Grandfather Mountain

Grandfather Mountain is the mountain a family refused to give up. The Cherokee called it Tanawha — 'fabulous hawk or eagle'; the settlers renamed it for the old man's profile in the cliffs, the face clearest from Foscoe. At 5,946 feet it's the Blue Ridge's highest peak, formed 750 million years ago, with recorded winds over 200 mph — an island of extreme weather in the southern Appalachians. Daniel Boone explored it; André Michaux climbed it in 1794; John Muir visited in 1898.

The MacRaes bought it in 1885 for the Linville resort scheme; grandson Hugh Morton ended up sole owner in 1952 and did two things that defined it: he built the Mile High Swinging Bridge — the 228-foot span to Linville Peak — and he fought the National Park Service over the Blue Ridge Parkway's route for two decades. Morton's campaign ('a switchblade to the Mona Lisa') forced the Parkway onto the lower slope, producing the Linn Cove Viaduct — the engineering marvel that finally closed the Parkway's 'missing link' in 1987.

The mountain stayed private until 2008 — the state bought the backcountry for a park while the attraction stayed with the family. It remains an International Biosphere Reserve — the peak where the Parkway's most famous engineering exists because one owner wouldn't let the road go over the top.

Grandfather Mountain is the archive's profile file — the Blue Ridge's highest peak, named for the old man's face in the cliffs, where the Mile High Swinging Bridge crosses and the Parkway's missing link was fought over for twenty years.