Moses Cone Estate, Blue Ridge Parkway/NPS

When you stop this summer at Moses H. Cone Memorial Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway and enjoy the beauty and history of the park and the manor, leave a donation behind before you leave. The estate created by Moses and Bertha Cone needs a lot of TLC, and your support can make it happen.

The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation long has been working to raise the millions of dollars needed to restore the manor. Not all visitors realize the needs, though. As the Foundation puts it, "(T)his is the time of year when thousands of visitors are enjoying Moses H. Cone Memorial Park at milepost 294 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. In the fresh mountain air, they are exploring miles of carriage trails, touring Flat Top Manor, and riding horses on the estate. But to many of them, it's a secret how desperately the estate needs their support."

In the past the Foundation has raised more than $2 million for restoration work, and now it's seeking to raise $600,000 to help pay for a fire suppression system in the manor, replace wood aspects of the manor, such as doors and windows, that have deteriorated, repair the estate's carriage paths, and rehab the landscape.

Every dollar helps ensure the wonderful experiences Moses and Bertha Cone created will continue for decades to come.

Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation: The Opportunity to Remake History at Moses H. Cone Memorial Park from StoryShare on Vimeo.

Here's a little history on Moses Cone:

The park was owned and developed as a gentleman’s country estate by Moses H. Cone, an American captain of industry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who with his brother, Ceasar Cone, brought denim production to the South with several mills based in Greensboro, N.C. Together they built a textile empire that still exists today.

Cone was not only a successful entrepreneur, he was an inquisitive gentleman farmer who experimented with agriculture and designed and built one of America’s most beautiful country estates. Beginning in 1897, he carefully created an impressive retreat featuring carriage trails, lakes, orchards, fields, and forests. His vision was influenced by a great regard for the natural landscape.

Before his untimely death in 1908, he constructed Flat Top Manor as the centerpiece of this idyllic mountain retreat. After his passing, his wife, Bertha, operated the estate for 40 years, adhering to his original concept. The 3,500-acre estate became part of the Blue Ridge Parkway in 1950. The Cone family’s generosity and influence is still evident in Greensboro, home to Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, and the mountains today.