Horace Kephart was born in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains. After graduation from Cornell University, he secured a position cataloguing a private book collection in Italy and then worked at the Yale University Library. Later, he served as director of the St. Louis Mercantile Library.
Kephart had a lifelong fascination with the pioneer lifestyle. In his early forties, disenchanted with urban, domestic life, he began seeking respite through camping trips in the Ozarks. In 1904, following separation from his wife and children, Kephart settled in Hazel Creek, North Carolina, then a remote mountain community sixteen miles from the nearest railroad station. During his three years at Hazel Creek, Kephart integrated himself into mountaineer culture and kept twenty-seven journals of his observations....
Cornell University Library