Saturday, September 15, 2012

Rock City


In the sixties-- the days with no Interstate highways-- my family made a half-dozen trips from Ft. Huachuca, Arizona to Asheville, North Carolina and back. It was a three-day trip on two-lane roads each way, and a high point of the trip was seeing Burma Shave signs. How I miss them!


There would be a series six white-on-red signs, making a one-eighth-mile rhyme.


The other highlight was spotting See Rock City and See Ruby Falls signs. My brother and I would complete to spot them on the sides of barns and on birdhouses..

We would often drive through Chattanooga on our trips, but we never stopped for the attractions. I finally managed to see Ruby Falls in the 1980s. But now, on my Lookout Mountain trip, I would finally See Seven States from Rock City!


Just what is Rock City? Glad you asked!

Early settlers discovered a "citadel of rocks" at the summit of Lookout Mountain. In 1823 Daniel Butrick wrote in this journal that their arrangement seems to "afford streets and lanes."

The spot was popular with geologists and picnickers until the early XXth century, when Garnet Carter decided to develop a settlement atop the mountain. It was to be called Fairyland, and the land included what is now called Rock City.

Carter's wife Frieda set out to turn the wonderland of rocks into the world's biggest rock garden. Carter, always one to seize an opportunity (he had attempted to make a golf course atop the mountain but instead developed a miniature gold course and licensed the idea), turned his wife's rock garden into a tourist attraction. Today tourists can wander amidst the rocks and get spectacular vistas of the land below from Lover's Leap (pictured at top).



I spent a pleasant two hours, stopped at Point Park and looked down at Chattanooga through my binoculars, and then headed down the mountain toward Ruby Falls.

Next: Ruby Falls

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