Maggie is one of the few places that the United States Post Office named after a real person. Back in 1904, Jack Setzer was working hard to prove that his remote settlement in the Great Smoky Mountains deserved postal service. When he finally succeeded, Setzer started submitting possible names. The first batch were already taken in North Carolina, so he submitted the names of his three daughters without explanation and Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock picked 14-year old Maggie Mae.
Planning a visit? Stay at Stonebridge Campground.
The Blue Ridge Parkway—469 uninterrupted miles of mountain roadway from Virginia to Tennessee—was built during the Depression years of the 1930s and is still America’s most-visited National Park Service property. It reaches its highest point on Richland Balsam Knob, at over 6,000 feet, just south of Maggie Valley. Popular nearby destinations are the waterfalls and open mountaintops of Graveyard Fields at Milepost 418 and the 360-degree views from the Devil’s Courthouse at Milepost 422.4.
As expected at a mountain resort (elevations range from 3,000 to 4,000 feet in the valley), there is golf at the Maggie Valley Club and Resort and skiing at the Cataloochee Ski Area, one of the East Coast’s southernmost ski resorts. However, you might not a mountaintop amusement park. R.B. Coburn created the Old West-themed Ghost Town in the Sky in 1961 on the slopes of Buck Mountain. Visitors can only access the fun and rides via a half-mile long chair lift.
The Maggie Valley Festival Grounds are kept busy with craft shows and Appalachia Mountain entertainment throughout the year. However, it never smells better than in July, when the slow cookers of the Western North Carolina “Smokin’ in the Valley” barbecue festival take over the grounds. The event is a sanctioned competition of the Kansas City BBQ Society.
It is another type of overload of the senses in May when the three-day Thunder in the Smokies Spring Motorcycle Rally rolls into the valley. That is also the perfect time to visit the Wheels through Time Museum with the world’s premier collection of rare vintage hill climbing bikes, choppers and bobbers, board track racers and motorcycles you won’t see anywhere else.
