The Party Gathers 

Col Vance and Major B Collins arrived on the 19th and they all went to Captain Isaac Weaver's They were General Joseph McDowell Col David Vance Major Mussendine Mathews commissioners John Strother and Robert Henry surveyors Messers B Collins James Hawkins George Penland Robert Logan Geo Davidson and J Matthews chain bearers and markers Major James Neely commissary two pack horse men and a pilot. 

They camped that night on Stag creek On the night of the 23d of May they camped at a very bad place in a low gap at the head of Laurel Fork of New river and Laurel Fork of Holston at the head of a branch after having passed through extreme rough ground and some bad laurel thickets. 

A road now runs through that laurel thicket built since the Civil War and runs from Hemlock postomce where there is now a narrow gauge lumber railroad and an extract plant to Laurel Bloomery in Tennessee.

A small hotel now stands half on the North Carolina and half on the Tennessee side of the line those men then ran and the gap is called Cut Laurel gap because it is literally cut through the laurel for a mile or more.  

Thousands of gallons of blockade whiskey used to be carried through that gap when there was nothing but a trail there It is called by Mr Strother a low gap but it is one of the highest in the mountains 

The Damascus Lumber Company Railroad 

In 1902 the Hemlock Extract Company, DK Stouffer manager, was built and several years afterwards the Damascus Lumber Company built a narrow gauge railroad from Laurel Bloomery in Tennessee on the Laurel Railway Company's line over the Cut Laurel gap. 

It is operated exclusively as a logging road but the grade generally is good enough for a standard road and there is no reason why it should not be electrified and operated as it is for freight and passengers Its terminus at Hemlock is only 19 miles from Jefferson the county seat of Ashe county. 

The grade down Laurel creek to the North Fork of the New river is good and the road should be extended to Jefferson at least the principal barrier to mountain roads having been overcome in the passage of the Cut Laurel gap.

From:

Western North Carolina: A History (1730-1913)

 By John Preston Arthur, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution of North Carolina. Edward Buncombe Chapter, Asheville

http://books.google.com/books?id=rHNtrkPD8UMC&pg=PA39&dq=cut+laurel+gap&hl=en&sa=X&ei=C4HVT86HJOO-0AHaxemrAw&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=cut%20laurel%20gap&f=false