Wilma Dykeman wrote a splendid history of the French Broad River and it's environs for the "Rivers of America" series published by Holt, Rinehart in 1955. The copy I have is a reprint printed by the University of Tennessee Press in 1965. I haven't seen the river since my sons, both avid whitewater canoeists, paddled the French Broad on their way home from the Nantahela.

Sandy