Views of White Top

Views of White Top

White Top (Whitetop) Mtn.
Appalachian Life
Appalachian Culture
Folk Festivals

Thursday morning. John Weaver... came in before I was up to have me determine some ore for him, and agreed to go with me to the Whitetop, an exceedingly high mountain, 3 miles north of the, say Northwestern most corner of N.Ca. of course in Virginia. Went out to see Perkins' ore bank which is extensive and then while breakfast was getting ready heard an amusing account of an old man who determined the locality of ores by the mineral rod, and by his own account is very busy in digging for gold and silver taken from the White by the Indians, and laid up in "subteranium chambers." Said he greased his books with dead men's tallow, and is prevented from getting the treasure out not by the little spirit with head not bigger than his two thumbs who come to blow the candle out, but by the great old two horned devil himself. After breakfast wound over the hills to William Perkins, then up Helton 2½ miles along a new horse path and by an old plantation to John Weavers. He has a wonderfully romantic place by the side of the creek under the over-hanging rocks. He is a bachelor of 27. His sister keeps house for him. Another house appeared at the distance of two miles up the creek, and we were apprised of our approach by the rolling of drums which the boys kept to frighten away the cattle that are driven in here in great numbers from Washington county, and eat up the range. Being very wild the drum scares them so that they go heels over head down the sides of the mountain; and a 4 year old ox will clear a 2 year old ox at a single jump. Two or three miles more another house, and then a mile brought us to the top. Here a few trees (of Spruce I believe) but most of the top is fine pasture covered with white clover and cattle, and commanding an extensive prospect of the mountains of Carolina and of the rich country west upon Holston in Washington county, and looking from the height at which we stood like a garden separated into its different compartments. This mountain is eviates into its different compartments. This mountain is evidently in the transition formation. I found grey rocks and grey rock slate around its base. The summit rocks are rather flinty, and I did not understand them well. But for the bleakness and cloudiness of the situation one does not see why there might not be a plantation on the very summit of the mountain. The soil is black, moist and fertile. A copious spring bursts out within a stones throw of the summit. Here the strawberries are just ripe, and I gathered and ate a number. Saw a number of plants which were new to me, but had neither the time nor the means for examining them. The Grandfather mountain, as I supposed it to be, with a craggy and irregular summit was seen at the south, and other ridges of Burke and Buncombe farther west and apparently as high as the Grandfather.

Diary of a Geological Tour, by Dr, Elisha Mitchell in 1827-1828
Introduction and Notes by Dr. Kemp P. Battle LL.D.
Published as James Sprunt Historical Monograph No. 6, by the University of North Carolina, 1905

Elisha Mitchell was educated at Yale. He was a Professor of Chemistry, geology, and Mineralogy at the University of North Carolina beginning in 1828. He also undertook a Geological Survey of North Carolina, commissioned by the state (1825). The following excerpt from a letter he wrote to his wife on a trip to the northwestern portion of North Carolina and into Southwest Virginia.

“We spent a night with some friends who were summering on the top of Whitetop Mountain. The social tide was out of the banks those nights. There was a feast for the soul and the body. Our friends had an abundance of speckled trout, and knew exactly how to brown them to the orthodox color, which, with the other rich viands made a feast too good for a king—good enough for a Democrat. The intellectual feast was exquisite. Whitetop is conic shaped mountain, which lifts its summit high above all its surrounding fellows. The approach to the top is by a spiral bridle path. Near the base the forests are dense, and the trees of immense size. As you ascend, the trees grow smaller until they are quite scrubby except in the coves. Then the trees all disappear, except a variety of evergreens. Finally, all the timber disappears, and the summit is covered with a rich carpet of green grass, interspersed with an abundant variety of beautiful flowers. To add to the life and beauty of the scene, snowbirds are there in great abundance in midsummer rearing their young."

“From Sunrise to Sunset; Reminiscence,” by Frank Richardson. King Printing Co., Bristol, Tennessee (1910). Reprinted in Douglas Ogle, Whitetop: the Great Meadow Mountain of Virginia (pp.166-169)

Dr. Elisha Mitchell
Frank Richardson (Doug Olson, Whitetop: the great meadow mountain of Virginia, p. 166-168)
Joe Tennis (Washington County Then and Now, p. 58-59)

Uncertain

Washington County Public Library

Not given

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