Chetola is Cherokee for “haven of rest.” Aptly named, Chetola Resort lies just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in the mountains of North Carolina near a place called Blowing Rock. Before 1752, when Moravian Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg visited the Blowing Rock area, the windy cliffs were home to the Cherokee and the Catawba Indian tribes, hostile to each other. It is said that two star-crossed lovers, one from each tribe, were walking near the Rock when the reddening sky signaled to the brave that he must return to his tribal duty, and the maiden urged him to stay with her. His desperation in choosing between duty and love caused him to leap from the edge of the gorge toward the rocks below, while the maiden beseeched the Great Spirit to bring him back to her. The famous winds of the John’s River Gorge blew her lover back into her arms, and this legend was born.

Blowing Rock has always been a resort. The high elevation was a welcome refuge from the heat of the southern summers, and people have been coming here for generations to enjoy the spectacular mountain scenery and the pleasing summer weather.

Chetola’s story is one of a long line of owners, each adding their touch to its present estate-quality grandeur. It was originally purchased in 1846 by William Stringfellow, an Alabama banker, and then in 1926 by Luther Snyder, the Coca-Cola King of the Carolinas. Snyder refined the estate to one of the grandest in the region. Today Chetola is owned by Rachael Renar and her son Kent Tarbutton, who have gone even further in developing the resort with a keen eye of maintaining its beauty and paying homage to its storied past.

The Bob Timberlake Inn opened in 2004 in collaboration with one of North Carolina’s most famous artists. Timberlake, who has spent his life painting and recording the fading rural nature of the Blue Ridge, is a remarkably successful artist and considered the master of the American Realist genre. Each room, named after a significant historical figure in Chetola’s and Blowing Rock’s history, was designed by Bob Timberlake using his own furniture designs based on his art. With Timberlake’s help the manor house has been returned to the golden days of the 1920s when the Coca-Cola King entertained his guests in grand fashion.

Today, Chetola maintains its late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century grandeur while offering an extraordinary number of activities for the guest including being the only Orvis-endorsed fly fishing lodge in North Carolina. Anglers can float or wade over 300 miles of small streams and rivers for brown, brook, and rainbow trout as well as smallmouth bass.

The Manor House Restaurant at Chetola pays homage to its history and serves a variety of menus with historical dishes from the region and its unique mountain culture. Unquestionably, Chetola is a visit to another time when life was lived on a grand scale and the mountains of the Blue Ridge called to heat-oppressed southerners and offered them a true haven of rest.