Memories of walking down the streets of Marble

Marble Many people know about walking streets of gold in heaven, but not many know about walking the streets of blue marble in Cherokee County.

According to the well-regarded history book Our Heritage by Margaret Walker Freel, a local historian elected by the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners in 1955, the marble deposit in Marble is an estimated 500 feet thick. The marble is very high quality and was accepted to be used at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.

The blue marble of the Cherokee County Courthouse built in 1927 was harvested from the marble quarry. There were quarries in Marble for both blue and gray marble, Freel wrote.

Doris Gibby, a lifelong local resident, remembers walking the long white- and blue-swirled marble sidewalk that spanned the length of the small township. She would walk the marble sidewalk to get to and from the different businesses open at the time.

“My grandfather, Will King, worked at the marble quarry in 1928,” Gibby said. “Everyday we’d hear the ‘quarry whistle’ at 7:30 a.m., noon and 4:30 p.m. It was loud and could be heard through the valley.”

The sidewalk was placed during a prospering time in Marble when several businesses were open, like two hotels and grocery stores. The area even had its own town hall and jail.

Gibby still has minutes from 1911 by the Marble Town Board of Aldermen setting ordinances and running business in the town.

“Marble isn’t what it used to be,” she said. “It has really changed over the years.”

Gibby said at one point, she knew everyone in Marble and where they lived or went to church. Today, it’s a good day if she goes to the post office and sees one person she knows.

When Gibby was a young woman, Marble was very different. She said being born at the end of the Great Depression, they grew up poor but didn’t really know it.

“It wasn’t a bad life,” she said. “We were poor, but everyone else was, too. When I was growing up we always had hogs, chickens and a garden.”

Gibby remembers the Sinclair Station owned by the Bryson Brothers, the grocery store owned by Howard West, Mike Moss’ store in the bottom of the Marble Springs Masonic Lodge building, Noah Abernathy’s store and Ben Mintz’s store.

She told of how two passenger trains came through Marble daily – one in the morning, afternoon and evening. The thriving community had street lamps along the main road.

“There used to be this huge metal building owned by Riley Lunsford between the highway and the railroad track, around about where The Oaks Academy sits now,” Gibby said. “They had the creek dammed up there and a swimming area.”

Marble also had a bowling alley and saloon owned by Arthur Palmer, who also owned a filling station and started the Palmer Museum of Marble filled with Cherokee relics, early settler wares and displays of native minerals. The museum’s contents were bought by Herman Wood and later donated to the Cherokee County Historical Museum in downtown Murphy.