Rocks

The price of rocks in North Carolina is getting pretty steep. The State of North Carolina has just purchased Chimney Rock Park for $24 million. The scenic park, with its iconic cylindrical rock formation, had been offered for sale before. I found an article in the North Carolina Collection newspaper clippings from 1961, when the park was offered to the state for $450,000. But the Parks Committee of the State Board of Conservation and Development passed on the purchase, deciding it was too expensive for them to pursue at the time. Chimney Rock was up for sale in 1974, that time at a price of $3 million, but again failed to find a buyer. Now, after being privately owned since 1885, Chimney Rock will at last become part of the state park system in 2008.

The image here is from a promotional brochure published in the 1920s, when the park was billed as a “far famed spot of unique scenic interest . . . a blending of the sublime and the picturesque–a combination of the grandeur of the canyons of the West softened by the exquisite verdure of the Southern Appalachians.”

Chimney Rock