This is probably of interest to .... well... no one.. but figured I'd share it anyway..
I was looking at the USGS quads for my area last night and downloaded the 1939 topo that includes the area between Spivey Gap and the Nolichucky River here in Erwin and I was surprised to see that the AT at that time ran around the back side of No Business Knob, through the Granny Lewis Creek area, and down what is now the Temple Hill Trail.
At some point, a serious reroute was made to get it to todays current location. Here's a link to the topo if you want to have a look: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/..._24000_geo.pdf.
I wonder if there's a historical archive somewhere of AT reroutes? It's pretty interesting to me to see the evolution of the trail.