About Us

A Walk Down Memory Lane

 

James Drury

"About 50+ years ago my grandparents purchased one of the first lots available in CHB. I was 8 yrs old. I remember we stayed in tents and vehicles the first summer when they were clearing the lot for a trailer. We went to the spring on Lakeshore to fill cans/jugs/etc with water to boil. I have also been in the cave when you could go, on your hands a knees, beyond the second cavern opening. The area has changed considerably since then as the lots were all wooded."

 

Karen Reynolds

"We bought our first lot in 6/80. Michael was on strike, we received a card in the mail, that said we would receive $10.00 in gas and $15.00 cash if we came to look at a lot, of course we bought the lot, 1595.00. l will say now it was a very good decision 😁 We camped for years, tent to popup camper to a small building. We hauled our water for years, but when we first bought the lot you could get water from an outlet where the office is now located. We finally acquired a few more lots and built a building with bathrooms and showers about 10 years ago, woo hoo. We still have the sign they put up."

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Angela Hayes 

"I was there when I was 9. I am 57 now. No water at all in that area. We went to the spring to get it. Then finally my dad fred Harmon went to get a big container to have water shipped in. Then finally water lines through the neighbor hood was put in. Back then no home owners had dues either. When we got on a bus we walked to the store. Then it was the mailboxes. My half sister alicia was the lucky one to walk out the door to the bus. My dad built by hand what use to be rocky mountain grocery. My mom and dad ran the store and I did put my time in too. They quit the store when they had to get new tanks in for the gas and got tired of it all. The store would still be going on if they had it still. They always worked hard to keep it going. Gas pumps bait and food was cheaper back then . As well as my dad knew if he kept the gas cheap people would go to that store. But anyway. Its tiresome to keep up a store. Cause you have to think of what people want and needed. To stay on the lake. You didn't want to go to sailings to get bait or tackle. Plus gas. But any way that is from my memories."

 

Lisa Day

"My parents bought the land at the corner of Wilderness Road and Hwy 728 in 1974 before it was sold to the investors who developed it, and John Smith helped my parents start Brownsville Insurance Agency. My mom cleaned their trailer/office every Thursday for quite a while. I remember the conversations debating “Cave” or “Cove” Hollow Bay.
Jaggers Road is named for my grandfather George Jaggers, who built it while he was magistrate.

My parents bought their six acres in 1972 at the corner of 728 and Wilderness (then Lige Elmore Road); trees covered the whole place, and Horn Pond was in the flat lower part of the road.
Lige Elmore owned much of the property from 728 to the lake (but possibly only to Jaggers Road, as my dads say, and he lived in the big white house at the end of the road. In the 1960s, my grandpa George Jaggers grated a road off Lige Elmore Road for a few families that lived back in the woods; the road had been only dirt before and easily flooded. When Lige Elmore died, his heirs sold the land to a group from Murray, which included John Smith, Bill Fendrick, Tommy Sanders, and a medical student who wore his hair in a ponytail, according to my dad, whose name he can’t remember. My dad rode around with the men, helping them decide where to clear trails for the tractors with grater blades. Stroud Decker (whose nickname was Stroudy) cut a lot of the roads, and when a tree fell on him and killed him, the developers named the road for him. Most of the lots sold for $500, and my dad thought it was pricey! We loved driving around and watching the ~10”x18” white signs with people’s last names—e.g., The Moores, Louisville, Kentucky, with an image of trees and water on one side. Probably along the same time as Jaggers Road was built, someone was bulldozing the lots where Bonnie’s Lakeside Cafe is now. The bulldozer dropped off the edge of the flat area and tumbled over the bluff. The driver wasn’t hurt, but they left the dozer down there for decades, rusting with trees growing up around it. My cousins and I used to sneak and look at it over the side, and it might as well have been 1,000 feet down. It took on mythical status for us."