Chimney Rock Park is as beautiful and natural as the Blue Ridge Parkway itself. Chimney Rock Park, just 25 miles from Asheville, boasts that it has the best of the North Carolina mountains in one place.

Chimney Rock Park offers stunning scenery, hiking, picnic areas, waterfalls, caves, famous rock formations, and much more.

Chimney Rock Park has been a tourist attraction in western North Carolina since a stairway was built to the rock’s summit in 1885. It encompasses roughly 4,000 acres on both north and south sides of the gorge and expansion efforts continue to bring more of the gorge’s rich natural resources into conservation.

Visitors can also enjoy observing the large number of wildflowers, birds and plants that are indigenous to the park. Hickory Nut Falls is one of the other main attractions of the Chimney Rock area. It’s one of the highest waterfalls east of the Mississippi and can be reached by hiking along the Skyline-Cliff  Trail Loop to its top.
 

The Chimney Rock area also has lots of antique shops, specialty and gift shops, restaurants and accommodations from cozy bed and breakfasts to rustic cabins.

This unique formation–the most noted on the Oregon Trail–has come to symbolize the greatest voluntary migration in the history of mankind!