Remembering Poet Laureate Ella V. Costner
by Frances Figart in The Great Smokey Mountains Association
Not long ago, I got a voice message from Carol Treiber, a member of Great Smoky Mountains Association, saying that she had read a story in Smokies Life magazine—and she needed my help.
When I reached Treiber, I learned she is an independent 86-year-old poet who lives alone in a modest abode beside the Tuckaseegee River near Bryson City, NC, close as she can be to her beloved Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She wanted to do something to help more people learn about an earlier Smokies native, another independent female poet named Ella V. Costner.
Ella Costner was born February 20, 1893, in a two-room log cabin on Crying Creek in the small community of Mountain Rest near today’s Cosby Campground in the Smokies. She and eight siblings helped their parents to eke out a living on a mountain farm with views of White Rock, Low Gap, and Snake Den. MORE