Grandfather Mountain
Morton's great-grandfather, Donald MacRae, bought the development rights for the 16,000 acres (65 km2) around Grandfather Mountain in 1885 from William Lenoir. Morton inherited this property from Hugh MacRae, his grandfather, in 1952 and immediately set out on making the property more accessible to tourists. In his first year, he built a vehicle road to the top of the mountain and built the now famous Mile High Swinging Bridge. The Mile High Swinging Bridge is a 228-foot-long (69 m) bridge that spans a chasm at more than one mile of elevation. In 1968, Morton bought two black bears, one male and one female, to release back into the wild; however, the female bear, named Mildred, could not readapt to the wild and was required to be recaptured and given an enclosed habitat, which was finished in 1973. It now contains bears, deer, eagles, river otters, mountain lions, and other animals. After Hugh Morton died in 2006, his family sold the mountain and surrounding land to the state of North Carolina for $12 million. It was turned into the state's 34th state park, officially receiving that status in April 2009.
Read more about this topic: Hugh Morton
Famous quotes containing the words grandfather and/or mountain:
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Tjaden: How do they start a war?
Albert: Well, one country offends another.
Tjaden: How could one country offend another? You mean there’s a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field in France?”
—Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959)