There’s a Mountain
In Your Future!
It’s I lio Roan: mill ions who have
never seen its wonilers soon w ill
he visiting it.
Rfl OLD TRUDGE
Millions of turbulent years ago, the
Roan comfortably occupied a roomy
bend on the western border of North
Carolina and faced toward the geo¬
logic drama spread beneath it. There it
awaits you. like some wise, patient
and brooding giant, set by a magi to
guard the glittering treasure of an un¬
earthly domain.
It is huge now — so large that it is a
range itself, containing in its body its
own mountains and gaps, balds and
ridges.
You should have seen it a few mil¬
lion yesterdays ago, when it was per¬
haps 18,000 feet high. The winds,
snows and rains of eons gnawed at it.
Prosperous farmers in the midwest
make crops in soil which once was the
Roan, and cities are built on its dis¬
sipated bulk. Men have panned its gold
a hundred miles away.
The Roan is still so big that its pil¬
grims rarely refer to its enormity or al¬
titude as they refer to other mountains
whose character needs bolstering.
Few even of those living in its val¬
ley know’ that it extends in a boom¬
erang shape all the way from the Fork
Mountains to the Little Yellow, so
prodigal that it carelessly shoots a
ridge off toward Tennessee, which
some map makers helplessly label
"Roan Mis.” It is unparalleled in the
fact that for about 6 miles it has an
elevation of from 5,800 to 6,282 feet,
and that most of this top is relatively
broad and level, practically untim-
bered. The presence of "balds” have
puzzled scientists ever since they first
were observed, and here the bald runs
almost the whole length of the range
— a 6-mile meadow, the greatest pas¬
ture in the state; dotted with the
magnificent scarlet rhododendron, oc¬
curring often in heavy growths of moss
so peculiar to the Roan.
Sometime you will go to the Roan,
because you will hear more and more
about it now that a new road has made
it so accessible. You may go next week
to sec the annual flower display.
When you do. you no doubt will go
to that part of it which we will call
Cloudland — the name of the hotel
which once was there. As you drive up
to the 4,500-foot level, the balsams
and Fraser firs will first advertise the
cool altitude. Nearly two thousand
feet higher, and you emerge onto a
plateau, about three miles long and in
places a half mile or more from edge
to edge. It is astonishingly smooth; on
all sides the world drops away, and in
every direction you sec mountains
from which the Roan seems strangely
remote. On a clear day with a good
glass, you can sec into seven states;
there is even one of those legends,
common among those to whom any¬
thing on the Roan is possible, that
from it you can sec the coast!
This plateau is covered with a deep
carpet of yellowish-green grass. Set in
orderly array on this carpet arc the
rhododendron — "scarlet laurel" to
the mountain people. It ranges in tones
Irom pink to purple.
It probably will be cool — even in
mid-July — and likely there will be a
steady to strong breeze blowing across
the plateau. The clouds may be boiling
around you. Sometimes, a freak current
of air will catch up the clouds, and
the thick mist flows down a ravine,
steadily and swiftly as if it were a river.
Or you may even experience that rare
phenomenon of being in the middle of
a cloud hatching up a rain — the wa¬
ter running through the mist like beads
on a spider web, collecting enough
moisture to form a drop, and then fall¬
ing at your feet.
Long before your visit, it lured dis¬
criminating judges of mountains, and
none wrote casually of it. In 1794,
Andre Miehaux came, and was so fas¬
cinated that he returned ten years
later. Dr. Asa Gray climbed the moun¬
tain and came down calling it "with¬
out doubt the most beautiful mountain
cast of the Rockies.” He first found
there the little bell-shaped lily, which
bears his name. He also found Scotch
Heather, and a variety of plant life
which sonic say is the most numerous
ever found in such a small area.
Dr. Elisha Mitchell, explorer of the
Blacks, came in 1836.
In 1799, a mountain-weary man,
John Strother, a member of the bound-
THE STATE, JUNE 14. 1952
