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North Carolina Highway 261
North Carolina Highway 261 (NC 261) is a short state highway going from Bakersville to the Tennessee state line where the road turns into Tennessee State Route 143 (SR 143). The road is only long and is very curvy. The road is close to Roan Mountain State Park in Tennessee. Route description NC 261 begins in the town of Bakersville, the county seat of Mitchell County, at a stop-controlled T-intersection with NC 226 (Crimson Laurel Way). It immediately climbs a short hill out of the town and into the Pisgah National Forest. As it starts to head in a northeastern general direction, NC 261 begins a winding course between the Cub Creek and Pumpkin Patch Mountain. After crossing Pumpkin Patch Gap (elevation approximately ), the road begins to follow the Little Rock Creek and pass through the communities of Cookstown and Glen Ayre. outside of Glen Ayre, after paralleling more streams, NC 261 starts a climb up to Roan Mountain. Afters some hairpin t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bakersville, North Carolina
Bakersville is a town in Mitchell County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 464 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Mitchell County. History In prehistoric times, local mica deposits were extensively mined by Native Americans. The first Euro-American settlers arrived in the area after the American Revolution, establishing scattered homesteads. The town of Bakersville dates from the 1850s and was named for David Baker, a Revolutionary War soldier and one of the first to live in the area around 1790 and described as "a large land owner, innkeeper, merchant and political leader until his death in 1838. Some of David's sons and daughters remained and were equally influential in the area for many years after David's death. " Situated on the main route leading over Roan Mountain and westward into Tennessee, the town developed slowly. Traveler Frederick Law Olmsted passed through Bakersville in the early 1850s and noted that the "town" consisted of only a couple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glen Ayre, North Carolina
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long and bounded by gently sloped concave sides, unlike a ravine, which is deep and bounded by steep slopes. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath".. The word is Goidelic in origin: ''gleann'' in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, ''glion'' in Manx. The designation "glen" also occurs often in place names. Etymology The word is Goidelic in origin: ''gleann'' in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, ''glion'' in Manx. In Manx, ''glan'' is also to be found meaning glen. It is cognate with Welsh ''glyn''. Examples in Northern England, such as Glenridding, Westmorland, or Glendue, near Haltwhistle, Northumberland, are thought to derive from the aforementioned Cumbric cognate, or another Brythonic equivalent. This likely underlies some examples in Southern Scotland. As the name of a river, it is thought to derive from the Irish word ''glan'' meaning clean, or the Welsh word ''gleindid'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asphalt Concrete
Asphalt concrete (commonly called asphalt, blacktop, or pavement in North America, and tarmac, bitumen macadam, or rolled asphalt in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) is a composite material commonly used to surface roads, parking lots, airports, and the core of embankment dams. Asphalt mixtures have been used in pavement construction since the beginning of the twentieth century. It consists of mineral aggregate bound together with asphalt, laid in layers, and compacted. The process was refined and enhanced by Belgian-American inventor Edward De Smedt. The terms ''asphalt'' (or ''asphaltic'') ''concrete'', ''bituminous asphalt concrete'', and ''bituminous mixture'' are typically used only in engineering and construction documents, which define concrete as any composite material composed of mineral aggregate adhered with a binder. The abbreviation, ''AC'', is sometimes used for ''asphalt concrete'' but can also denote ''asphalt content'' or ''asphalt cement'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dirt Road
A dirt road or track is a type of unpaved road not paved with asphalt, concrete, brick, or stone; made from the native material of the land surface through which it passes, known to highway engineers as subgrade material. Dirt roads are suitable for vehicles; a narrower path for pedestrians, animals, and possibly small vehicles would be called a dirt track—the distinction is not well-defined. Unpaved roads with a harder surface made by the addition of material such as gravel and aggregate (stones), might be referred to as dirt roads in common usage but are distinguished as improved roads by highway engineers. (Improved unpaved roads include gravel roads, laterite roads, murram roads and macadamized roads.) Compared to a gravel road, a dirt road is not usually graded regularly to produce an enhanced camber to encourage rainwater to drain off the road, and drainage ditches at the sides may be absent. They are unlikely to have embankments through low-lying areas. This lea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gravel Road
A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. They are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and the United States. In New Zealand, and other Commonwealth countries, they may be known as metal roads. They may be referred to as "dirt roads" in common speech, but that term is used more for unimproved roads with no surface material added. If well constructed and maintained, a gravel road is an all-weather road. Characteristics Construction Compared to sealed roads, which require large machinery to work and pour concrete or to lay and smooth a bitumen-based surface, gravel roads are easy and cheap to build. However, compared to dirt roads, all-weather gravel highways are quite expensive to build, as they require front loaders, dump trucks, graders, and roadrollers to provide a base course of compacted earth or other material, sometimes maca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization's work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility. The agency was founded on March 3, 1879. The USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior; it is that department's sole scientific agency. The USGS employs approximately 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The USGS also has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, and Menlo Park, California. The current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is "science for a changing world". The agency's previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its hundredt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roan Mountain, Tennessee
Roan Mountain is a census-designated place (CDP) in Carter County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 1,360 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Johnson City Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is a component of the Johnson City– Kingsport–Bristol, TN- VA Combined Statistical Area – commonly known as the Tri-Cities region. History In September 1780, the Overmountain Men— a group of American soldiers from the trans-Appalachian frontier who fought during the American Revolution— passed through Roan Mountain en route to North Carolina, where they would engage and defeat a group of loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain. On the night of September 26, this force camped at Shelving Rock, between what is now the Roan Mountain CDP and Roan Mountain State Park, where a rocky outcropping provided a convenient place for the soldiers to store their weapons and gunpowder. The site is now part of the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Trail (also called the A.T.), is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006)"Appalachian Trail FAQs" Outdoors.org (accessed September 14, 2006) The Appalachian Trail Conservancy claims the Appalachian Trail to be the longest hiking-only trail in the world. More than three million people hike segments of the trail each year. The trail was first proposed in 1921 and completed in 1937 after more than a decade of work. Improvements and changes have continued since then. It became the Appalachian National Scenic Trail under the National Trails System Act of 1968. The trail is maintained by 31 trail clubs and multiple partnerships, and managed by the National Park Service, United States Forest Service, and the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Most of the trail is in forest or wild lands, although some portions traverse towns, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hairpin Turn
A hairpin turn (also hairpin bend or hairpin corner) is a bend in a road with a very acute inner angle, making it necessary for an oncoming vehicle to turn about 180° to continue on the road. It is named for its resemblance to a bent metal hairpin. Such turns in ramps and trails may be called switchbacks in American English, by analogy with switchback railways. Description Hairpin turns are often built when a route climbs up or down a steep slope, so that it can travel mostly across the slope with only moderate steepness, and are often arrayed in a zigzag pattern. Highways with repeating hairpin turns allow easier, safer ascents and descents of mountainous terrain than a direct, steep climb and descent, at the price of greater distances of travel and usually lower speed limits, due to the sharpness of the turn. Highways of this style are also generally less costly to build and maintain than highways with tunnels. On occasion, the road may loop completely, using a tunnel or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roan Mountain (Roan Highlands)
Roan Mountain is a mountain straddling the North Carolina/Tennessee border in the Unaka Range of the Southern Appalachian Mountains in the Southeastern United States. The range's highpoint, Roan is clad in a dense stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest, and includes the world's largest natural rhododendron garden, and the longest stretch of grassy bald in the Appalachian range. The Cherokee National Forest and Pisgah National Forest converge atop the mountain, with Roan Mountain State Park located near its northern base. The Appalachian Trail traverses most of the Roan's crest. The Roan High Knob Shelter is the highest back-country shelter on the entire trail. Roan Mountain comprises the greater part of the Roan Highlands, a massif stretching from Big Rock Creek on the west to U.S. Route 19 on the east. Most of this massif lies along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, between Carter County and Mitchell County. Yellow Mountain and Little Hump Mountain, on the northe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Other major cities include Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville. Tennessee's population as of the 2020 United States census is approximately 6.9 million. Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachian Mountains. Its name derives from "Tanas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
