Dupont

The waterfalls at the heart of DuPont were very nearly the centerpiece of a gated community. In 1999 developer Jim Anthony bought the 2,200-acre tract for $6.35 million, outbidding the Conservation Fund’s $5.5 million, and planned an upscale development arranged around the falls. On October 23, 2000, Governor Jim Hunt and the North Carolina Council of State voted unanimously to take the land by eminent domain, and the state ultimately paid about $24.5 million for it, nearly four times what the developer had spent a year earlier. The forest now holds 64 trails and 56.5 miles of singletrack, Ridgeline’s long, swooping descent among them, open to everyone.

The map traces the network through the contours of the Little River drainage. The contour lines bend around the granite domes, Cedar Rock and Big Rock among them, and crowd together where the river cuts down past the falls. You can follow Ridgeline’s namesake spine across the print and see how the trails string the domes, drainages, and lake basins into one connected forest.