Abstract:
Whitehouse Mountain is located along the Jackson and Macon county border. It's highest point is known at the “Devil's Courthouse.†Along the path up to the courthouse is a rock chiseled with a Spanish inscription. No one knows who carved this. One theory is that one of DeSoto's men carved the phrase when they traveled through the Highlands area in 1540. Appalachian historian T. W. Reynolds argued that a local citizen, Herman Wiles Alley, carved the inscription around 1925. This theory has been questioned by others who remember seeing the carving before Alley's birth. The mystery remains unsolved.