CASCADES, NEAR WARM SPRINGS.
Lately the Warm Springs property has passed into the hands of a company of men well fitted by capital and experience to increase the popularity of the place, both as a summer and winter pleasure resort and sanitarium. Mr. Gudger, the superintendent, was for a number of years in charge of the State Insane asylum, and is consequently well adapted to the business he has entered into. Great improvements are being made in the buildings, and every convenience added for the welfare of guests. This to the votary of pleasure: The next to the largest ball-room in the state is here.
The falls of Spring creek, not far distant up that stream, are cascades of marvelous beauty. A number of the surrounding mountain summits command magnificent prospects. Deer can be started in neighboring fastnesses and driven to the river. As a bridge spans the stream directly before the hotel, the picturesque spots on the opposite bank can be reached. The famous Paint Rock is six miles below. The spot is well worth visiting. It is an immense wall of granite arranged in horizontal layers projecting over each other in irregular order and towering in weird proportions above the road, which lies close at its base between it and the river. The rocks present dark red faces, and it is from the natural coloring that the name is taken. On some of the smooth-faced layers black-lettered names can be deciphered; some left by Federal soldiers who, during the war, swept around this bend and up the river.
Near here Paint creek comes dashing down between bold cliffs to empty into the French Broad. A toll-gate on its banks bars the way, and over-head looms Paint mountain, whose summit, bearing the Tennessee boundary line, is wound round by the road towards Greenville, the old home of Andrew Johnson.
From the railroad between Warm Springs and Wolf creek, in Tennessee, glimpses of some of the wildest scenery of the French Broad can be obtained. Cliffs three hundred feet or more in height lean dizzily over the river. The most noteworthy of these rocky ramparts are termed the Chimneys. They are lofty, piled-up, chimney-like masses of stone standing out before bare walls of the same rocky exterior. At the first bridge below the Springs, Nature has wrought a terrific picture of the sublime. The river runs white-capped and sparkling below; the wild tremendous fronts of rocky mountains, seared with ravines frowning with precipices and ragged with pines, close around. Bending in sharp curves, the railroad penetrates the picture, leaps the long iron bridge and disappears.
TABLE OF ALTITUDES.
From Professor W. C. Kerr’s report of altitudes. The railroad altitudes were obtained from J. W. Wilson. Only those mountain and valley heights of particular interest are given.
| AREA OF COUNTIES. | |
| (From State Report.) | |
| Square miles. | |
| Alleghany | 300 |
| Ashe | 450 |
| Buncombe | 620 |
| Burke | 400 |
| Caldwell | 450 |
| Catawba | 370 |
| Cherokee | 500 |
| Clay | 160 |
| Cleaveland | 420 |
| Forsyth | 340 |
| Graham | 250 |
| Haywood | 740 |
| Henderson | 360 |
| Jackson | 960 |
| McDowell | 440 |
| Macon | 650 |
| Madison | 450 |
| Mitchell | 240 |
| Polk | 300 |
| Swain | 420 |
| Transylvania | 330 |
| Watauga | 460 |
| Yadkin | 320 |
| Yancey | 400 |