Club Officers:

Don Stafford - Club President, Russell Greene - Vice President, Mary Stafford - Treasurer. For more information, please call 828.688.4025.

Whatever you do on your visit to Mitchell County, be sure to visit Roan Mountain. Dr. Elisha Mitchell, after whom Mitchell County is named, is only one in a long line of distinguished visitors the mountain has received-and impressed. Mitchell, a University of North Carolina professor of science, came to Western North Carolina in the 1830's to measure the elevations of the Roan and the state's other high peaks including Grandfather Mountain. It was he who established that the highest mountain east of the Rockies was located, not in New Hampshire, as had been previously believed, but in North Carolina.

Mitchell died when he slipped and fell down a waterfall during his explorations of the mountain, Mount Mitchell now bears his name. While the Roan's 6,285 ft. elevation put it out of contention for the highest mountain honors, its beauty is unsurpassed, as Mitchell observed: "It is the most beautiful of all the high mountains. The top of the Roan may be described as a vast meadow without a tree to obstruct this prospect, where a person may gallop his horse for a mile or two with Carolina at his feet on one side and Tennessee on the other, and a green ocean of mountains rising in tremendous billows immediately around him."Dr. Elisha Mitchell (1836).