Retired Stuarts Draft educator Nat Forbes has witnessed plenty of history in his 101 years, including some of the Big Levels story. Nat’s father and older brother converted a Model T into a flatbed truck to help haul cages of white-tailed deer that had arrived on the railroad to the newly formed Big Levels refuge a few miles away.
“Justus Cline and the others had fenced in the whole area with a real high fence and created a deep pool in one of the streams,” Nat said of Big Levels. “When they released the deer, they were so scared that they all jumped in the pool and went under water. Pop said that all you could see when you looked across the water was their noses sticking up like brown ducks!” he remembered with a laugh.