Chimney Rock and Grandfather Mountain

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If you have ever stood on the mile-high swinging bridge at the top of Grandfather Mountain or on the towering rock formation that gives Chimney Rock Park its name, you will recognize these familiar landmarks. What you may not know is that both of these cherished icons were privately owned for many years and both are becoming North Carolina state parks.

The sale of Chimney Rock Park by the Morse family to the state of North Carolina became official in January 2007. Grandfather Mountain will officially become a state park in 2009. 

The story of these two remarkable resources and the families who have preserved them for generations is a unique and still unfolding chapter in the history of North Carolina. 

“We’re learning how to do it. It’s the first time in the state that this has been done,” says Meghan Rogers, events manager at Chimney Rock Park. Rogers is referring to an existing attraction, such as Chimney Rock Park, continuing to operate within a larger state park. 

Visitors to Grandfather Mountain or Chimney Rock Park will not notice significant changes. Each park will continue to sell tickets to the attractions at the gate. The surrounding state park in each case will develop a master plan to create clear boundaries and designate entrances as distinct from the central attraction. At Grandfather Mountain there are established trails in the backcountry. Chimney Rock has trails within the existing attraction area, but trails in the backcountry have to be developed. The dynamic relationship between the staff at each attraction and the staff of the state park will continue to develop, making the entire experience full of possibilities for visitors.

In the case of Chimney Rock Park, the central attraction with the elevator to the top of the chimney, the nature centers, gift shops, and the existing trails will operate as a concession within the larger park. The Chimney Rock management staff and the Chimney Rock State Park rangers and employees will work together to coordinate programs. 

Grandfather Mountain’s central attraction, with its swinging bridge, animal habitats, nature museum, cafeteria and gift shops, will become a nonprofit called Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation within the larger Grandfather Mountain State Park. Staff members and board members will work in partnership with the park staff and will work to help with the transition. 

What is so vital about maintaining and expanding the parks?

Countless people who have visited these parks over the years would immediately recognize the importance of preserving attractions like the mile-high swinging bridge at Grandfather Mountain or the elevator ride inside the chimney as well as the spectacular views and sheer beauty of both locations. But there are other, less visible gifts that each park has to offer.

Grandfather Mountain is one of about 400 biospheres in the world and the only one that isprivately owned. A biosphere designated by UNESCO must contain ecologically diverse systems and must be on protected land. The goal is to explore balance in the relationship between humans and the biosphere. 

Hugh Morton was constantly concerned about air quality as he looked out from his beloved mountain and realized that the views were becoming obscured. He was also concerned about acquiring additional land to “buffer” those views. 

Grandfather Mountain’s naturalist Jesse Pope, who has worked there for nine years, does all he can to keep Morton’s intense environmental and ecological concerns alive, including education, conservation, and resource management. This means keeping counts of bats and other wildlife (the park has the largest colony of Virginia big-eared bats in the country), tagging and monitoring the endangered Northern flying squirrel, and tracking more than 70 species of birds as well as the foxes, wild turkeys, deer, bear, and groundhogs that make the mountain their home. Pope is responsible for developing educational program, including myriads of school groups throughout the year.

Tanya Cline heads the habitats at the park. She too and her trained staff care for the bears, otters, two eagles, deer and panthers that call the mountain home. Once the perimeter fence has been completed, the habitats will achieve final accreditation by the American Zoological Aquarium Association. 

Grandfather Mountain’s Museum contains one of the premier gemstone exhibits in the state as well as fascinating exhibits on the history and ecology of the mountain region. Rolland Hower, former chief of natural history exhibits for the Smithsonian, designed many of the displays. Models of native plants were created by the late Paul Marchand, and life-sized carvings of birds by Bill Chrisman.

Chimney Rock Park has the most ecologically diverse cliff system in the United States as well as an old growth forest. The land in Hickory Nut Gorge (now Chimney Rock State Park) represents some of the greatest biodiversity in the southeastern United States. Todd Morse, whose great-great uncle Lucius Morse was the first official owner of Chimney Rock Park, gives his father Lucius Morse III a large part of the credit for beginning to identify the unique biodiversity of the park. He worked with scientists at UNC-Charlotte to catalog plants, birds, and animals. 

The younger Morse, who became general manager of the Chimney Rock Park in 1986, hired Elisabeth Feil as a part-time naturalist at the park. Through her efforts, she established a nature center and educational programs. 

The staff at Chimney Rock Park is well aware of the legacy they are continuing. Meghan Rogers, public relations and events manager, is passionate about the role of the park in educating visitors and staff members alike about constant attention to environmental impact. Emily Walker, the education coordinator, creates the educational programs for school students and families. Naturalist Ron Lance is working with the state park staff to create a baseline inventory of plants, building on an existing list begun by Feil. The park has, among other inhabitants, a nesting pair of peregrine falcons. 

Transition To State Park

Grandfather Mountain

Crae Morton, one of Hugh Morton’s grandsons, was asked by his grandfather in 2003 to return to the mountain and help run the business. If you ask Crae Morton about the decision to work with the state to develop a state park, he points to the time after his grandfather’s death. In a meeting with family members, he remembers saying: “Here we are with a mountain to take care of. Which direction should we go?”

“In the past,” Morton says, “it was all my grandfather’s energy taking us in whatever direction.” 

The board members began to ask themselves: “How are we going to be sure that this mountain will still be here and taken care of in the same way 50 or 100 years from now?”

You can hear the reverence in Morton’s voice, the determination to enhance what his grandfather’s legacy has been. Like his grandfather, Morton knows that a mountain does not “belong” to anyone, even if an individual holds a legal document. 

“In the sense that it can belong to anyone, it belongs to the people of the state of North Carolina and beyond and to their children and their children’s children,” he says.

The Morton family had to find a plan that would ease their minds and ensure the mountain would be taken care of. Morton is concerned about more than the land that will become Grandfather Mountain State Park. The high profile of Grandfather Mountain made it all but inevitable that the land would be preserved. But Morton worries about the challenges to other pieces of land in the state. 

“You’ve got to go after everything,” he says, meaning that valuable natural resources must be protected for the future, even if they are not as well known as Grandfather Mountain.

Beginning in 2006, the Morton family began to assess how the mountain could become more environmentally friendly. They hired professors from Appalachian State University to help them develop a plan for the greening of Grandfather Mountain. Already a significant portion of their energy needs are generated from solar energy, and they are working toward harnessing wind energy while avoiding significant visual impact on the mountain. 

The staff at Grandfather Mountain is as enthusiastic as the Morton family. In fact, they consider themselves to be part of the family. Tanya Cline, head of the habitats, has worked at Grandfather Mountain for 12 years and, along with her capable assistant, has shepherded the occupants with enthusiasm since she graduated from university.

Chimney Rock Park 

Todd Morse was the first direct descendant of the original owner to actually run Chimney Rock Park. He began there in 1986, and under his direction, the park began to thrive and grow, with improvements, new buildings and programs. Morse became president of the company in 1992 and ran the park with the help of a loyal staff headed by Mary Gale Yeager, whom he considers one of the most talented people in tourism in the state. Yeager, who now heads the Chimney Rock Park Management, emphasizes the fact that the park and the village of Chimney Rock are intertwined.

The village depends on the park for its economic survival and the park looks to the people of the village for amenities such as restaurants and lodging right outside the gates. Yeager includes the new state park staff in this picture. 

“It’s not just about this piece or that piece,” Yeager says, “We’re all in it together. The real beauty is we all have the same mission.”

It’s no wonder Yeager views the mission of Chimney Rock Park with missionary zeal. She thinks of the late Hugh Morton as my mentor.” 

As the area surrounding the park developed and the park’s land increased in value, pressure mounted to develop a plan that would keep the park intact, the park staff employed, and the Chimney Rock residents (most of whom depend on the park for their livelihood) and the Morse family’s own interests protected. 

 “We truly did look for an outcome that was the best for the land, the family, and the employees,” Morse says.

A New State Park

The state of North Carolina had already purchased the land surrounding Chimney Rock for the Hickory Nut Gorge State Park. The Morse family approached state park director Lewis Ledford as early as 2005 to discuss the possibility of a sale. Initially, there was hesitation because the state had never operated a paid attraction within a larger park. 

It took nearly two years of exploring all possibilities before the state of North Carolina and the Morse family reached an agreement. The state would purchase Chimney Rock Park, the attraction would become an employee-owned company (Chimney Rock Management LLC), and the existing Hickory Nut Gorge State Park would be re-named Chimney Rock State Park.

Park Superintendent Adrienne Wallace is overseeing the development of Chimney Rock State Park. She works closely with the staff of the management company. It is not the first time she has been in charge of a brand new state park. She was the first superintendent of Mayo River State Park in the central area of the state which became a park in 2003.

“State parks carry a strong sense of the state’s heritage,” she says. “There’s a strong local base, a strong connection to the citizens of the state.”

Like the staff at Chimney Rock Park Management, she is excited about all the possibilities ahead.

“We are working together to complement, but not compete,” she says of the arrangement. 

Her small staff uses office space made available by the staff of the management company. Their goal is to develop a master plan, locate boundaries, and develop and improve trails. She shares the vision with those who have long worked to make Chimney Rock Park a remarkable place. Now the educational and environmental goals will be shared with the state park staff, and the staff operating the attraction work to protect the resources for future generations.

North Carolina’s State Park System

North Carolina’s tradition of state parks actually owes its beginnings to citizen reactions to the uncontrolled timber cutting in the early 20th century. As soon as rail lines were introduced into remote parts of the state, logging companies descended. The destruction of Mount Mitchell’s forests was so alarming that local citizens appealed to Governor Locke Craig. He was appalled by what he found upon visiting the mountain and launched a campaign to save it. In March of 1915, the General Assembly made Mount Mitchell North Carolina’s first state park. 

Grandfather Mountain will become the 34th state park in North Carolina. In addition to Grandfather Mountain, there are eleven mountain parks, including Dupont State Forest and two new state natural areas, Yellow Mountain and Bear Paw, both in Avery County. 

Given the intensity of development in the mountain counties of North Carolina, the fact that two families recognized the need to protect unique natural resources that they had “owned” for more than a century rather than offering it to the highest bidder is a blessing no visitor to either park should ever forget. Both families believe that it is not actually possible to own such a thing as a mountain or a forest, but that citizens can only be responsible stewards. Visitors can be grateful that two families were willing to share their unique legacies with future generations.

History of the Parks

Many factors in the history of the two parks are intriguing, but none more than the fact that the land was purchased by the two families in the late 1800s, just prior to a time when forests in western North Carolina would be systematically clear-cut by enormous timber companies. The 21st century brought a juggernaut of developers buying up land for gated communities, golf courses and industrial parks. In the face of these threats, the Morton family at Grandfather Mountain and the Morse family at Chimney Rock not only preserved their land but found remarkable ways to share it with their neighbors and fellow citizens. 

Grandfather Mountain and the Hugh Morton family

Hugh Morton, beloved North Carolina photographer and committed environmentalist, inherited the mountain from his maternal grandfather, Hugh MacRae, in 1952. MacRae graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1885 and came to North Carolina to work as a mining engineer in the mica mines near Spruce Pine in Mitchell County. While traveling on horseback in Avery County, he was smitten by the beauty of the land around Grandfather Mountain. He wrote to his father in Wilmington asking for money to purchase 16,000 acres of land from Walter Lenoir, grandson of General William Lenoir, for whom the town of Lenoir, N. C., is named. MacRae probably paid as little as 50 cents an acre for the land. 

MacRae established the Linville Improvement Company in 1889 and went on to found the resort community of Linville at the foot of the mountain. He built the first golf course in the North Carolina mountains in Linville. His daughter Agnes married Hugh Morton’s father Julian. In the early 1900s, the horseback trail was widened and an observation deck was built about half way to the summit. 

Mile-high Swinging Bridge

When Hugh Morton inherited the mountain, he built the famous mile-high swinging bridge. It was designed by Charles Hartman of Greensboro, N.C. Morton widened the road to the summit and began his life-long work to preserve the mountain while finding ways to share its beauty and biodiversity with the public. 

Linn Cove Viaduct

Morton insisted that the fragile eco-system on the mountain not be disturbed by the “missing link” of the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

For years Morton battled any plan that might sacrifice plant or animal life or unique mountain views to a highway. The result was the Linn Cove Viaduct, a spectacular engineering feat which was the first of its kind in the United States. It is, in effect, a “land-bridge” built from the top down and supported by piers in order to reduce the impact on the surrounding land. It is considered one of the most difficult bridge projects ever to be undertaken. Such viaducts were common in Europe, but few had been attempted in the United Stated when it was completed in 1982. The Linn Cove Viaduct remains the most popular spot on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Chimney Rock and the Morse Family

The Morse family’s history with Chimney Rock is analogous in many ways to the    Mortons. Lucius B. Morse was a Missouri physician. In the late 1800s, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and advised to move to a healthier climate. During frequent horseback rides through the Hickory Nut Gorge in Rutherford County, he became fascinated with the towering rock formation that looked like an enormous chimney. Tradition has it that he paid a local man 25 cents to take him by mule to the top. The formation had been previously purchased by Jerome Freeman, who had opened it to the public in 1885. In 1902, with the financial backing of his twin brothers, Lucius Morse bought 64 acres of the mountain which included the chimney and the cliffs. 

From the beginning, Morse dreamed of a park, a healing resort community, and even a lake. In 1916, he and his brothers built a bridge over the Rocky Broad River and a road to the chimney’s base. Within weeks the bridge was destroyed by the flood of 1916, but it was soon re-built. For many years, tourists (including women in high-heeled shoes and long skirts) walked 470 steps up to the 2,280 foot summit. 

Chimney Rock Elevator

In 1946, the Morse brothers began to plan for an elevator. In 1948, a tunnel was blasted into the rock, and miners began work to blast a shaft through the   chimney to the surface. Lucius Morse did not live to see the elevator completed, but it opened to the public in 1949. At the time it was the highest elevator (26 stories) in the United States. 

The Morse family added to the original tract over the years and Chimney Rock Park grew to about 1,000 acres. During the 1970s and ‘80s, Lucius B. Morse III   and Todd B. Morse, who were descendants of the original brothers, began to work as the park’s directors. They developed trails and made them safer, replaced bridges and stairs, added scenic observation points, and renovated buildings and the elevator. They also began to work toward cataloging and preserving the plants and wildlife in the gorge. 

Keeping NC’s Park System healthy

Crae Morton describes Lewis Ledford, director of North Carolina’s State Parks, as “a visionary.” You can hear the energy and excitement about the park system in his voice.

“North Carolina is among the top when it comes to recent energies in conservation, ” Ledford says. He attributes this energy to growing support by citizens and elected leaders because of a growing population and the pressures of related development. North Carolina’s park system in not resort-driven, unlike some other state park systems, Ledford explains. North Carolina is therefore allowed to focus on what he describes as “the large, iconic kinds of places” and to place their emphasis on outdoor recreation and conservation. 

A vital factor in the expanding state park system since the mid-’90s has been the support of the North Carolina General Assembly. Even with the current economic pressures, Ledford says that support for state parks has been bi-partisan and very strong. Also crucial is the ongoing support of citizens who benefit from the parks and the active support of residents who live near a particular park. North Carolina’s state parks contribute more than $400 million annually to the state. In addition, every park in the state has a Citizens’ Advisory Board consisting of seven to nine local residents representing government, business and civic groups. This group has input into the master plan for the park, as well as every aspect of how the park impacts the community, things they would like to see changed, and new programs they would like to see. Ledford adds that state and national conservancy groups play a vital role in the process of acquiring and developing state parks. These groups can sometimes even hold the land until the state can get all the necessary documents and money organized for the final purchase.

As for the two families who have moved to make their family legacy a part of the state park system, Ledford notes that this kind of citizen involvement has been crucial. Beginning with Mount Mitchell in 1916, the state has depended on the generosity of individuals and non-profit groups to build its strong, vibrant state park system.