The Falling Water community in 1959.
Mark KennedyResidents of the Falling Water community can tell by your smell if you are from Signal Mountain. It’s not your body odor, but the smell coming from your car brakes.
The morning air in the little Falling Water community has the acrid smell of scorched brake pads straining against the steep grades of Roberts Mill Road, which plunges down the side of Walden’s Ridge.
For mountaintop residents who live in Signal Mountain, Walden, and unincorporated areas of Walden’s Ridge, Falling Water is that little cluster of farm properties at the foot of the mountain they whiz through on their way to work or play.
Some of the Falling Water old-timers remember when Roberts Mill Road was just a dirt path, and people thought little of hiking up and down the mountain. In many ways, Falling Water in the early decades of the 21st century is a land that time forgot, a small rural community surrounded by – some might say choked by – urban sprawl.
“Back in the ’30s and ’40s, everybody who lived in Falling Water were kin,” says Bud Moody, who started at Falling Water School in 1936.