Howards Knob. Howard’s Knob. Howard Knob. No one can quite reach a consensus about the name of the mountain above downtown and Appalachian State University. The prominence, 4,396 feet above sea level, gives Boone its unique mountainscape skyline and gave Benjamin Howard a place to hide from the patriots during the Revolutionary War. Thus its name.
NASA, General Electric, and the U.S. Department of Energy placed a turbine on Howards Knob back in the 1970s to see how many homes they could power from the howling wind whipping over the summit. It never quite worked, but it did make a whooshing sound that rattled windows in the town of Boone.
The Whooshies
Appalachian State students, calling themselves the whooshies, gathered like some sort of cult to pay respects as the turbine was dismantled in 1983.
They dressed in sheets and beads and offered prayers to the turbine god Nay-zuh, which coincidentally sounds a lot like how you might pronounce NASA in a situation in which wearing a bedsheet as clothing seemed like a good idea. They said the turbine “brought energy from the heavens down to the peoples of Earth.”
Now there’s a county park on the site with a picnic area and an overlook of downtown and the university.
Hang Gliding on Howards Knob
The overlook predates the NASA wind turbine, of course, and used to provide a perfect launch pad for hang gliders. They would jump off there and sail toward any number of open fields, such as where the New Market shopping center is today.
If you look closely at this launching area, which has obviously been built up over the years with concrete, there’s a fixed compass telling gliders which direction they were facing–presumably so they’d know where the wind was blowing.
Today, access to this platform has been discouraged by a chain link fence–a fence that’s now bejeweled with lovers’ padlocks, like those on some of the bridges in Paris.
Bouldering on Howards Knob
Speaking of extreme sports, Howards Knob was also well-known to local climbers and boulderers as having the best rock so close to town and campus. Joey Henson, who helped establish many of the boulder problems on the Howards and much of the bouldering in Linville Gorge, was instrumental in getting Howards Knob into the mind of John Sherman and his book Stone Crusaders.
This was intended to raise awareness and, presumably, compassion about the treasured rock outcroppings that were destined for destruction by a housing developer in the 1990s. In conjunction with the Blue Ridge Conservancy and the town of Boone, Henson helped stop development. Climbing in the area was also stopped, a decision that Joey and many others have worked for years to reverse or at least modify.
Nevertheless, Howards Knob was the genesis for the Boone bouldering scene, which has since expanded in all directions in the High Country. Intentionally, though, there’s still no guide book about climbing up here, because, in the words of Henson, “people need to explore for themselves, ask around, regain their pioneer spirit.”
The Segregated Black Community Called Junaluska
Junaluska Road stretches up Howards Knob from downtown Boone and the black community of Boone mostly resided in this area. Once known as “The Hill” and then as “Junaluska,” the area still has residents and remnants of those segregation days still anchored along the sides of Howards Knob.
Of course Boone and Appalachia are not well known for their rich heritage of African American roots and history, but the Knob might contain one of the longest-standing black communities in western North Carolina.