Blowing Rock (land feature)

The Green Park Inn is a historic hotel located on the Eastern Continental Divide in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. The hotel was built in the 1880s and operated continuously until May 24, 2009, reopening after change of ownership and renovation on October 29, 2010.The Green Park Inn is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation for recognizing and celebrating the finest historic hotels across America.Past guests of the hotel have included John D. Rockefeller, Herbert Hoover, Annie Oakley, Calvin Coolidge, Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Mitchell among others. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1982. It is located in the Green Park Historic District.In the latter part of the Civil War a small fortification was built on the site of the Green Park by Federal Troops. The hotel is purported to be haunted, and has played host over the years to several conventions of ghost hunters. In the face of a difficult economy, the Green Park Inn was closed seeking a new buyer in 2009, and foreclosed later that year. On March 31, 2010, The Green Park Inn was purchased by two New York real estate investors who were already the owners of a number of other hotel properties. The new owners worked extensively with the Blowing Rock Historical Society and the State Historic Preservation authority in order to the retain charm, character, and historical integrity of the property. Just off the Lobby is the History Room which recounts the Hotel's storied past and contains the original Green Park U.S. Post Office. Following an aggressive renovation of the property, The Green Park Inn reopened to the public on October 29, 2010. During the refurnishing, the owners purchased only American made products. On July 1, 2011, the Green Park Inn reopened the Laurel Room Restaurant (now named the Chestnut Grille, to hone the American Chestnut from which the hotel is primarily constructed) and the Divide Tavern (so named as it straddles the Eastern Continental Divide) following a gut renovation of the hotel's kitchen facilities. The new food and beverage operations was headed by James Beard award-winning Chef James Welch.On October 29, 2011, the Green Park Inn celebrated its first anniversary of reopening after having a progressively successful year. In 2016, the hotel celebrated its 125th anniversary at a gala dinner and dance celebrating a milestone for the state's second oldest operating resort hotel and the last of the "Grand Manor" hotels still operating in western North Carolina. Included among the guests were descendants of two of the three hotels founders, the Bernhardt family and the Harper family.

Blowing Rock is a town in Watauga and Caldwell counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The population was 1,397 at the 2021 census.The Caldwell County portion of Blowing Rock is part of the Hickory–Lenoir–Morganton Metropolitan Statistical Area, while the Watauga County portion is part of the Boone Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Vardell Family Cottages Historic District are three historic summer homes and national historic district located at Blowing Rock, Watauga County, North Carolina. They are Opicherhoka (1899-1900), Hemlock Cottage (c. 1903, 1950s), and The Shoe (1933). Opicherhoka is a picturesque two-story, weatherboarded frame Arts and Crafts-style dwelling. Hemlock Cottage is a small rectangular, plainly-finished, weatherboarded, frame cottage. It consists of a two-story, two-room main block, a one-story shed roof front porch, and a gable roof ell. The Shoe is a small rectangular Arts and Crafts style one-story-with-loft frame cottage.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

The former Randall Memorial Building, also known as the Village Cafe, is a historic commercial building located at Blowing Rock, Watauga County, North Carolina. It was built in 1907, and is a 1 1/2-story, weatherboarded cottage with steep gable roof. It has a one-story hip roofed wing. It was built by the local Episcopal Church congregation to serve as a workshop and training center for mountain handicrafts. It later served as a community centre.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

The Bollinger-Hartley House is a historic house located at 423 North Main Street in Blowing Rock, Watauga County, North Carolina.

‹See Tfd› Bass Lake, also known as Cone Lake, is a 22-acre (8.9 ha) man-made lake or reservoir located in Blowing Rock, Watauga County, North Carolina, United States. The Moses H. Cone estate, also called Flat Top Manor, is on a hillside overlooking the lake, whose elevation is 3,563 feet (1,086 m). Cone constructed two lakes on the property: Trout Lake and Cone Lake. The lakes are within Moses H. Cone Memorial Park which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Moses H. Cone Memorial Park is a country estate in honor of Moses H. Cone in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It is on the Blue Ridge Parkway between mileposts 292 and 295 with access at milepost 294. Most locals call it Cone Park. The park is run by the National Park Service and is open to the public. It contains 3,500 acres (14 km2), a 16-acre (65,000 m2) trout lake, a 22-acre (89,000 m2) Bass Lake and 25 miles (40 km) of carriage trails for hiking and horses. The main feature of the park is a twenty-three room 13,000-square-foot (1,200 m2) mansion called Flat Top Manor built around the early 1900s. At the manor, there is a craft shop and demonstration center, along with an information desk and book store. The activities in the park are walking, hiking, cross-country skiing, and horseback riding. More people use the park for hiking and horseback riding than any other activity. There is also fishing available at the two nearby fishing lakes. Many people also do amateur and professional photography, especially in the autumn. The park is open year-round and sees 225,000 people each year being the most visited recreational place on the Blue Ridge Parkway and second in visitors after the Folk Art Center that sees 250,000 visitors. Together with the Julian Price Memorial Park, it is the largest developed area set aside for public recreation on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Moses obtained advice from noted conservationist Gifford Pinchot, the pioneering forester at the Biltmore Estate and First Chief of the US Forest Service, on planting white pine forests and hemlock hedges.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 as Flat Top Estate, a national historic district. The district encompasses four contributing buildings and two contributing sites. They include the historic landscape, Flat Top Manor house (1899-1900), carriage house (c. 1899–1905), Cone Cemetery (1908), Sandy Flat Missionary Baptist Church (1908), and the apple barn.

Flat Top Manor, as it is most commonly known, is also called the Moses Cone Manor, Moses Cone Estate, and the Moses H. Cone Mansion. It is at Milepost 294 of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It was built by American textile entrepreneur Moses H. Cone for his home and based on the idea of replicating George Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate, the largest privately owned house in the United States. He used his estate to showcase his knowledge of scientific farming and to represent his wealth he had accumulated. The manor mansion and associated property was donated to the National Park Service and they managed it. The house is referred to as the Parkway Craft Center to those that travel the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Craft Center has a gift shop and a workshop where various arts and crafts are demonstrated. There are tours given by Park Rangers of the second story of the mansion and there are self-guiding trails on the property where a visitor can hike.

Westglow, also known as the Elliott Daingerfield House, is a historic home located near Blowing Rock, Watauga County, North Carolina. It was built in 1917, and is a 2+1⁄2-story, rectangular, Colonial Revival style frame dwelling with a hipped roof. It has a two-story hip roof extension. The front facade features a monumental tetrastyle portico supported by columns with Ionic order capitals. Also on the property are the contributing artists studio and caretaker's cottage (1920s). It was the summer home and studio of artist Elliot Daingerfield (1859-1932).It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad (reporting mark ET&WNC), affectionately called the "Tweetsie" as a verbal acronym of its initials (ET&WNC) but also in reference to the sound of its steam whistles, was a primarily 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge railroad established in 1866 for the purpose of serving the mines at Cranberry, North Carolina. The 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge portion of the ET&WNC was abandoned in 1950. The 11-mile (17.7 km) 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge segment of the line from Johnson City to Elizabethton, Tennessee, operated as East Tennessee Railway until 2003. In 2012 the rails and ties were removed to make way for a rail-trail. This trail was named the Tweetsie Trail.

East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad Locomotive No. 12, also known as Tweetsie Locomotive No. 12, is a historic narrow-gauge 4-6-0 "Ten Wheeler" type steam locomotive located near Blowing Rock, Watauga County, North Carolina. It was built in 1917 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works for the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad. The East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad ceased operations in 1950 and No. 12 is the only one of the railroad's narrow-gauge engines still in existence. It was sold to the Shenandoah Central in 1952 were it continued to operate in service until retirement in 1954. The locomotive was later sold again to the Tweetsie Railroad theme park in 1957 were it received a restoration and began pulling excursion trains around the park. Today, No. 12 continues to operate at the Tweetsie Railroad along with former White Pass and Yukon Route 2-8-2 No. 190. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

Tweetsie Railroad is a family-oriented heritage railroad and Wild West amusement park located between Boone and Blowing Rock, North Carolina, United States. The centerpiece of the park is a 3-mile (4.8 km) ride on a train pulled by one of Tweetsie Railroad's two historic narrow-gauge steam locomotives. The park also features a variety of amusement rides, live shows, a zoo and other attractions geared towards families with children. The park also hosts a variety of special events throughout the year including their Halloween and Christmas-themed events.