Some people just don’t like folks, who challenge fake history!

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

I am working day and night on the big documentary video, being financed by some folks in California and Mayas in the Yucatan Peninsula, which tells the saga on how I stumbled upon the real history of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Ah-h-h the good ole days of 2010 through early 2012.

From March 2010 to August 2015, I was the National Architecture columnist for the Examiner. Beginning in April 2010, I was getting paid by Roger Kennedy* to do field research for him. So, yes, I was homeless, but had plenty of food . . . continued paying notes on my Explorer and the insurance bills on Explorer. I intentionally kept myself well groomed.

* Those who have read The Shenandoah Chronicles may recall that I met Roger at the same 1990 Smithsonian Christmas party, where I met Vivi the French Courtesan. At the time, Roger was Director of the National Museum of American History – Smithsonian Institute. In 1993, he became Director of the National Park Service. Like me, Roger never forgot Vivi and asked about her again, when he contacted me in April 2010.

Suddenly, in North Carolina, groups of vigilantes began attacking my camp site in Graham County, NC at night. I was not bothering anyone, so couldn’t figure out why this was occurring. A Snowbird Cherokee friend told me that federal law enforcement and state cops were telling the Snowbird Cherokees, plus local Baptist churches that I was a gay prostitute with AIDS, who was breaking into houses and stealing food.

Typically, my camp site was attacked at night by vigilantes from local churches 1-3 times a week. Without me telling them to, my three herd dogs rotated guard duty at night. Two would sleep with me in the tent and one would sleep outside at the edge of the camp site, so they wouldn’t be visible.

When attackers were coming thought the woods, the sentry dog would go in my tent and wake me up silently. Then I would grab my Creek war club and assault rifles then with the dogs go into the undergrowth at the edge of the camp. Then I would attack the vigilantes with the war club, when they entered the camp site and triggered the solar-powered, motion detector light. I never had to use my rifles, since the vigilantes seemed to carry only baseball bats, plus ropes with nooses.

Nowadays, there are a bunch of white men in that neck of the woods, who are in their late 20s and early 30s . . . with high pitched, squeaky voices. They still talk about that crazy Creek Injun, who didn’t show proper respect for good Christian, white folks. You know, Thelma Lu, them thar Creeks are the mean ones!

One time, a guy dressed like Bigfoot came into the camp. He was about 6′-7″ with a big bushy, reddish-brown beard. He was dressed in gorilla suit and wore a woman’s red hair wig. The herd dogs thought that he was a cow, who had broken through its fence. Funny! As my herd dogs nipped him on his ankles, he hopped and skipped through the dark woods, hollering for help.

Then in Georgia

As long as I camped in Towns County, GA, the situation was idyllic. People were very friendly in the county seat of Hiawassee. The Towns County Sheriff was an officer and a gentleman. He was the very likable type of law enforcement officers I knew growing up. A lot of evenings, he would stop by the camp to chat for a bit. He had a dog just like mine growing up and was very interested in Native American history.

Also, several times deputies stopped by the camp in the daytime with big cups of ice tea for me from Bojangles. Needless to say, I wrote some very complimentary articles in the National Examiner about Towns County.

My camp site on Wolf Creek in Union County, GA – Chattahoochee National Forest

The first few days on Wolf Creek in Union County were uneventful. However, it made me a little antsy to see what was obviously drug dealers or drug buyers going past the camp on the narrow one lane.

Then at exactly 1:30 PM, Rob Roy the Wonder Dog woke me up. Eight pickups and cars were pulling into the camp site. A whole bunch of young men were getting out of the vehicles. All were carrying search lights. I could see pistols in the hands of at least several of them.

Run Forest Run!

I grabbed my rifles, war club and cross bow. There was a trail made by deer and bears I thought that it would take us to safety. It didn’t. The trail ended at a rock cliff. However, there were some large boulders that we could get behind, where I could fire at them, but I would be mostly protected from there pistols. It was pitch dark. There was no moon . . . so their search lights made them perfect targets.

Fortunately, the leaders of these vigilantes stopped about 10 feet from me and turned around. They looked around the edge of the camp site for a couple of minutes and then went home. I heard some of the vigilantes uttering racial slurs about Injuns as they were getting in their vehicles. I assumed at the time that they were KKK members.

I called the Atlanta regional FBI the next morning and told them what happened. The young agent responded “Sir, this is the FBI!”

I responded, “Yes, I know. I was on federal land and the victim of a hate crime. We came very close to having dead bodies on the ground.”

He then told me that the FBI doesn’t get involved anymore with things like that. Translation – Unless you are a corporation or a major political donor, you’re up Wolf Creek, when a KKK type crime occurs.

I soon found an abandoned chicken house near Track Rock Gap, that the dogs and I could live in. It had a small office with a kitchenette, bathroom, electricity and telephone/internet service, but no HVAC . . . just a small wood stove. Yes, that is the same Track Rock, as in the Track Rock Terrace Complex in the premier of America Unearthed on the History Channel. The rest is history.

Post Script

Three months later, I learned what was going on that scary night in June 2010. Two drug enforcement officers with the Union County Sheriff’s Department had parents, who had made a lot of money from the cocaine trade, while living in southern Florida. They were now growing marijuana in the national forest at an industrial scale. They were being protected by US Forest Service employees and their sons. The locals thought that I might be a federal government “spy.”

The two deputies then passed the word at Choestoe Baptist and Liberty Baptist that there was a predator of teenage girls camping out on Wolf Creek. They gathered a vigilante posse of about 16 young men, some of whom were guards for the marijuana plantation. The two crooked deputies were careful not to tell the vigilantes to kill me, but only said to bring guns for their protection.

The deputies did not wear uniforms, when they attacked my camp. The entire operation was a totally illegal action on federal land. However, I would have never discovered Track Rock Gap, if I had remained in the northern edge of Union County.

Now you know!