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Whiteside Mountain is a mountain in Jackson County, North Carolina between Cashiers and Highlands, North Carolina and the Georgia border. Whiteside Mountain is claimed to have the highest cliffs in Eastern North American. It also has a feature called Devil's Courthouse, whose name may be confused with the Devil's Courthouse that is 20 miles away in Transylvania County, NC.
There is a road to the top. From the Mountain top itself one can view several States. A foot trail leads off the Road to the top of the Mountain to the Court House. The Park Service since the 1980s has tried to restrict access to it and allowed the trail to it to grow over because of dangers of not only getting to it but one in a strong wind could cause someone to be blown off of it. They also did not want accidents from paragliding and similar activities taking place from the Mountain or from the Courthouse. The overhang itself is a small platform less than 7 feet in what would be it's diameter connected to Whiteside as if it were a cantilever. Similar overhangs can be found on the Appalachian Trail.
Legend of De Soto
The overhang edge has carved into it a message which supposedly says that De Soto was here and supposedly carved by his men who allegedly threw over their crippled sick horses here as well as someone who was giving De Soto trouble and allegedly De Soto held Court and determined that the man should be executed by being thrown off what is called today Devil's Courthouse.
It is dangerous to try to read the carved letters which are less than an inch from the drop off point of the bottom letters and in the 1950s only a small child can even get close to the letters without falling off. The letters must be safely viewed upside down with a mirror or a running mini-video camera attached to a long pole or some sort of robot--- besides rattlesnake trails have been seen here. The best way to see the letters is by helicopter and even then they are difficult to see.
A legend about the carving by De Soto has persisted for many years and even got into some otherwise reputable history texts used in Schools; however, it was proven a hoax and was carved by some boys around 1926 when there was probably much more of the overhang than there is today (2007). This terrain is just too rough for Man and Horse to get through by climbing up straight up sheer walls and over Mountains especially when one considers the straight almost vertical walls of the Blue Ridge escarpment as well as the Gorge in this area for De Soto to have come through here in a time when there were no roads and only pathways or no pathways at all. De Soto's most likely route took him through the Cumberland Gap from South Carolina.
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