Portal to the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains
in North Carolina and Tennessee

An Island in the Sky

Hundreds of miles west of the Atlantic coast, the Blue Ridge forms a nearly continuous line of cliffs that stretch from the Potomac to Georgia, a barrier for settlers in the colonial era and interstate highways in the modern. For most of its length it is only a few miles wide — but North Carolina is different. The North Carolina Blue Ridge widens to more than a hundred miles east-to-west, and reaches upward well over a mile above sea level, with forty peaks topping 6,000 feet. This is no narrow mountain barrier; it is an island in the sky.