Grandfather Mountain is one of North Carolina’s most iconic landscapes, and one of the highest peaks along the Blue Ridge. But did you know that just a few miles southwest, there’s a Grandmother Mountain?
Until recently, WFDD’s Amy Diaz did not. For this edition of Carolina Curious, she spoke to a conservation lawyer who spent decades working to preserve that land.
Last month, The Blue Ridge Conservancy and The Conservation Fund announced they’d partnered to buy an acre of land on Grandmother Mountain’s eastern slope. When I saw that news, I had to read the name twice. But sure enough, they meant Grandmother.
Mike Leonard was part of the team working to protect the mountainside which faces Grandfather Mountain and the Linn Cove Viaduct.
“Because somebody could have put a large house up there," Leonard said. "And to this day, that side of the mountain is forested and wild-looking. So, it had been a goal to protect that one acre for about oh, 30 years or so.”
But, like me, Leonard says he encounters lots of people who have never heard of it. It makes sense. It’s much smaller than Grandfather Mountain. And it doesn’t have any hiking trails — just a gravel road you can drive up, he says. But Leonard learned about it when he was young.
“My grandfather, who died in 1960, first pointed to it years ago and said, ‘That's Grandmother Mountain.’ So the name's been around a long time," he said. "I always just kind of thought that, ‘Well, it's this nice, rounded mountain, pleasant, right next to a very rugged mountain.’ So I've always kind of thought that's where the name came from.”
Grandfather Mountain’s name dates back to the 1700s. It has a cliff that resembles an old man’s profile. An online search turns up hundreds of results detailing that origin story.
For Grandmother Mountain, you don’t get much, other than the fact that it’s home to a broadcast tower that transmits PBS North Carolina.
But toward the end of our call, Leonard remembered he had a book in his library: The North Carolina Gazetteer, which is like a geographical dictionary for the state, with over 20,000 place names. It was published in 1968.
“It's way up on a top shelf, so I had to open a ladder. Here it is, way up here on top," Leonard said, pulling the book down.
As he flipped to the G’s section, I started to get my hopes up. Grandfather Mountain got a whole paragraph, he said. But sure enough…
“Here’s all that it says about Grandmother. It says: 'Grandmother Mountain: East Avery County, altitude 4,696,'” Leonard said, reading from the book.
That’s it. So for now, I’m going with Leonard’s theory. People probably figured Grandfather Mountain needed a companion.
"And like a lot of grandmothers, Grandmother Mountain has a much kinder face than the Grandfather," Leonard said.
You can see the mountain as you drive along the Linn Cove Viaduct heading south toward Asheville. So next time you’re out visiting Grandfather, make sure you say hello to Grandma too.