John Shearer: Corntassel Miniature Village In Hixson In Need Of Preservation

Corntassel was a former historic community in Monroe County, Tn., below Knoxville that was flooded when the TVA-related Tellico Dam was constructed in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Now, one person wants to make sure a miniature village – which was built by Alfred “Pete” Snider on a sloped wooded hillside at the foot of Big Ridge as an ode to his former family community -- does not disappear as well.

Dave Michelson, who operates a kitchen design business in Naples, Fl., recently bought some property with his wife, Rita, above the former Snider home at 4831 Gann Store Road. They also hope to build their own home here, in part to have a place closer to family in Wisconsin.

While checking out the property just above the Greenway Farm in Hixson not long after they bought it in March, they noticed the village. “I walked up to the top and my wife had been sitting in the car and said, ‘What’s all this stuff?’ ” he said, remembering with a chuckle noticing it after he came back down.

He looked it over and found several dozen small wooden or metal replicas of old buildings, homes, churches, barns, or other landmarks. There was even a small “See Rock City” sign near a miniature rocky “town.” The sign could have also been like that found on a barn in Monroe County in the old days.

Becoming extremely curious, Mr. Michelson later began to research the miniature village online and found a story written by Holly Abernathy in 2012 in chattanoogan.com but little else. The article, which is linked at the bottom of this story, said that Mr. Snider’s parents had been raised in the former community named for a Cherokee chief and that he lived there for a short time after birth.

After buying the Big Ridge property in 1978, Mr. Snider in the early 1980s began constructing the village using recycled wood and other materials and with inspiration from old photographs and memories. And like with an actual town, people began visiting the little village.

Along the way, Mr. Snider collected various logbooks in growing numbers due to all the visitors, including some from other countries, as the village also continued to grow as he constructed more buildings.

With close to 40 buildings and a few other miniature landmarks, the attraction has no doubt been a draw to a variety of people over the years, from children with imaginations to old-timers with long memories of the good old days of small communities.

As someone who works with wood as well in a different realm, Mr. Michelson was drawn to the attraction and said he wanted to preserve the village after noticing it, realizing it was unique. He soon tracked down Mr. Snider over the phone and had a nice conversation with him. And in recent weeks, he and his wife visited with Mr. Snider at his residence at Summit View senior facility in Mountain Creek.

“He said he did it because he wanted to have something to remember where he used to live because it was no more,” Mr. Michelson said Mr. Snider told him, adding that he learned that the inside sections of the wood buildings were treated to keep them from rotting.

Mr. Snider – whose avocation was almost like that of a carpenter elf or Santa’s helper – also gave Mr. Michelson permission to make sure as much of the partly decaying village as possible is preserved. As a result, the Floridian, who said he and his wife fell in love with the village of Chattanooga, too, while passing through on their way to Wisconsin and back, has been trying to find an ideal place, possibly even an indoor site, where it can be preserved.

He has had positive talk with an official at the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore due to its proximity to the former village of Corntassel and the likely Native American connections, but nothing has come to full fruition yet.

Mr. Michelson welcomes anyone with other ideas regarding possible preservation to email him at david@gulfcoastkitchen.comcastbiz.net.

William McGuffy, who is helping Mr. Snider with some of his personal affairs and has also been in contact with Mr. Michelson, said he is hopeful a positive outcome can result from Mr. Snider’s multi-decade hobby. That is, even though the property could be sold in the not-too-distant future, Mr. McGuffy said.

“We’re not going to let anything happen to the houses,” he said of the folk artist-like or Howard Finster-like craftwork.

As someone who grew up in Hixson, Mr. McGuffy said a lot of people in that part of town were familiar with the village.

“It was quite something in the day,” he said. “It took him many years to create all that. It was amazing how many kids used to come up there. He would make stories up about it. It was a lot of fun.”

As a newcomer to the area, Mr. Michelson has also taken notice of what is more like a hidden treasure of sorts these days.

“It’s a really strange thing,” he said, saying he learned it once had lighting. “It sits here and people go by it.”

And officials hope a positive outcome results for this village that brightened a few faces and shined a light on a forgotten East Tennessee community of the past as well.

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To see the 2012 story on Mr. Snider and his Corntassel village by Holly Abernathy, read here.

https://www.chattanoogan.com/2012/2/18/219786/The-Tiny-Village-Of-Corntassel.aspx

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jcshearer2@comcast.net