America’s Top Dream Towns

COMBINE THE DRASTIC granite drop-offs of the Blue Ridge escarpment with more than 80 inches of rain a year and something dramatic is bound to happen. Around the town of Cashiers (pronounced CASH-ers), perched at 3,500 feet on the Eastern Continental Divide, the jackpot shows up in the form of waterfalls everything from tiny cliff side seeps to 400-foot-plus cataracts that roar into deep gorges. The downtown is little more than a crossroads, the junction of U.S. 64 and North Carolina 107, and a mile or so radius of antique shops, high-end restaurants, and second-home clusters discreetly tucked into the woods.

OUTDOORS: Hikers can go short, on spur trails to waterfall lookouts, or take on longer segments of the Foothills Trail or the Chattooga River Trail. Fly fishers and kayakers pilgrimage to the Nantahala, Ocoee, and Chattooga rivers. Panthertown Valley, a 6,700-acre wilderness area, is the closest fattire-trail web, and the Tsali Recreation Area, a one-and-a-half-hour drive west, is an off-roader’s dream, with more than 40 miles of epic single track. The thousand-foot cliffs of Whiteside Mountain provide the kind of hairy, multi-pitch, huge-exposure climbs that would almost make you swear someone had trucked the place out from Yosemite.

Outside Magazine, August 2004

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