Springer Mountain, Katahdin, the Presidential Range, and the White Mountains are all iconic, all dramatic, in their own geologic and cultural heft, each with their own stories. And then there’s Grandfather Mountain.

From a distance, this western North Carolina massif surrounded by a state park near the Blue Ridge Parkway cuts a hard and well-defined profile on the horizon. But to truly appreciate its substance, its history, you need to hike its forests, stand on its peaks, and soak up its rich Appalachian history.

Randy Johnson has done that, over a period of more than four decades, leaving sweat and likely a little blood on the mountain as he chronicled its past, resurrected some of its historic trails, and helped implement a backcountry management plan to preserve its essence.

There is substance in the Appalachian landscape, the hollows and caverns, the dense forests, ridges, balds, trails, and cultures that hold it all together. And there are many tales to be told. These are easy to dismiss from the distance, or when surrounded by a city, but these are the places from which our forefathers formed a country.

Johnson, in this handsome hardcover from the University of North Carolina Press, strives to ensure that that history and natural setting are not merely an afterthought or overlooked. He takes somewhat of an encyclopedic approach to dissecting Grandfather Mountain, which towers above this landscape in a 50-square-mile swath.

He ticks off the early wanderers who explored the region, the entrepreneurs who knew people would pay to experience and enjoy the setting, the hikers who crisscrossed its hefty back, and he even touches on some of the controversies that understandably rise up around these endeavors.

There also is a section on natural history that showcases the flora and fauna of Grandfather Mountain, of course, and another that explains why, and how, Johnson developed the backcountry management plan for this mountain.

He does so, though, not with a simple encyclopedic page-after-page listing, but by pulling all the threads together into a quilt that in sum total of its individual patches tells a story befitting this ancient mountain.

And to entice you onto Grandfather’s flanks, he includes a hiking guide and a photographer’s guide, pointing you to some of the stunning vistas and close-ups to be captured.

There are, no doubt, other notable mountains in the East, those deserving of their own story. And with Grandfather Mountain: The History And Guide To An Appalachian Icon, Johnson shows why those stories should be told, too.