Qualla: Hanging Rock State Park

Hanging Rock State Park: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was 5minutes at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.5. The mountain resort never happened. Private investors had picked out the cliffs and waterfalls of the Sauratown Mountains, north of Winston-Salem, as the perfect place for a getaway hotel - until the Great Depression killed the financing. What the developers had to sell, the Winston-Salem Foundation and the Stokes County Committee for Hanging Rock bought. They donated the land to the state. Between 1935 and 1942 the Civilian Conservation Corps - the New Deal's army of young men with shovels - built a 12-acre lake, a stone bathhouse, a sand beach, picnic shelters, the park road and the parking lots. Almost a century later the lake is still there, the bathhouse still stands, and the rhododendron tunnels still echo with the voices of swimmers who paid six dollars for a day pass.

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Image: The original uploader was 5minutes at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Hanging Rock State Park: The Sauratown Range

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ron Miguel from North Carolina, USA, CC BY 2.0. Hanging Rock is part of a monadnock range called the Sauratowns, named for the Saura people - the Cheraw, a Siouan-speaking nation - who lived in the river valleys below. The peaks aren't tall by mountain standards (800 to 1,700 feet, or 244 to 518 meters), but they rise abruptly...

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Image: Ron Miguel from North Carolina, USA | CC BY 2.0

Hanging Rock State Park: What the CCC Left

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx._Granger, CC0. Between 1935 and 1942, three Civilian Conservation Corps companies worked Hanging Rock. The CCC was Franklin Roosevelt's idea - put unemployed young men into the woods, pay them thirty dollars a month with twenty-five sent home to their families, give them tents and shovels and g...

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Image: Mx._Granger | CC0

Hanging Rock State Park: Twenty Miles of Trails

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit bobistraveling, CC BY 2.0. More than twenty miles of hiking trails fan out from the visitor center. The signature trail is the 1.8-mile out-and-back to Hanging Rock itself - a stone overhang that gives the park its name, balanced on a cliff edge with a view over the Dan River valley that on a clear day rea...

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Image: bobistraveling | CC BY 2.0

Hanging Rock State Park: Going Home Through Pilot Mountain

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit bobistraveling, CC BY 2.0. From Winston-Salem, the drive in is about an hour and a half: up US-52 to NC-66 north, then west on Moore Spring Road to the entrance. There is no entry fee. Swimming and boat rentals carry small day-use fees ($6 adult, $4 child for the pool; $7 per hour for boats). The cafe near...

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Image: bobistraveling | CC BY 2.0