The Geology of the Blue Ridge, Its Mountains and Its Waterfalls

Presented by Bill Jacobs, author of Whence These Special Place: The Geology of Cashiers, Highlands and Panthertown Valley

Watch this presentation on Youtube!

Ever wonder why Looking Glass Rock and nearby Devil’s Courthouse have such radically different profiles, or why Looking Glass Falls is rugged and precipitous but a few miles upstream Sliding Rock is smooth and slidable? This program will answer these and many similar questions by exploring the processes, spread over more than 500 million years, that have created the western North Carolina mountains. Bill Jacobs will discuss the Blue Ridge mountains and the geology that has shaped specific mountains and waterfalls. 

Bill Jacobs is the author of Whence These Special Places? The Geology of Cashiers, Highlands & Panthertown Valley. When he retired from his Atlanta-based legal career in 2011, he began pursuing his curiosity about the geologic origins of the mountains. After years of in-person and on-line courses, wide-ranging self-study, and numerous back-country explorations, he began to give presentations to interested groups as well as writing Whence these Special Places.