Local photographer uses drone to capture images of wrecked cars in the Cullasaja Gorge

While taking videos of the Cullasaja Gorge, local photographer Eric Haggart stumbled across wrecked cars at the bottom of the gorge.

With a bit of curiosity and permission, Haggart trekked to the locations in the video and found several old cars that had wrecked, some to believe, more than 60 years ago.

“I go up this road quite a bit,” Haggart said. “The gorge is kind of my go-to place when I want to get out and shoot a little bit of video. A few years back, the now former mayor of Franklin told me that there were some old cars out in the gorge. So, every once in a while, especially during winter, I go up there and try to see if I can locate them with a drone.”

Haggart got into photography 12 years ago and got into drone operating five years ago after shooting photos from a helicopter.

“About five years ago, I went up in a helicopter on an assignment and it was thrilling,” Haggart said. “If you’re a baseball player, you want to play in the World Series. If you play football, you want to play in the Super Bowl. For me, this was my experience. I had heard about drones around 2015 and I didn’t really want to do it because I wanted to be up in a helicopter. You come to realize it’s so expensive. So, a friend of mine turned me on to a drone company so I bought one and it’s been uphill from there. I got my commercial license four years ago.”

Now as a FAA Part 107/NCDOT certified sUAS operator Haggart said flying a drone adds a tool to his tool belt having to shoot everything from real estate to weddings.

“Being able to fly a drone makes my work better,” Haggart said. “It allows people to see things from a different angle that they weren’t even thinking about. Flying a drone allows me to capture our area through a different lens. It’s just another tool in my toolbox.”

Two weeks ago, Haggart caught a commercial vehicle going up the gorge and pulled out his drone to video what would happen. In the video, which now has 13,600 views, the commercial vehicle slows down and almost hits a pickup truck driving on the gorge. The pickup truck slowly backs up and the commercial vehicle keeps driving.

“Those things happen more often than not,” Haggart said. “I’ve had at least two or three encounters where I have seen large commercial vehicles going one way or another up the gorge and it just happens when I’m in the air. About a year ago, there was a tractor trailer going down the gorge and I followed it with my drone, because if it had hit that corner and there was a car coming up, something horrible would have happened. I never want those things to happen, but I want to make sure that I video it so there will be video evidence if someone was hurt or killed.”

Under the video, a local posted a comment telling Haggart that they live down in the gorge and they have a trail to some of the old cars.

Between hiking through trails and stopping to get his bearing with the drone, Haggart was able to locate the cars.

“I went and met with the husband and wife and the husband showed me the quote, unquote, trail,” Haggart said. “There was an old forest service road that I was able to walk for a little bit, then I had to send my drone up to get a bird’s eye view of where exactly I was. I finally made my way to the first car, and it was all rusted out. Then I made my way to the second car, which was pinkish in color.”

Later, looking back at the pictures, Haggart said he was able to see an old dealership sticker on the car. After a quick Google search, he said he found the car was sold out of Greensville, South Carolina.

“Other than the sticker from the car dealership, there were no distinguishing marks as to what type of vehicle it was,” Haggart said. “One commenter on the picture posted a photo of what he believed the vehicle to be, and it seemed to be pretty spot on.”

From small deer carcasses, wicker chairs and smashed in pickup trucks, Haggart said a feeling of eeriness was in the air when he was down in the gorge.

“I kept on thinking, ‘What happened? How did these vehicles get down here?’” Haggart said. “There was a Franklin area reporter who shared some articles of vehicles that had gone over the gorge. One was in the ‘30s and one was in the ‘50s. I took off with my drone at the base of the where the cars were and roughly estimated that they had to have fallen 150 feet. I kept thinking about how quiet it was down there with just the water trickling. If you fell down there and no one knew, I mean, you’re so disconnected from the road. It was a solemn place, knowing that someone had died in one of these accidents and not knowing the answers.”

Now getting a small taste of what might be out there, Haggart said he plans on coming back for more pictures.

“I do plan on going back, especially during the summer, when life has come back to the gorge,” Haggart said. “I want to see how it looks then, because these things are not visible from the air then. Now that I have permission from the property owners to go back, I’m definitely going to go back once the trees are all full and the gorge is pretty.”

More pictures can be found on Haggart’s Facebook page at Eric Haggart Imagery.  

- By Christopher Lugo