Mount Mitchell State Park

The mountain takes its name from Elisha Mitchell, a science professor at the University of North Carolina who first measured the peak in 1835 using barometric readings and careful math, and concluded it was the highest in the eastern country. His claim held for two decades until a former student, the senator Thomas Clingman, publicly challenged it, arguing that Mitchell had measured the wrong summit and that a different peak was the true high point. The dispute grew into a bitter, years-long public argument over who had stood on the tallest ground.

In 1857 Mitchell returned to the Black Mountains one last time to gather the measurements that would settle the matter. Exploring alone, he slipped and fell into a deep pool at the foot of a sixty-foot waterfall and drowned; his stopped pocket watch marked the hour at eight o'clock. His body was found days later by the famed local bear hunter Big Tom Wilson. It was eventually confirmed that Mitchell had been right all along, the peak was named in his honor in 1858, and his remains were carried up and buried at the summit, where his grave still sits.

By the early 1900s heavy logging was stripping the Black Mountains, and the sight of the ravaged slopes alarmed people across the state. In response the legislature moved quickly in 1915 to set the summit aside as Mount Mitchell State Park, the first unit in what would grow into North Carolina's whole state park system. The park now protects around 1,900 acres of the range's high country.

That early rescue matters, because the summit holds something unusual: a boreal spruce-fir forest, a cool, misty woodland of Fraser fir and red spruce that survives here as a relic of the last ice age. It is closer in feel to the forests of Canada than to the hardwood coves lower down, home to plants and birds found almost nowhere else in the South, and worth the drive for the change in air alone.

From the parking area near the top, a short, steep, paved path leads the final stretch to a modern stone-and-steel observation deck built to give a clean 360-degree sweep of the surrounding ranges. On a clear day the view runs for scores of miles across the Blue Ridge, and on many days you find yourself standing above a sea of clouds pooled in the valleys below. Nearby sit Mitchell's grave and, in season, a small natural-history museum that explains the forest, the weather, and the mountain's story.

The summit makes its own weather. It can be ten to twenty degrees cooler than the towns below, wind-whipped, and socked in with fog when the lowlands are sunny, so a jacket is smart even in July and a clear morning is worth chasing. When the sky cooperates, it is one of the most rewarding easy summits in the East, a true mountaintop panorama reached with only a few minutes of walking.

You reach the park from the Blue Ridge Parkway, turning onto a five-mile spur road that climbs to the summit parking area. Because the Parkway itself can close in ice, snow, or heavy fog, it is wise to check road conditions before setting out, especially in the shoulder seasons. The seasonal facilities, the museum, restaurant, and campground, generally run from spring into fall.

Give yourself time to do more than snap a photo from the deck. There are hiking trails along the crest of the Black Mountains for those who want a longer walk, picnic spots in the cool forest, and plenty of reason to simply stand at the top and take in the scale of it. It is the kind of place that rewards a clear day and an unhurried visit, the very roof of the eastern country and the mountain that started a state's love of its wild places.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.