"Brownie" was such a gentle horse...everyone in town asked for Brownie when they came to the livery stable to rent transporation. "Why, I could climb on Brownie in Hagan, Va., and drop the bridle down, or even go to sleep if I wanted to and that horse would bring me straight to Harlan," said an old timer who rode the trail many times. "She never faltered by the road side or turned off on the wrong path."

Brownie was one of the horses rented from the livery stable owned by Charlie Smith and H.C. Rice. The livery stable, on the corner of Elm and Central Streets was the first and only place where horses were available to hire.

The big frame building housed 12 to 15 head of horses with a little office room in front. A big stove furnished the heat with the laterns hung around for light.

Someone always slept there at night to take care of any lste riders. The price of $1.50 a trip to Hagan was excellent pay. Smith and Rice owned another livery stable in Hagan. The passengers rode the horse from here and left it at Hagan, or came back in from Harlan and turned the horse over to the owners here. That method of transporation went on for several years until the railroad was built. Charlie Price stayed on the Hagan side of he mountain and took care of the horses there. In one part of the Elm Street livery stable, the owners kept "drummer's hacks", "two seated buckboards," and wagons. Usually the younger crowd rented the hacks to ride to Evarts or some other neighboring place to a box supper.

"Granny" was the horse that most women asked to ride. They looked a little disappointed when they asked to hire a horse and discovered that "Granny" was on the other side of the mountain.

Henry Creech owned a blacksmith shop across the street from the stable where the swimming pool is today. He kept the horses shod and the blackboard repaired.

In the winter when traveling was rougher than usual, he "rough shod" the horses with heavy hob nails to help them climb the mountain. Sometimes the horses collected on either side.

If several left Harlan early in the mornng, they remained on the other side until someone rented one over there. W.W. Duffield and others who worked with the Kentenia Corporation here rented the horses daily to go about over the county surveying the land. In later years, Brownie was sold to them.

Smith and Rice did a flourishig business at the livery stable for seven or eight years. When the railroad first came to Baxter, the men sent a buckboard down there to meet the train and carry passengers on to Harlan.

picture...FIRST TRANSPORATION CENTER---The big livery stable at the corner of elm and Central Streets was once the center of Harlan's transporation. horses for hire at the stable was the only means of commuting with the outside world. the dozens or more horses were kept busy between harlan and Hagan. Charlie Smith, one of the owners, is shown here with"Brownie" one of the most popular horses to hire. The other owner was H.C. Rice

Sunday January 31, 1954

Volume 53 Number 25

Page 1

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