Photos courtesy of Mike Booher and the Boone Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Sights & Sounds

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Moses Cone Memorial Park

Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, near Blowing Rock, North Carolina on the Blue Ridge Parkway, preserves the country estate of Moses Cone, a prosperous textile entrepreneur, conservationist, and philanthropist of the Gilded Age. Its centerpiece is Flat Top Manor, a gleaming white 20-room, 13,000 square foot mansion built in 1901 in the grand Colonial Revival style.

The Manor is now the home of the Parkway Craft Center, one of five shops of the Southern Highland Craft Guild which features handmade crafts by hundreds of regional artists. Throughout the season, local artists demonstrate crafts such as quilting, embroidery, weaving, pottery, glass-blowing, and woodcarving on the front porch of the Manor

Twenty-five miles of carriage trails wind through the fields and forests of the 3,500-acre estate. The trails are available to horse drawn carriages, horseback riding, and hiking. The Craftsman's Trail is a 20-minute loop walk around the Manor which the Cones are said to have walked together every morning. The estate also contains a family cemetery and a carriage and apple barn.

Moses Cone's interest in nature and conservation led him to plant extensive white pine forests and hemlock hedges (at the advice of friend and noted conservationist Gifford Pinchot), build several lakes stocked with bass and trout, and plant a 10,000-tree apple orchard.

Hours of Operation

Flat Top Manor and the Parkway Craft Center are open seasonally.

March 15 - November 30
9 am - 5 pm daily

Call the Parkway Craft Center for the daily schedule of craft demonstrations.

Hours of operation are subject to change. Contact directly for most current information.

Admission Fees

None.

Location

The Moses H. Cone Memorial Park is located at milepost 294 on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Parkway Craft Center
Flat Top Manor at Cone Park
667 Service Road
Blowing Rock, NC 28605
(828) 295-7938

Blue Ridge Parkway website