By Jesse Wood
March 31, 2014. After 60 years, Grandfather Mountain’s historic entrance sign in Linville couldn’t withstand any more brutal wind gusts – as the structure collapsed during the storm that lasted from Saturday night to early Sunday.
As Grandfather Mountain noted in a Facebook post on Sunday, the weather equipment atop Mile High Swinging Bridge recorded a high gust of 92.5 mph during that storm.
The sign was built in 1953. While it received a fresh coat of paint in 2006 to make the structure blend more into the surrounding area, the sign located at the intersection of N.C. 105 and N.C. 221 was the original – although the wood had been rotting and the sign deteriorating for years.
Catherine Morton, director for Mission at the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation and daughter of Grandfather Mountain developer Hugh Morton, hadn’t heard about the sign when she was driving to the mountain on Sunday.
“Nobody bothered telling me. I was driving through the intersection and immediately whipped my car around to take pictures myself,” Morton said, adding that she chuckled when she saw the sign on the ground.
Morton said that the property with which the sign stood is owned by Linville Resorts and that Grandfather Mountain and Linville Resorts had a deal that Grandfather Mountain would keep the sign and corner lot manicured.
However for the past several years as the sign became more old-fashioned, Morton said that the members at Linville Resort have “expressed less enthusiasm for it.”
“One thing we did to make it less obtrusive was to paint it with brown letters on a tan background to match the color combination of Linville Resort,” Morton said, adding that the resort then had plans to construct a new sign that had arrows pointing to the Linville Golf Course, The Eseeloa Lodge and Grandfather Mountain.
But because of floods, the resort had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the golf course and put the sign project on the backburner.
“So the last time we talked in the fall, we were told that replacing the sign wasn’t on the list until 2015,” Morton said.
Over the past decades, the sign has become a landmark in the High Country and beyond with many people stopping to capture a Kodak moment.
“My father would be so happy because he worked so hard to make the Grandfather name a recognition factor and make it a destination to attract people to the High Country,” Morton said. “He saw it as an economic driver and the many people that came to Grandfather bought gasoline or went to restaurants or stayed in a motel and bought gifts and souvenirs along the way. He would be very excited that people noticed.”
Morton mentioned the first priority is to clean up the fallen structure. As for the process of rebuilding the sign, that is now in the hands of the resort and its board of directors.
John Blackburn, general manager of the Linville Resort, didn’t immediately respond to a message request for comment early Monday.
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