Asheville Art Museum | Asheville-Buncombe Library | UNC Asheville | YMI Cultural Center
Appalachian State University |Appalachian Cultural Museum |Southern Highland Craft Guild
Asheville
Art Museum | Asheville-Buncombe
Library | UNC
Asheville |
YMI
Cultural Center
Appalachian
State University |Appalachian
Cultural Museum |Southern
Highland Craft Guild
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WHITESIDE MOUNTAIN |
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| "...we came out before the massive front
of a peculiar mountain. Whiteside, or in literal translation of
the Cherokee title, Unakakanoos, White-mountain, is the largest
exposure of perpendicular, bare rock east of the Rockies [picture,
p.12]. It is connected, without deeply-marked intervening gaps,
with its neighboring peaks of the Blue Ridge; but from some points of
observation it appears isolated--a majestic, solitary, dome-shaped
monument, differing from all other mountains of the Alleghanies in its
aspect and form. The top line of its precipitous front is 1,600
feet above its point of conjunction with the crest of the green hill,
which slopes to the Chatooga, 800 feet lower. The face of the
mountain is gray, not white; but is seared by long rifts, running
horizontal across it, of white rock. With the exception of a
single patch of green pines, half-way up its face, no visible verdure
covers its nakedness. (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The
Heart of the Alleghanies, pp.321, 322)
"...Whiteside, a few miles from the village [Highlands], is a point which no sojourner in the mountains should fail to visit. A sight down a precipice's 'headlong perpendicular' of nearly 2,000 feet has something in it positively chilling. As the observer to secure a fair view lies flat on the ground with part of his head projected over a space of dread nothingness, the horrible sensations created, which in some minds culminate in an overpowering desire to gently slip away and out in air, are fancifully attributed to the influences of a 'demon of the abyss.'...Get the guide to hold our feet when you crawl to the verge." (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Allehghanies, pp327, 328.)
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