bushes and the rhododendron and the deer, the bears, the birds and countless other small creatures of the forest will have no food. 

The rattle of gunshots will replace the music of wind through the hemlocks and the rush of the Green River. Birdsong will grow silent, and the calls of hawks will no longer echo over the forest.

“It’s not the same as the rest of the world,” said molecular biologist Alex Harvey.

Harvey has lived in the Saluda area and is building a house just down the road from the site of the proposed law enforcement training center and shooting range.

Harvey has been hiking the property for the last three years.

“When I first walked the property, I was struck by how beautiful it was, even compared to the game lands,” he said.

Harvey described the acres of blueberry bushes growing under 100-year-old trees and the animal trails intersecting and crisscrossing through the area.

“I found a lot of large healthy hemlocks on property,” he said. “There’s a large effort to rescue the ones that are still alive.”

As a biologist who works in pharmaceutical development, Harvey holds a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins, and received his doctorate from Vanderbilt. He is an avid kayaker, and first began coming to the Saluda area 40 years ago.

“I think this part of the Green River is one of the most amazing stretches of river in the world,” he said.

He continued on, describing the number of fresh water springs located on the property, which feed directly into the Green River.

“The water in those springs is crystal clear,” he said. “Any development would impact the water quality of those springs.”

Harvey said, in his opinion, there was very little of the 99 acres that could actually be developed. He said most of the property is simply too steep.

The building the Henderson County Sheriff is proposing would have to be located directly over the blueberry patch and some of the wetlands would have to be moved.

Nearby resident Tom McHugh said his father and uncle grew up camping on the property. They would sit for hours around the campfire, telling stories of ghosts who walk the surrounding mountains.

In the mornings, mist would cover the bog as they followed a deer path down to the river to fish.

McHugh, who was a developer in the area for more than 30 years, agreed with Harvey regarding the property’s suitability for building. He said there was only about 10 acres or so on the property that could be built on and because of the setbacks required for a shooting range.

“It’s also not a good property for a housing development either,” McHugh said. “Most of it is too steep to build on, and there’s too much free-flowing water and wetlands.”

According to McHugh and Harvey, there are numerous old logging trails that run through the property to the game lands. Along with the logging trails is the old Drover Road that people in a by-gone age used to drive livestock from Spartanburg to the markets in Asheville.

An old inn, once modernized, still stands at the entrance to the property. The remnants of a stonewall and a stone chimney speak of the footsteps of the area’s ancestors.

On the other side of the dirt road that cuts through the property is a large pond with a clear, serene surface bordered by majestic pines.

A hawk nests in the hemlocks on the road and swoops at residents’ cars as they make their way under the forest canopy. Adjacent to the property are houses from the 1800s, alongside beautiful new homes. There are three upscale developments and several children’s summer camps with a mile or so of the property.

Before World War II, the property was a subsistence farm for a family raising pigs, corn and milk cows. McHugh’s said there was a kitchen garden, and the owners would cut firewood in the surrounding forest.

About 60 years ago, the owners left to work in the mills in South Carolina, and the property sold to a man in Florida. It has been home to the wildlife ever since.

Now, his heirs are trying to sell the property as part of his estate.

“They will really have to lay waste to the property to use it for this [training center],” McHugh said.  “They will have to park 30 to 40 cars or more there.”

“We’re just kind of scratching the surface of what’s there,” said Harvey. “We’re just starting to learn about the wildlife and plants that are there.”