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Kathryn Case, courtesy of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
Whitetop Mountain
The Appalachian Trail on Whitetop Mountain.
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Va. Creeper Trail
The Virginia Creeper Trail in autumn.
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Kathryn Case, courtesy of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
Whitetop Mountain
The Appalachian Trail on Whitetop Mountain.
Even in August, when the huckleberries bloom along the Appalachian Trail, it seems like Christmas at Whitetop Mountain. Near the tri-state corner of Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina, this mile-high peak in southwest Virginia rises in three counties – Grayson, Washington and Smyth.
Elevation: 5,520 feet. Nearby, to the south, the community called Whitetop is considerably lower – in some spots, as much as 2,000 feet. Yet it's a good place to grow Christmas trees, especially the Fraser fir, considered a "Cadillac" for its durability and beauty.
That's why it seems like Christmas never ends at Whitetop. Practically everyone grows Christmas trees – a leading cash crop in this corner of the Old Dominion, replacing the cows that once roamed the high-elevation ranges in the 1970s. In recent years, several Christmas tree farmers have also opened older homes, or built new cabins, to establish rental units at Whitetop.
Case-in-point: Buryl Greer. He and his wife, Brenda, have lived on Whitetop Mountain for decades. They also operate a retail business in nearby Marion, Va., a town that historically has ties to the Whitetop community.
During the 1930s, musicians from Marion organized a folk festival on the prairie atop the mountain, the second highest peak in Virginia – just a couple of hundred feet behind looming Mount Rogers. Most famously, the Whitetop Folk Festival lured First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to attend concerts on Aug. 12, 1933 – a day that attracted as many as 20,000 people to the mountain.
That original folk festival ended its run in the 1930s. But the Greers are instrumental in helping organize the events that attract visitors today: a maple syrup festival in March; a ramp festival in May; and a molasses festival in October. Each event serves as a fundraiser for the Mount Rogers Volunteer Fire Department & Rescue Squad.
In between comes summer. And, after winters that can pile up as much as 10 feet of snow, Buryl Greer looks forward to summer days that rarely exceed the 80-degree mark. "You always get cool nights," Greer says. "There's no problem sleeping."
Greer's Whitetop Mountain Cabin – a handsome rental cottage – stands at a 4,000-foot elevation on a hill that ranks among the highest points of the community. Wrapped with porches, this log home boasts a bedroom upstairs, two more downstairs and 360-degree views that include the fabled prairie of Whitetop Mountain and rows of Christmas trees on the Greer farm.
Just down the road, hardly more than a mile, stands a replica of the original Whitetop Train Depot, once a landmark along the Virginia-Carolina Railway. Today, that rail line is the bicycle-friendly Virginia Creeper Trail. And it marches downhill from Whitetop to Green Cove so splendidly, for a three-mile stretch, that there's never a need to pedal.
Whitetop is not the end of the 34-mile-long Virginia Creeper Trail; that's actually on the North Carolina border, at Ashe County, about a mile away. Yet, Whitetop is likely the starting point for the thousands who visit each year, shuttled to "the top" – Whitetop – from nearly a dozen bicycle business, just down the road in Damascus.
On Whitetop, the air is clean, and the temperatures are cool. If it's 85 degrees at the westernmost point of the Virginia Creeper Trail in nearby Abingdon, you can count on about 10 degrees cooler temperature at Whitetop. "And most of the days you have a little breeze, too," Greer says. "It's just good cool weather and peace and quiet."
Atop Whitetop
Greer's Whitetop Mountain Cabin, 854 Old Park Rd., Whitetop, VA
276-388-3477, wtmcabin.homestead.com