Western North Carolina is a hiker’s paradise. With so much land protected by national and state forests and parks, those who live in the Wes.
Jutting off from the left side of a typically busy Blue Ridge Parkway pull-off overlooking Mills River, an unassuming dirt path dips into the woods an.
Black Mountain is 9 miles from the nearest entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the Buncombe County town had something last year that the world-famous park couldn’t offer – a public bathroom.
That feature – as well as its restaurants, shops and gas stations – drew in crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic when the national park’s facilities were shuttered but millions of people still came from around the world.
According to preliminary data compiled by the National Park Service, the 469-mile parkway, which snakes across the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains in Cherokee, was the most-visited of all 423 national parks in 2020.