Alexander Arthur

Who was Alexander Arthur?

Alexander Alan Arthur was a Scottish-born engineer and entrepreneur active primarily in the southeastern United States in the latter half of the 19th century. Flamboyant, charismatic, and energetic, Arthur used his prominent American and European financial connections to fund numerous business ventures, most of which were overly ambitious and ultimately failed. A proponent of economic advancement in what became known as the New South, Arthur played a primary role in the development of the Cumberland Gap area, and in the course of his endeavors established the cities of Middlesboro, Kentucky and Harrogate, Tennessee. The community of Arthur, Tennessee, is named for him.

After spending his early life migrating back and forth between Scotland, Canada, and Scandinavia, Arthur moved to Boston in 1879, and accepted a position as the general manager of the Scottish-Carolina Timber and Land Company's American operations. In the early 1880s, Arthur identified a rich stand of timber in the upper Blue Ridge Mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, and devised a boom system to extract the timber from the difficult mountain terrain.