Hugh Morton: The owner of Grandfather Mountain, a huge tourist attraction
“What I was opposed to was the high route they had planned originally,” explains Hugh Morton. What he refers to was a scheme called for a section of the Parkway extending to the top of Grandfather Mountain, to elevations of 5,000 feet. It would have required an 1,800-foot tunnel through Pilot Ridge, and during wintertime the road would have been unsafe to use because of ice, snow, and fog. To descend from the proposed high route and connect with the already-completed Parkway at a middle elevation would have been especially tricky, according to Morton, whose family has owned the Grandfather Mountain for many generations and runs tourist there as a family enterprise.
“There would have been a bunch of hairpin curves and a switchback, where we now have the environmental habitat, in order to get back down. It was a dangerous, impractical road they had planned.” Morton protested against the idea, which included a controversial plan to make the Parkway a permanent, year-round toll road. North Carolina Gov. Luther Hodges agreed with Morton’s position, and even President Eisenhower got involved in working out a solution. Eventually, under the administration of Gov. Dan Moore, a compromise was reached based on Morton’s first suggestion.
“We had already provided 125 acres per mile for the construction of a middle route, which is where the new road was finally built,” remembers Morton. “I like to call it the Blue Ridge Parkway Viaduct, because that’s more helpful to visitors trying to locate it. There is a creek that goes down through there along the bottom of the Viaduct, and hardly anyone knows where it is.” Now tens of thousands of visitors have access to his mountain, without extraordinary driving hazards, all year ’round.