Linville Falls and the Gorge Below the Overlook

The falls at Linville drop in two stages. The upper cascade spreads across a wide granite shelf and runs broad and shallow before it reaches the edge, where the rock narrows and the water commits. The lower plunge drops into Linville Gorge, a canyon that the National Forest has designated as wilderness: no motors, no mountain bikes, permits required on busy weekends.

The gorge below the falls is one of the deepest in the eastern United States: twelve miles long, in places as much as fourteen hundred feet from rim to river. From the overlooks accessible from the Parkway parking area, you are looking down into a landscape that functions on a different scale from the world you just drove through. The river at the bottom is white in sections visible from certain angles.

The trails from the Parkway access point give three separate overlook perspectives on the falls and the gorge entrance. The upper trail is short and accessible. The Erwins View trail is longer and gets you to the gorge rim. None of them take you to the river. The gorge below, if you want to reach the water at the bottom, is backcountry. Permits are required on summer weekends and holidays through the Pisgah National Forest permit system.

The granite you are looking at is part of the basement rock of the Blue Ridge, approximately three hundred million years old, from an era when the Atlantic Ocean had not yet formed and the Appalachians were part of a mountain range connected to what is now northwestern Africa. The falls are a very small event in a very long geological story.