Karen Chávez

kchavez@citizen-times.com

This is the fourth article in a series on state parks in Western North Carolina. The park system is celebrating its centennial.

MOUNT MITCHELL - Jake Blood likes nothing more than a hard, calf-burning climb up a high mountain peak, the more patches of wild blackberries and need for bushwhacking, the better.

That’s why he finds such satisfaction in a hike amid the Black Mountains, which buttress Mount Mitchell and its sky-scraping elevation of 6,684 feet, the highest east of the Mississippi.

But the retired Air Force intelligence officer, and founding member of the High Peaks Trail Association in Burnsville, was always bothered by something as he pored over topographic maps of Pisgah National Forest, which surrounds Mount Mitchell.

“I always wondered, what is that?” Blood said, pointing to a spit of land colored in white denoting private property, jutting in between the boundaries of the state park in Yancey County. “It always baffled me. What was it doing there?”

He was leading a hiking group last week across the Black Mountain Crest Trail, which scales the spine of the Blacks’ most prominent peaks in Yancey County – Mount Craig (6,645 feet), Big Tom Wilson (6,552 feet), Balsam Cone (6,611 feet), and Cattail Peak (6,583 feet), until now, the highest elevation, privately owned peak in the Eastern United States.

Thanks to recent events, the maps will change, with the white piece of the jigsaw puzzle soon to be colored purple – indicating state-owned land for public enjoyment.

The Conservation Fund, a Raleigh-based land trust, has purchased 2,744 acres in the Black Mountains – 783 acres in the Laurel Branch Area and 1,961 acres in the Cattail Peak area, including Cattail Peak - adjoining the state park. The fund will convey the land to the state this year, timed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the N.C. State Park System and Mount Mitchell, the state’s first park.

The park expansion and centennial will be marked by a party Saturday and Sunday at Mount Mitchell. The land acquisition will more than double the size of Mount Mitchell State Park, which was 1,996 acres.

Funding is complete for the Laurel Branch area, valued at $3 million, said Bill Holman, N.C. director of the Conservation Fund. Gifts from philanthropists Fred and Alice Stanback covered most of the costs, with $130,000 coming from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund.

The Stanbacks, of Salisbury, provided half the funding for the Cattail Peak to Cane River properties, Holman said. Those carry a value of $7.25 million. The Clean Water fund provided $1.2 million last year and earlier this year, the N.C. Parks and Recreation Trust Fund set aside $728,000.

Holman said he is hopeful for another $1.2 million grant from the Clean Water trust fund this year and $100,000 from a grant request from the Duke Energy Water Resources Fund.

The land assemblage was purchased over the past three years from conservation-minded land buyer Tim Sweeney. It is as historic and visionary as was the establishment of Mount Mitchell as a state park, said N.C. State Parks spokesman Charlie Peek, and includes land down the western slope of the Black Mountains all the way to Cane Creek.

New lands to aid in climate resiliency

The land acquisition has greater, more far-reaching importance, said Mike Leonard, Conservation Fund board chairman.

“By doing this, we are going to the highest, privately owned peak in the Eastern United States and close that privately held gap between the U.S. Forest Service and state parks,” Leonard said.

“We also got the opportunity to acquire lands from Cattail Peak going down 3,500 feet in elevation to the Cane River itself. This will make the park boundary for the first time from the base of the mountain all the way to the top. That much elevation is really important for climate resiliency.”

The rare, high-elevation spruce-fir forests, which more closely resemble the climate of southern Canada than the Southeastern U.S., will be important for plant and animal life seeking higher, cooler habitat as the globe warms, he said.

Average annual temperature on Mount Mitchell can range 10-15 degrees cooler than the Asheville valley, a mere 30 miles away, but about 4,500 feet difference in elevation.

The mountain is also given to weather extremes. The peak's highest temperature since 2008 reached 81 degrees on July 1, 2012 while the lowest in the last eight years dipped to minus 18.8 degrees on Jan. 7, 2014

“It’s an important ecosystem. It is unique,” said Scott Stephens, a meteorologist at the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville. “It is a whole other world, from a weather perspective. It’s invaluable.”

A park's tumultuous history

Around the time of the park's designation, discovering new areas to claim for resource extraction was more in vogue than global warming.

UNC science professor Elisha Mitchell had heard the Black Mountains might hold the East's highest through the explorations of botanist Andre Michaux. Mitchell came to evaluate the land for its potential uses, Blood said, as well as claims of its elevation.

Mitchell measured the mountain elevations through barometric pressure readings, and announced in 1835 that Mount Mitchell – known then as Black Dome – was the highest east of the Mississippi.

Thomas Clingman, a former student of Mitchell’s, and a U.S. senator from North Carolina, took his own measurements in 1855, claiming the peak to be 6,941 feet high.

On a return trip in 1857 to verify his measurements, Mitchell fell from a cliff above a 40-foot waterfall and drowned in a pool below. The mountain was named in honor of Mitchell, who came closest to measuring its actual height of 6,684 feet.

A bear hunter and one of Mitchell’s hiking guides, “Big Tom” Wilson, found Mitchell’s body. One of the peaks in the Blacks at 6,580 feet was named for Wilson. Mitchell’s body, originally buried in Asheville, was reburied at the Mount Mitchell summit in 1858.

By the 1900s, logging had reached drastic levels, Blood said.

“It was all clear cut, just tree stumps and desolation,” he said. “Gov. Locke Craig came up here and saw the desolation and said, ‘Now we’ve used our resources, it’s time to return the land to its natural state.’ That was the impetus to create Mount Mitchell State Park.”

A bill introduced in the state legislature in 1915 made Mount Mitchell the first state park, during a time of park-building across the country. The National Park Service celebrated its centennial Thursday.

By the end of 1916, the state had purchased 795 acres for Mount Mitchell State Park.

In 1925, an enterprising Floridian, Percy Threadgill, bought 5,000 acres of the recently logged land surrounding the new state park. He meant to market it as a second-home retreat for folks from Florida, said Karen Fitzgerald, Threadgill’s granddaughter, who lives in a cabin in the Yancey County community known as Cattail Creek.

Fitzgerald inherited the land with her brother, Jim Hooker, who lives in Colorado, when her grandfather died in 1984.

“They called it Cattail because the creek swerves around like a cattail,” said Fitzgerald, who sold the land containing Cattail Peak to Sweeney three years ago.

“I knew he wanted to keep it in conservation. I would never have sold it otherwise,” she said. “My grandfather would have loved this.”

Looking ahead

Blood’s trek last week to see firsthand the newly acquired Cattail Peak gave hikers a taste of how rugged, but also how lush and scenic the park is. They hiked up and over slick boulders, some so steep they required the use of ropes. They scrambled over fallen, mossy Fraser firs, and picked their way past dense blackberry bushes, following the Black Mountain Crest Trail, blazed with brown triangles.

Blood stopped at each highlight in the wet and wild forest, looking back at the Mount Mitchell parking area from a rocky ledge at Mount Craig, and pointed out the area where Elisha Mitchell fell to his death, and even a wrecked plane that has rested in the woods since the ‘60s.

The group passed the “false summit” of Cattail Peak, with an old, incorrect sign, and bushwhacked to the actual Cattail Peak, elevation 6,583 feet, denoted by a U.S. Geological Survey marker.

Hikers can reach this point now, although trails are not always marked, and the terrain is strenuous. Liz Kelleher, one of the hikers on Blood’s trip, was sore after the trek, but said it was worth the muscle aches.

“It’s not a hike for beginners,” said the retired forester from Greensboro. “But the opportunity for vistas was spectacular. Getting to Cattail Peak, making it to the top, was my favorite part.”

A virtual tour of the trail is also available through the Conservation Fund’s Google Trekker.

If numbers of visitors are any indication, Mount Mitchell State Park will need the newly acquired land for more elbow room. Visitation last year reached a record of 315,979, Peek said. That was up 12 percent from 2014.

So far this year, visitation is already up through July, with 184,384 visitors, compared to the same seven-month period in 2015.

The park has 16 miles of hiking trails, a nine-site campground, a restaurant and a nature museum, gift shop, concession stand and picnic area near the summit. It is the most accessible of the high peaks. N.C. 128 off the Blue Ridge Parkway is a four-mile road to the summit area, where there is a short walk to an accessible observation platform built in 2007.

Blood said he is hopeful for new trails. The N.C. High Peaks Trail Association also became the Friends of Mount Mitchell State Park in 2012, and works with the state parks, as well as the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service, leading hikes and maintaining and upgrading nearly 90 miles of trails in the Black Mountains.

Hiking trails are always in high demand, so that will be a high priority. But so are bathrooms. The Connect NC Bond, approved by voters earlier this year, will give Mount Mitchell $600,000 to renovate existing or establish new restroom facilities.

Mount Mitchell joins renewed interest in 41 state parks across North Carolina. Last year a record 17.3 million people visited state parks, which include Chimney Rock, Gorges, Grandfather Mountain and Lake James in Western North Carolina.

“We very likely have another record this year,” Peek said. “I think the centennial has given people a chance to reacquaint themselves with the park. When we were kids, a park was a place to go picnic and hike, but now there’s paddling, mountain biking, rock climbing and pursuits that didn’t even exist then. It’s a national recreational movement.”

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IF YOU GO

N.C. State Parks will hold a Centennial Celebration Saturday and Sunday at Mount Mitchell State Park, accessible off the Blue Ridge Parkway at Milepost 355.

Starting at 10 a.m. Aug. 27, there will be live music, clogging, traditional mountain skills demonstrations, such as blacksmithing, quilting, chair caning and spinning, crafts for sale, storytelling and games for children.

The park will limit access by private vehicles during the event, except for registered carpooling vehicles. Free Saturday shuttle service will be available from Asheville, Burnsville, Marion and Black Mountain. For more information, visit www.ncparks.gov or visit http://tinyurl.com/jdpz6ec.

On Aug. 28, the N.C. High Peaks Trail Association will lead a moderately strenuous, 6-mile loop hike around Mount Mitchell. It will start at the Mount Mitchell summit and include history talks and a climb back to the ridgeline on the Big Tom Trail to join the Black Mountain Crest Trail. Hikers should meet on the Burnsville Town Square at 8:30 a.m. Transportation to and from Mount Mitchell will be provided in a Yancey County van for a $5 donation. Reservations are required, or hikers can meet at the Mount Mitchell summit parking lot at 10 a.m.

Bring lunch, water, snacks, sunscreen, a light jacket and rain gear. Call hike leader John Whitehouse at 828-682-3217 or e-mail trails@nchighpeaks.org by Aug. 25 to reserve a spot. For more details, visit www.nchighpeaks.org.