By T. Edward Nickens | June/July 2009 | Due South

A Perfect Ten

A decade after it was saved, the Jocassee Gorges region still astonishes visitors  

A decade is less than a nanosecond in the history of the Jocassee Gorges region, 43,500 remote mountain acres around fjord-like Lake Jocassee about sixty miles west of Asheville, North Carolina. But ten years ago a monumental change occurred here. State and federal agencies purchased these untrammeled wilds, long in the sights of developers, from Duke Power Company. Conservationists quickly lauded the deal as the most significant public lands acquisition in the Southeast highlands since the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The one tract tied together three national forests and a half dozen South Carolina state parks, and spawned perhaps the gem of the lot, North Carolina’s stunning Gorges State Park.

Here, in 7,500 acres and the span of a few miles, the ancient Appalachian mountains fall 2,000 feet in breathtaking palisades of granite cliffs, talus slopes, and forested coves filled with rare ferns, wildflowers, and mosses. The region drinks in more than eighty inches of rain per year, and it is famous for falling water. Five major rivers and streams—two of them on the list of National Wild and Scenic Rivers—plunge over bulwarks the Cherokee dubbed the Blue Wall. All told the Jocassee region boasts more than thirty waterfalls, including the 411-foot-tall Whitewater Falls.

For more information on Gorges State Park, visit ncparks.gov or call 828-966-9099.