01/08/06
Mitchell Falls

As hard as I try to prevent it from happening, mistakes find a way of creeping into my writings. But none have as interesting a background as the Mitchell Falls saga. It begins some time ago with me making a tortuous bushwhack from the gap between Mount Mitchell and Mount Craig. I followed Mitchell Creek to the falls, snapped a photo, and climbed back out along Little Piney Ridge, which proved to be nothing but a rhododendron hell. It was a tough hike, but I had seen the famed Mitchell Falls where Dr. Elisha Mitchell had fallen to his death.

Sometime afterward I saw a historical photo of the falls and it didn't look right. Had I been to the wrong waterfall or was this a photo of the wrong falls? I didn't find the answer until recently while doing research for an upcoming book in which I'm rephotographing historical photos from across North Carolina. I found numerous historical photos that were captioned as Mitchell Falls. Trouble is, there were three different waterfalls shown in the photos! What the heck was going on?

To sort it out and to get photos for my upcoming book, I obtained permission and directions to hike in from the bottom to the falls. The true Mitchell Falls is not the waterfall I had visited earlier. It is not the waterfall that George Masa photographed sometime in the early part of the 1900s. And it is not the waterfall Rufus Morgan shot in the 1800s. The waterfall that Masa photographed appears to be the one I had visited first. The one Morgan shot is probably another drop on the creek downstream from it. Both photographers likely hiked to the falls as I did, starting from the top. When they reached a waterfall they mistakenly assumed it was Mitchell, as I did. This is, of course, conjecture on my part. But it seems likely that if they had hiked upstream along Mitchell Creek they would have found the true Mitchell Falls. The other possibility is that somehow the photos of theirs have been erroneously captioned by others.

So, besides Mitchell Falls, it appears that there are at least two additional falls on Mitchell Creek. The one I first visited starts as a long steep slide and culminates in a short, near vertical slide. The one Morgan shot falls in a narrow crevice, similar to the real Mitchell Falls. Mitchell Falls is not 40 feet high as is often cited. I'd estimate it at no higher than 25 feet. It's very scenic though, with a small plunge pool where Dr. Mitchell's body was found.

If you want to see any of these falls yourself, you're out of luck. As stated on page 154, it's on private property and access is strictly prohibited. I was able to get permission only because of the nature of the book project I'm working on.