
Death in Briar Bottom
The True Story of Hippies, Mountain Lawmen, and the Search for Justice in the Early 1970s
Timothy Silver(Author)
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 12. November 2024
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-1-4696-8286-0 (ISBN)
Description
On July 3, 1972, twenty-four hippies from Clearwater, Florida, set up tents and settled in for the night at Briar Bottom, a public US Forest Service campground in western North Carolina. The impromptu campout was a pit stop for the group on their way to a Rolling Stones concert in Charlotte. Early that evening, they drank beer, smoked marijuana, and listened to rock music as they anticipated the good times that lay ahead. Near midnight, the county sheriff showed up with six deputies, allegedly responding to a noise complaint. They were armed with pistols and five sawed-off 12-gauge shotguns, one of which discharged, killing a young man named Stanley Altland. To this day, no one has been held responsible for the tragic incident, though it happened in front of over a dozen eyewitnesses.
Tim Silver writes the true story of Altland's death and its aftermath, using archival research, interviews with surviving Clearwater campers, and newly unearthed FBI files. A mix of true crime, southern history, and personal storytelling, this book shows how, in the dark of night at a remote mountain campsite, the killing of an innocent man epitomized the suspicion of and violence toward the counterculture that gripped the nation in the early 1970s.
Tim Silver writes the true story of Altland's death and its aftermath, using archival research, interviews with surviving Clearwater campers, and newly unearthed FBI files. A mix of true crime, southern history, and personal storytelling, this book shows how, in the dark of night at a remote mountain campsite, the killing of an innocent man epitomized the suspicion of and violence toward the counterculture that gripped the nation in the early 1970s.
Reviews / Votes
[A} gritty true crime . . . . By finding the universal dimensions in a local tragedy, Death in Briar Bottom shows how a true crime story from the past says a lot about persistent national problems."-Foreword Reviews"Thoroughly researched . . . . An intriguing perspective on a lesser-known case. This book proves that history can repeat itself in unexpected ways, and not everyone is eager to revisit the past." -Library Journal
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Product notice
Cloth
Illustrations
15 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 241 mm
Width: 159 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
445 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4696-8286-0 (9781469682860)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Timothy Silver
Death in Briar Bottom
The True Story of Hippies, Mountain Lawmen, and the Search for Justice in the Early 1970s
E-Book
11/2024
The University of North Carolina Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
Timothy Silver is professor emeritus of history at Appalachian State University, author of Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains, and coauthor of An Environmental History of the Civil War.