Public Radio for the Piedmont and High Country
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

High Country conservation group closer to protecting Blowing Rock land

A High Country conservation group is moving closer to its goal of protecting the forests and waterways that make up the famous views from Blowing Rock.

Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina is hoping to acquire more than 300 acres for a permanent preserve under a plan that would also add a public trail system. The land includes the headways of the Johns River and its tributaries, which flow into the Catawba River.

Andrew Kota is executive director of the organization. He says the land will adjoin the recently acquired Cherry Tree Hollow land with its well-known views from Blowing Rock.

“It’s basically one of the last viewshed corridors from US 321 — looking sort of west-southwest that includes the Linville Gorge and Grandfather Mountain,” he says.  

The group’s effort to acquire the land got a boost this month with $150,000 from the state’s Environmental Enhancement Grant Program, funded through an agreement made in 2000 between the state’s attorney general’s office and Smithfield Foods.

Kota says the organization still needs about $1 million to complete the transaction for the land.

 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

Support quality journalism, like the story above,
with your gift right now.

Donate