Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America

Short line mountain railroads are often miracles of construction. Built primarily for shipping logs, the Mount Mitchell Railroad was no exception. Within a span of 21 miles, the road climbed 3,500 feet, but utilized only three trestles and nine switchbacks, while maintaining a grade of five and a half percent. In this richly illustrated work the author brings to life a time when Mount Mitchell was dressed in virgin timber. Access to the mountain, located in Western North Carolina, was slow and difficult; but after completion of the railroad, a timbering industry was born. The railroad also provided tourists with scenic trips along its rugged contours.

This volume looks at the natural and human history of North Carolina's Mount Mitchell, part of the Black Mountain range and the highest peak in the United States. It chronicles the geological forces that created this landscape, traces its environmental change and human intervention.

The highest peak in the eastern United States, Mount Mitchell towers 6,684 feet over its home in Yancey County, North Carolina. It has borne silent witness to great scientific and personal achievements, tragic loss of life, heated debates, and a host of controversies both great and small. Once considered forbidding and remote, it claimed the life of its namesake, Elisha Mitchell, when he fell to his death in an attempt to firmly establish the mountain's height. In the early 1900s, entrepreneurs constructed a railroad, opening its old-growth forests to massive deforestation. This devastation stirred some of the earliest notions of environmentalism that led to Mount Mitchell's establishment as North Carolina's first state park. Today, it is a playground for tourists from around the world, offering some of the best hiking and views in the nation. Mount Mitchell showcases the rich history of the mountain along with the events and colorful characters that have shaped its story.

The most visited site in the National Park system, the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway winds along the ridges of the Appalachian mountains in Virginia and North Carolina. According to most accounts, the Parkway was a New Deal "Godsend for the needy," built without conflict or opposition by landscape architects and planners who traced their vision along a scenic, isolated southern landscape. The historical archives relating to this massive public project, however, tell a different and much more complicated story, which Anne Mitchell Whisnant relates in this revealing history of the beloved roadway.

From the Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Piedmont and the Outer Banks, this thoroughly updated and revised guide features more than 200 hiking trails in all regions of the state.