Waterrock Knob

At milepost four hundred fifty-one point two, Waterrock Knob rises to six thousand two hundred ninety-two feet, and its visitor center, at five thousand eight hundred twenty feet, is the highest on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It sits in the Plott Balsams range between the Great Smokies and the Great Balsam Mountains, an area the Cherokee people called part of the cosmography of Kituwah, their name for the homeland they have occupied in these mountains for more than a thousand years. The mountain's name comes from a spring that flows over a flat rock face near the summit, a reliable source of water for hunters and farmers who climbed this high ground for centuries.

On a clear day the view spans four states. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians donated a large adjoining tract to the National Park Service in the early two thousands, preserving the ridgeline that still marks the edge of the Qualla Boundary.