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Hilltop Tracks a Tale of Death and Greed: The Story of Delk's Cliff
by Bob Burnette
Click photos to enlarge
The name changes as the story fades
A flash of water far below - the Ivy River
Up in the Cliff, no end of crannies where a fugitive could hide.
The Bend of Ivy, green and cold
A chestnut plank - how old?
A wet, cold journalist
A wild place
Bruce Phillips, looking for history wherever he goes
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Picture yourself on the run from the law in the early 1800's. There is no place to hide from your fate but in the dense woods. In the rugged terrain, only the cliffs bring you shelter. Many are looking for you for a cash reward, dead or alive. One man you trust brings you food.
This sets the stage for a famous tale from Madison County during the early 1800's. The man's name is Jordan Delk, which gives the name Delk's Cliff to a Madison County landmark. Our local historian Bruce Phillips once again has brought a story.
"He (Delk) bought a piece of land down this side of Petersburg from a man. He didn't bother to check out what had gone on in the courthouse in Asheville. He just bought it. He bought this place, and he found out that the guy had already sold it to somebody else, and he sold it to Delk a second time. And Delk went down to see him about it - I guess you could say that - and saw him all right. And he climbed up in the window. The man was sitting there in a chair rocking a baby. And Delk put a rifle ball through his head.
"He took off. A lot of you know that when you do something bad enough, the first thing you do is run. Well he ran! And he wound up in this cave over on Ivy River, way up in the cliffs. He hid out in that cave. And the law would look for him and look for him. And they put a price on his head -- a $100 reward. Now in 1810, $100 would get anybody. There's lots of people would kill you for $100. I mean if they didn't really mind shooting somebody too bad. But Delk stayed in that cave.
"And there was this man down at the mouth of White Oak, and he came up there every day and brought food to Delk, so he could stay in the cave, stay out of sight, so nobody would see him. But somebody went around, put up some posters around that put $100 on Delk. So the next time this old boy went up there to feed him, took his food to him. I guess Delk trusted him by then. So he sat out on a rock and started eating. And the guy pulled out a pistol, shot him in the head, and killed him.
"He hooked a mule to him and drug him back down off of that ridge and put him in an old shed. The guy kept an old store down there. And upstairs he had some big boxes where they salted down meat. So he put Delk in one of those boxes, covered him up with salt, so he could have kept him as long as he wanted to. And sent word to the sheriff, who I think - his name was Huey. It may be James. But his last name was Huey. He sold land for some people around here, for the government. He sent the sheriff word now that if he could get the $100 in cash, which meant hard money, bring it to me, and I'll give you your man. And the sheriff did. Paid $100 for a dead body."
"When that man got older - the one who had shot Delk and collected the reward - when he got older and his time came (It looked like he was going to die, as a matter of fact): and he was laying in bed with his sons and his family around him; and it was at night; and all of a sudden he screamed and pointed at the door; and he said, '. . . .'"
Note: From this point on Bruce Phillips swore us to secrecy because, he said, the man still has relatives in Madison County who even 200 years after the event might take issue with public release of an unauthorized version of the last minutes of their ancestor's life. . . even though the story was, Phillips said, "too good to keep hidden much longer."
"They say," Phillips continued, "that where Delk stayed and kept a fire, there are still marks above on the rocks that show the blackness of where the flames hit to show where he stayed."
As we heard this story, we felt that we must visit Delk's Cliff and find exactly where all this happened. Phillips himself had done a college thesis on this story but had never actually explored the cliff and found the spot.
We meet Phillips in Mars Hill at The Country Hub Chevron Station, which he owns, and follow his SUV west on 213, then south on Bull Creek road until we come to a turnoff called Delis Cliff Lane. Phillips comments on how names change over time.
As we drive up the road we notice how a few housing developments have started even way out here. It's rough terrain grown up in small trees, and Phillips recalls when it was cut over and grown up in briars. He says folks then called it "Scratch Ankle Road", due to all the ticks and thorns.
At the end of the pavement we ponder exactly which way we should take through the woods as two roads emerge. As the poem states, we take "the one less traveled" and drive through very thick woods to the end of the track, where a weathered blue tarp marks, perhaps, a hunters camp.
Phillips rummages a rope out of the car and warns, "Don't know if you'll need that, but there's a big drop out there. One step off of that and you're not coming back." Phillips wants to go with us, but he suffers from a bad back. As we start the descent down the cliff, I can see why he opts for looking for 'sang (ginseng) around the car. Looking down from the top is like leaning out of an airplane. Even the game trail around the cliff goes nearly straight down, and there's not much to catch you if you were to fall.
From the bottom it is a magnificent sight to look up from the banks of the Ivy River to see the entire massive cliff. The water is clear and deep and the landscape green and bright. As you look up on the cliff, you realize that there are any number of possible places in which Delk could have stayed.
We decide to cross the river to the other side to get a better view, and we realize the depth of the water. In some parts it comes up to chest level. I take a spill and find out exactly how cold it is! It can't have changed much since Phillips fished there years ago.
We notice up on the rocks there is an ancient chestnut board that serves as a walkway to cross over a gap that leads up to the giant cliff, but we do not have the time or the gear to thoroughly explore further.
As we make the long hike back up the mountain, I want to know more about what transpired among those rocks. Once we get back, Phillips is eager to know what we have seen and done in the two hours we have been gone. We describe it to him in detail, but the search for Delk's hideout with the smoke-blackened ceiling remains a goal for another expedition.
Before we leave the area, we follow Delis Cliff (aka Scratch Ankle) Lane to its end and find a very new house surrounded by pastureland. A friendly young lady approaches to see if we need any help. We explain our mission.
Although her house is almost directly above the cliff where fugitive killer Jordan Delk died, and though it is probably not far from where his killer died screaming at the prospect of his own demise, the young lady knows not of what happened there. Maybe from somewhere Delk's ghost is looking down (or up) trying to keep it that way.
Note: Just as we finalized this story for The Hilltop, we got a call from Bruce Phillips telling us that he had found out exactly where the spot was. He received information from a relative of Delk's killer that we were in the right location but wrong spot. We need to travel a little upstream to the actual spot, so part two will be coming soon.
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