The Heart of the Alleghanies; Or, Western North Carolina

Written in the twilight of the 19th century, when the railroads had only just begun to creep into the high valleys and forgotten hollows of the Appalachian uplands, this book is both a loving gazetteer and an elegy for a wilderness slipping away. Zeigler guides readers through the thunderous gorges, ancient forests, and cloud-wrapped peaks of Western North Carolina with the reverent eye of a man who knows he is documenting something vanishing. Here are the stories of early explorers and the Native American nations who called these mountains home, the legends that still clung to the ridges like morning mist, and the rough-hewn adventures of a people living close to the land. But beneath the guidebook's practical details lies something deeper: a romantic's conviction that mountains are sacred, that the frontier spirit still breathes in these remote valleys, and that the heart of America beats not in its growing cities but in places like this. For readers who crave the America that existed before we paved it over, Zeigler offers a portal to a wilder time.