Photo courtesy femmeaufoyer2011.blogspot.com

The creation of Lake Jocassee, along with Lake Keowee, forever altered the Upstate landscape, eliminating the Horsepasture, a precious area where the Toxaway and Horsepasture rivers met.

Revisiting the Horsepasture

By Dr. Thomas Cloer, Jr.

Special to The Courier

When I see books now that show the stages of the massive Duke Energy project that created lakes Keowee and Jocassee, I feel a wave of melancholy sweep over me. Some of the fondest memories of my life were formed within the mountains, hollows, rivers and meadows that are now just putrid mud at the bottom of those reservoirs. The Horsepasture was that precious area where the Toxaway and Horsepasture rivers met. It was flat there, and livestock such as horses were pastured there at one time, thus its name.

Photo courtesy Cloer family
The author and his father-in-law, Conrad Kowalski.

One of the greatest thrills in my life was to spend a week-end fly fishing up the Horsepasture River from its junction with the Toxaway River. This was the very area called the Horsepasture by the natives of this region. The old gravel road was beside the Horsepasture River until Mill Creek and Bearcamp Creek joined the mighty headwaters of the Keowee. Where Bearcamp Creek joined the Horsepasture River, we often made our camp. The Horsepasture River left the road there and turned toward North Carolina. All is now sludge at the bottom of Lake