Sugar Hill Receives Its Name
Four decades after Pierre-Francois Tubeuf’s
demise near its peak, Sugar Hill received its modern name.
The property had passed on to Old Hattler Bickley whose dreams were
less far-fetched than Tubeuf’s had been --- Bickley just wanted to make
a living off the land on and around Sugar Hill. Old Hattler
Bickley ran cattle and grew grain, but he soon discovered that Sugar
Hill was also full of Sugar Maple trees that could be tapped in early
spring to make maple syrup and maple sugar.
Bickley’s maple sugar operation was relatively unique in the area, but
cooking down maple sap into sugar had been part of the native culture
for hundreds of years. According to Native American legend, the
sweetness of maple sap was discovered by accident when Chief Woksis
came home and threw his tomahawk into the side of a Sugar Maple tree
outside his home. The next morning, he pulled the tool loose and
went hunting, not realizing that sap was leaking out of the gash and
into a bowl at the base of the tree. Later that day, his daughter
noticed the bowl of liquid while cooking supper and poured the maple
sap into their meat stew rather than walking all the way to the creek
for water. As the stew cooked, the maple sap was rendered down
into syrup, giving Woksis and his daughter a tasty treat.
However the first maple sugar was discovered, the sweetener quickly
became a prominent part of the culture of many eastern Native American
tribes. The sap of Sugar Maples is rich in sugars in the early
spring, and during this season many Native Americans would relocate to
spend an entire month tapping maples and boiling down the sap into
sugar. The maple sugar was used for seasoning for the rest of the
year and was also traded to other tribes who lived outside the small
area in which maple sugar could be produced --- the climate required
for maple syrup and sugar production is found only in part of New
England and in certain pockets further south along the Appalachian
Mountains.
European settlers learned to tap maples from the Native Americans,
though relatively few tried the endeavor this far south. Old
Hattler Bickley’s operation is considered to be the first maple
sugaring operation in the area, taking advantage of the cold,
north-facing slope that allows Sugar Maples to grow in our more
southern climate. Bickley tapped trees on the hillside below the
Frenchman’s settlement, then boiled down the sap to be sold at the
Bickley Mills trading center in Castlewood. If you keep your eyes
peeled, you may see patches of charcoal in the soil where fires were
kept burning all day to reduce the sap by 4,000%, turning maple sap
into syrup and then into sugar.
I have tried to tap the Sugar Maples on my own land about ten miles
away with limited success, and have heard others in our area complain
that southwest Virginia’s mountains no longer get cold enough to
produce the sugar-filled sap that boils down into maple syrup. As
global warming makes maple syrup and sugar production in southwest
Virginia a matter for the history books, it is worth remembering Sugar
Hill’s history as a sign of a colder time.
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