Morton program on UNC-TV, 3/5-3/6

Hugh Morton on a rock at Grandfather Mountain, circa 1950s-early 1960s

It’s a busy Morton-related week: a special episode of UNC-TV’s Exploring North Carolina featuring Hugh Morton and Grandfather Mountain will air statewide for the first time tomorrow evening, Thursday, March 5, at 8:30 PM and again on Friday, March 6, at 9:30 PM. Host Tom Earnhardt describes the program as “a mix of biography, biodiversity, geology and Hugh Morton’s phenomenal photographs from the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill.”
I worked with Tom to select and provide photos for the episode (such as the ones included here), so I’m excited to see it — and I hope you’ll tune in too.

Hugh Morton with Heller's Blazing Star, circa 1990s

6 thoughts on “Morton program on UNC-TV, 3/5-3/6”

  1. Great News, Elizabeth! Thanks for the heads-up! I am regular viewer of Exploring North Carolina with Tom Earnhardt. It is an awesome showcase for the diversity of North Carolina. Tom is great with a subtle sophistication and vast knowledge. I look forward to seeing “your photo selections” on the show! Congrats!

  2. Well! I hadn’t seen that picture of Hugh in a long time. I took it around 1954 on Calloway Peak, highest point on Grandfather Mountain and highest point in the Blue Ridge Range, where Avery, Watauga, and Caldwell Counties come together. When I say I took it I mean Hugh fixed it so all I had to do was snap the shutter. You may be interested to know that the elevation at that point was recorded as 5964 ft. above sea level when the geodetic survey was made. Jim Morton had the elevation measured again last year with all the fancy new equipment available nowadays and the “measurers” reported the mountain was only 5946 ft. tall. He didn’t want to pay to find out Mt. Mitchell’s height, so all we can do is wonder whether that old hill has shrunk a little, too. But there was one plus: the actual 5280 foot mark (one mile!) is dead in the middle of the Mile High Swinging Bridge Almost too good to be true, but true none the less. Hugh would have had mixed emotions…By the way, the flowers in the second picture are both classified as rare and endangered, and grow in greater abundance on Grandfather than anywhere else. Though that doesn’t mean they are abundant anywhere.. I shall tune you in tomorrow (Thursday), thanks for the reminder.

  3. I really enjoyed the program and shared this blog with a bunch of people so they can tune in tomorrow. We’re some of the lucky ones that get UNC-TV in Virginia.
    Cheers,
    Clyde

  4. WOW!
    Fantastic work, Elizabeth. Your selections of Hugh’s great work were perfect. This is what the future of the Hugh Morton Collection should be about…using his great photography to tell beautiful and important stories.

  5. Great job, Elizabeth! I just watched the show and your photography work was perfectly integrated and illustrative. My fav was the shot of Hugh feeding the big ol’ Black Bear! Nice touch! And hey, I noticed you made the credits and rightly so! Congrats!

  6. The picture of Hugh on the top of the Calloway Peak of Grandfather Mountain was one of the few I ever took. (After all, why would I ?) The second one of him shows him with two of the rare and endangered species on the Mountain. I do not know who took that one.

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