Chimney Rock State Park
Chimney Rock State Park is a List of [North Carolina state parks|North Carolina state park] in Chimney Rock, Rutherford County, North Carolina in the United States. The park is located southeast of Asheville, North Carolina, and is owned and managed by the state of North Carolina.
The park features hiking trails for all skill levels, views of the Devil's Head balancing rock, and a waterfall, Hickory Nut Falls. Its most notable feature is a gneiss monolith named Chimney Rock, which is accessible by elevator and provides views of the park and surrounding countryside.
Early park development
In May 2005, the North Carolina General Assembly authorized the creation of the "Hickory Nut Gorge State Park." In August 2005 the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy purchased a tract of land south of Lake Lure known as "World's Edge" for $16 million with the intention of transferring the land as the first to be added to the new state park. World's Edge contains a mile-long set of steep slopes on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Escarpment, with more than of streams and waterfalls. From an overlook point, the land falls away to provide views of the Piedmont. The area provides habitat for rare flowers, diverse forest communities, endangered bats and salamanders, unique cave-dwelling invertebrates, and birds such as peregrine falcons and migratory neotropical species. Transfer of the World's Edge tract to state ownership was completed in 2006.State acquisition of Chimney Rock Park
In 1902, Dr. Lucius B. Morse purchased at Chimney Rock Mountain from Jerome Freeman, a North Carolina state legislator and land speculator, including the Chimney and cliffs. Morse and his family owned and operated "Chimney Rock Park" as a privately managed park from 1902 to 2007. Many small tracts purchased over the years expanded the park to. In 2006 the land was put up for sale. Many feared the park might fall into the hands of private developers, but the state and the Morse family completed a purchase agreement in early 2007.In July 2007, the General Assembly renamed Hickory Nut Gorge State Park to Chimney Rock State Park.
Geology
The metamorphic rock underlying Chimney Rock State Park and Hickory Nut Gorge has been mapped and studied in detailed by Lemmon and Dunn, Davis, Davis and Yanagihara,and Epps. They found that the region of Chimney Rock State Park and Hickory Nut Gorge is generally underlain by Ordovician, Henderson Gneiss. North of the Broad River, outliers of the older Poor Mountain Formation overlie the Henderson Gneiss and comprise the summit of and crests of two eastern ridges of Rumbling Bald Mountain. Similarly, south of the Broad River, The upper portions of Chimney Rock Mountain and Sugar Loaf Mountain also consist of an outlier of Poor Mountain Formation and Sugarloaf Gneiss overlying the Henderson Gneiss. In both areas, the contact between the Henderson Gneiss and the overlying Poor Mountain Formation is a thrust fault known as the Sugarloaf thrust fault. Ancient movement along the Sugarloaf thrust fault has transported the strata of the Poor Mountain Formation westward and over the top of the Henderson Gneiss. The surface of the Sugarloaf thrust fault slopes steeply to the east. As a result, the plane of the Sugarloaf thrust fault disappears along with the Henderson Gneiss beneath an overlying migmatitic biotite gneiss and Poor Mountain Formation along a north-south line following to the axis of the north and south arms of Lake Lure. At Bat Cave, North Carolina, the Henderson Gneiss abruptly terminates against another eastward sloping thrust fault that is known as the Tumblebug thrust fault. Along the Tumblebug thrust fault the Henderson Gneiss lies on and has been transported westward and over poorly-foliated, light-gray, medium-grained, Ordovician-Silurian, biotite-granite-gneiss.
Henderson Gneiss
The Henderson Gneiss is a medium- to coarse-grained, typically well-foliated, biotite-microcline augen gneiss. It consists mostly of oligoclase, quartz, orthoclase, and biotite. Accessory minerals are muscovite, garnet, allanite, zircon, sphene, and opaque minerals A distinctive trait of Henderson Gneiss is the presence of orthoclase augen up to long. It also exhibits a pronounced NE-SW-trending mineral lineation defined by quartz ribbons, elongate orthoclase porphyroclasts, and flakes of biotite and occasional muscovite. The composition of the Henderson Gneiss indicates that before metamorphism was originally granite to quartz monzonite. In local and regional studies of the economic geology of areas containing the Hickory Nut Gorge and Chimney Rock State Park area, economic minerals and ores of any significant were found to be lacking in the Henderson Gneiss.The massive and largely unfractured nature of the Henderson Gneiss is directly reflected in the scenery of Hickory Nut Gorge and Chimney Rock State Park. The exfoliation surfaces, locally called balds, rim the valleys of Hickory Nut Gorge and Chimney Rock State Park. In addition, other joints produce large blocks that spall from the exfoliation surfaces and landslides. Both processes have produced talus and fissure caves such as Bat and Gneiss caves. Erosion along joints in the Henderson Gneiss produced Chimney Rock.