Grandfather Mountain

If you follow me on facebook, you probably know that I have been working on a photo history about Grandfather Mountain for Arcadia Publishing. This will be my fifth book for Arcadia. Previous titles include Avery County; Caldwell County; Mitchell County; and the very popular Remembering North Carolina's Confederates. I signed this contract back last year.

Grandfather Mountain has a little Civil War history to it. It was up on Grandfather that Confederate conscription officers drove Keith and Malinda Blalock, after their brief experience in the 26th NCT. They supposedly hid out in a hog pen. And local tradition has it that the lower slopes of Grandfather were used as part of a local underground railroad, funneling escaped POWs and dissidents out of Salisbury toward Federal lines in east Tennessee.

Of course, there is much more recent history to Grandfather Mountain: events like the annual Singing on the Mountain -- started in 1924-- or the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, or the annual Girl Scout Day. So I am looking for photographs of people visiting the animal habitat, crossing the Swinging Bridge, or hiking the Profile Trail. If you have photographs, please drop me a line. They need to be scanned at a high resolution.

Thanks for reading - and, it is a good day to visit someplace like Grandfather Mountain!