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.
[2] 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.
While these mountains contained one of the richest timber stands in the eastern United States, their general remoteness and rugged terrain had left them mostly untouched by loggers for much of the 19th century.
[3] Arthur chose the small community of Newport, near where the Pigeon River exits the high mountains and enters the upper Tennessee Valley, as a base for his logging operations.
"[6] Dykeman said of Arthur: ... he rode, lord and master, on a shiny black stump-tailed horse over his domain, never settling the bulk of his weight into the saddle, but always standing in the stirrups as if personally overseeing in the wilderness the birth of empire.
[7] Arthur built a large house in Newport— known as "The Mansion"— and made plans to redesign the rough frontier village as an ideal community, complete with parks, clubhouses, hotels, a new town hall, and a college.
Arthur then formed the Knoxville, Cumberland Gap, and Louisville Railroad to build a spur line to Middlesboro which would transport the pig iron and coke out of the valley.
They grew even more concerned when the ore deposits in the Yellow Creek Valley were determined to be of low grade, and after the failure of Baring Brothers in 1891, Arthur's British financiers backed out of American Association.
[2] Believing Middlesboro would one day grow into a great industrial center, Arthur decided to establish a suburb for the city's future elite on the Tennessee side of the Cumberland Gap.
[1] Arthur understood the great wealth that could be obtained from extracting the abundant natural resources of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, but even with million-dollar financing, the lack of technology and inaccessibility of the region proved too much to overcome.
In the early 1900s, firms such as the Little River Lumber Company and Champion Fibre saw enormous returns logging the timber stands Arthur had attempted to reach decades earlier.