Skip to main content

Another NC Roadtrip - The Foothills

Last weekend, I was back in Gaston County visiting friends and on Saturday did a photo trip into the NC Foothills.

The entire flickr set (67 photos) is here.

Route: Local roads in Gaston and Lincoln Counties to NC 27, NC 27, NC 150, US 74, US 74 Business, US 74A, NC 9, Mill Creek Road, US 70, Old NC 10 into Marion, US 70, NC 126, NC 181, NC 18, NC 27 local roads to Mt. Holly, NC.

The first stop was the old Marisopa Road bridge just across the Gaston/Lincoln county line. I would love to have taken more photos here, but the last shower of about a day and a half worth of rain came through the area. I did get the shot below though.

Along, NC 27 in Lincoln County is the tiny community of Iron Station. They have a parade in Iron Station once a year, when the line painting crew goes through town. In Iron Station, the former elementary school still stands but now abandoned.



US 74 Business runs through three Rutherford County towns, Forest City, Spindale, and Rutherfordton. I stopped in Forest City to walk around. Here are some highlights:




We continued along the former mainline of US 74 (now US 74A) to Lake Lure. Lake Lure is a resort area at the base of the Blue Ridge.

At the intersection of US 74A and NC 9, there is what appears to be an old gas station and general store with this interesting gas sign affixed to a tree.

The next town after Lake Lure is Chimney Rock. I've been there a few times but never realized that there is an old one lane bridge over the French Broad that is still in use!

From there we headed north up NC 9 to Black Mountain where we followed Old US 70 up to Ridgecrest. We continued to where the old highway splits off towards Point Lookout. I noticed that there was a new gate and that the old road had a frest layer of asphalt. I didn't realize it, but that weekend I would receive e-mails that the old road is now part of the Point Lookout Trail, a 3.6 mile greeway.

We stayed on Mill Creek Road which is now the only way (with the exception of I-40) to get to Old Fort from Black Mountain. It's a twisty unpaved road, but it's not lost to civilization. there are a few homes and even a bed and breakfast. On the Old Fort side of the mountain, Mill Creek Road goes past Andrew's Geyser before meeting back up with Old US 70.




The Geyser was built in 1885 as a tribute to Col. Alexander Boyd Andrews who built the Western North Carolina Railroad into Asheville. Water is pumped from a source two miles away and natural forces lift the geyser nearly 100 feet into the air. The geyser was rebuilt in 1911. Passenger trains would have a scheduled stop at the geyser for riders to stop and look at.

There's an old segment of the Central Highway between Old Fort and Marion. The NC Gazetter calls it Old NC 10 but from US 70 it's known as Old Greenlee Road. Surprisingly, there is a brief two mile dirt/gravel section. In Marion, Old NC 10 appears to have gone along Tate St and Court St.

Finally, if you ever have an extra 45 minutes o so...and you are in the area...take NC 126. It is a very scenic drive espescially around Lake James, and there is even a one lane bridge of decent length to cross too!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po