Flat Top Estate

The Moses H. Cone Memorial Park is a country estate in honor of Moses H. Cone in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It is on the Blue Ridge Parkway between mileposts 292 and 295 with access at Milepost 294. Most locals call it Cone Park. The park is run by the National Park Service and is open to the public. It contains , a trout lake, a bass lake, and of carriage trails for hiking and horses. The main feature of the park is a twenty-three room mansion called Flat Top Manor built about 1900. At the Manor there is a Craft Shop and demonstration center, along with an information desk and book store. The activities in the park are walking, hiking, cross-country skiing, and horseback riding. More people use the park for hiking and horseback riding than any other activity. There is also fishing available at the two nearby fishing lakes. Many people also do amateur and professional photography, especially in the Autumn. The park is open year-round and sees 225,000 people each year being the most visited recreational place on the Blue Ridge Parkway and second in visitors after the Folk Art Center that sees 250,000 visitors. Together with the Julian Price Memorial Park it is the largest developed area set aside for public recreation on the Blue Ridge Parkway. A "moderate" walking trail is the Flat Top Mountain Carriage Trail to the Fire / Observation Tower where one can get a complete view of the park. The observation tower is away from Flat Top Manor. The leisurely pathways to Bass Lake and Trout Lake go for a couple of miles. The Cone cemetery where the family burials are located is about a mile walk from the Manor. Cone genealogy family pictures are in the Flat Top Manor along with area information and history books. Moses obtained advice from noted conservationistGifford Pinchot, the pioneering forester at the Biltmore Estate and First Chief of the US Forest Service, on planting white pine forests and hemlock hedges. The town of Blowing Rock is two miles (3 km) away where many novelty shops are located along with the area restaurants. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 as Flat Top Estate, a national historic district. The district encompasses four contributing buildings and two contributing sites. They include the historic landscape, Flat Top Manor house (1899-1900), carriage house (c. 1899-1905), Cone Cemetery (1908), Sandy Flat Missionary Baptist Church (1908), and the apple barn.