The Blowing Rock is an immense cliff 4,000 feet above sea level, overhanging Johns River Gorge 3,000 feet below. The phenomenon is so called because the rocky walls of the gorge form a flume through which the northwest wind sweeps with such force that it returns light objects cast over the void. The current of air flowing upward from The Rock prompted the Ripley's "Believe-It-Or-Not" cartoon about "the only place in the world where snow falls upside down." Visible from The Rock down the gorge to the southwest are Hawksbill Mountain and Table Rock. To the west are Grandfather Mountain (the highest peak in the Blue Ridge chain) and Mount Mitchell (the highest peak east of the Rockies).
The Legend of Blowing Rock ~~ It is said that a Chickasaw chieftan, fearful of a white man's admiration for his lovely daughter, journeyed far from the plains to bring her to The Blowing Rock and the care of a squaw mother. One day the maiden, daydreaming on the craggy cliff, spied a Cherokee brave wandering in the wilderness far below and playfully shot an arrow in this direction. The flirtation worked because soon he appeared before her wigwam, courted her with songs of his land and they became lovers, wandering the pathless woodlands and along the crystal streams.
One day a strange reddening of the sky brought the brave and the maiden to The Blowing Rock. To him it was a sign of trouble commanding his return to his tribe in the plains. With the maiden's entreaties not to leave her, the brave, torn by conflict of duty and heart, leaped from The Rock into the wilderness far below. The grief-stricken maiden prayed daily to the Great Spirit until on evening with a reddening sky, a gust of wind blew her lover back onto The Rock and into her arms. From that day a perpetual wind has blown up onto The Rock from the valley below. For people of other days, at least, this was explanation enough for The Blowing Rock's mysterious winds causing even the snow to fall upside down.
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| Grandfather Mountain |
The origin of The Blowing Rock~~ At the time the rocks of the Blue Ridge Mountains were being thrust up by tremendous forces that slowly squeezed the rocks of the region very much like a huge vise, other natural processes of weathering and erosion started tearing down the young mountains. Now, after more than 250 million years have passed, mountain building has ended and erosion has gradually stripped off the uppermost miles of rocks that were originally here. In the process, rocks that were once buried and squeezed under the weight of miles of rock are now exposed at the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains where we see them at The Blowing Rock and other areas in this region.
These old rocks were drastically changed (metamorphosed) by high pressure and temperature during the hundreds of millions of years while they were still buried. Geologists have classified these metamorphic rocks as GNEISS (pronounced “nice”). The age of the gneiss has been determined to be 1,055 million years by the geologists of the U.S. Geological Survey. This age is based on the amount of radioactivity still present in the small crystals of the mineral zircon found in the rock. This particular rock is officially designated THE BLOWING ROCK GNEISS by Geological Survey of The United States.
During the formation of the Blue Ridge Mountains, strong pressure in the rocks of the earth’s crust produced many features which we now see at The Blowing Rock. These features include the more or less “striped” appearance caused by the alignment of the crystals of minerals in the rock. The pressure also caused many microscopic cracks in the rock. Weathering has widened and enlarged these cracks. Erosion by running water has removed the weathered material to such an extent that the present form of The Blowing Rock has been created.
There are a few short trails around The Rock, which is where I was able to get some of the above pictures. Pets are welcome so I was able to bring Lucy on my walk there. However, the one hike I did not take was the Robbins Ridge Trail because it is an extreme trail with 164 stairs and 100 foot drops. Walking the campground that we are staying at is strenuous enough as it is very hilly.
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| Robbins Ridge Trail |
Robbins Ridge Trail is named in recognition for Grover Robbins, Sr. who started The Blowing Rock Attraction in 1933. Grover and his sons and daughters have contributed much to the High Country over the years. This trail was used by the Cherokee Indians in the 1700s and 1800s to access the ridge known as the Blowing Rock. As early as the 1700s, it has been noted that early settlers had named the ridge the Blowing Rock due to the strong winds that traveled from the Grandfather Mountain ridge into the Johns River Gorge below and thus forced up over the ridge next to the Rock. In the late 1930s Grover Robbins would pay his sons $.25 to remove items thrown over the cliff. In the past years the trail eroded becoming only a path for bears, raccoons and deer.
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| Grover Robbins Sr. |
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| The Blowing Rock 1925 |
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| Blowing Rock -- Where Earth Stands Tip-Toe on the Rim of Heaven on a rolling mountain top plateau 3,600 to 4,000 feet in the sky |
For over 60 years visitors have come to Blowing Rock every summer to enjoy the cool, restful, and invigorating mountain air. The City of Blowing Rock has grown, adding hotels, restaurants and gift stores to cater to the thousands of visitors that come here every year.
The Civil War even found its way to Blowing Rock through John Davis Hatfield. He told his Great-Granddaughter of his experiences about a place his Cavalry Regiment had been, high atop a mountain, where some of the enlisted men would throw their caps off the mountain and the wind would bring them back up to them. Great-grandmother would laugh and said that she would ask him if he had thrown his off and he replied that he never did.
This was the place that Hatfield had visited during his service in the Civil War as part of General Stoneman's task task to "dismantle the country" and that they had left Tennessee and passed through parts of southwest Virginia into parts of North Carolina securing strategic bridges and destroying railroad tracks and were encamped in Hendersonville, North Carolina when they received word of a "truce" and returned to Greeneville, Tennessee. The raid covered over 600 miles in total length through three states.
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| The Blowing Rock Main Building |
This structure was constructed by Grover Robbins Sr. around the mid-1930s which was three years after the annex building. This building was built as a gift shop and tavern. The basement of the building was an apartment for the manager of the facility. The rock for the main building is Grandfather stone which was harvested from the Grandfather Mountain area. In the 1970s the structure was renovated to accommodate additional gift items. Through the years the structure went through more renovations.
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| Koi Pond |
I did not see any Koi in the pond so I don't know if they were in there.
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