The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page M05

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER www.philly.com M5 An old estate with great trails Sunday, December 29, 2002 Pi ii i.i Flat Top Manor, the impressive estate of the Cones, just off the Blue BOB DOWNING Knight Ridder Tribune Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Flat Top Manor, a lovely estate built in 1901, has some of N.C.'s best hiking trails on its acres. By Bob Downing KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE BLOWING ROCK, N.C. It was 101 years ago that Moses and Bertha Cone moved into a 23-room mansion atop the Blue Ridge Mountains. Flat Top Manor, as the $70,000 Colonial Revival house was called, was an impressive turn-of-the-century country estate in a very impressive setting.

The estate had two man-made lakes, rolling farmland, meadows, 26 miles of broad, well-maintained and interconnected carriage trails through virgin hardwood and evergreen forests, and pastures filled with prize-winning cattle and sheep. The Cones had become wealthy in the grocery business in the Northeast and moved to North Carolina after the Civil War. He became known as the Denim King and operated more than 30 textile plants. The couple used the mansion for stylish entertaining. It had extensive pillars and porches and an imposing staircase with a long curving banister of cherry wood.

Cone planted extensive apple orchards, imported sugar maples from New England, and had pioneering forester Gifford Pinchot advise him on white pine plantings and hemlock hedges on the estate. Prior to working for Cone, Pinchot, who served two terms as governor of Pennsylvania (1923-1927; 1931-1935), had done forestry work at the famous Vander-bilt estate, Biltmore, outside of Asheville, N.C. And in the early 1900s, Pinchot virtually created the U.S. Forest Service and its system of National Forests. Cone did not live long enough to see Pinchot's work come to full fruition; he died in 1908.

Cone's wife wife died in 1947 and the estate was donated to the National Park Service in 1950 as the Moses H. Cone Memorial Park. Today, it is a star attraction along the popular Blue Ridge Parkway outside Blowing Rock, N.C. It is also home to the Parkway Craft Center, operated since 1951 by the Southern Highland Craft Guild. The center offers for sale an array of mountain crafts from artisans in nine states; their products include wood carvings, baskets, ironwork and quilts.

The park also hosts ranger-led interpretive programs throughout the year, but mostly in the summer. But the trails are the really big attraction at the old estate, which offers one of the more developed hiking areas along the parkway. The trails are open for hikers, walkers and joggers, as well as equestrians and, in season, cross-country skiers. Bikers, however, are The trails are generally not blazed but have signs at trail-heads and junctions. They range from easy to moderate.

Among them are: The Maze. A puzzling, twisting, turning trail of switchbacks designed by Pinchot. It runs through a forest of pine, oak and magnolia. The Rich Mountain and Flat Top Mountains trails. They ascend from the manor house through hardwood forests and offer views of nearby Grandfather Mountain.

The Trout Lake Trail, which runs about a mile through a hemlock-laced forest in a pretty mountain cove, flanked by old-growth conifers and rhododendron thickets. The Craftsman's Trail, the Cones' favorite, offers a 20-minute walk under a canopy of white oaks, red maples, mountain magnolia, black cherry and tulip poplar trees. The Watkins Carriage Trail abounds in spring flowers. The entire estate ranges in altitude from 3,560 feet at Bass Lake to 4,558 feet at Flat Top Perillo Tours A museum offers about 100 more reasons to visit Tupelo, Miss. Loving cars tender in Elvis' hometown The trusted name in travel since 1945.

Mountain. Pretty 22-acre Bass Lake and 16-acre Trout Lake are designated as wild trout waters (not hatchery-supported). Throughout the spring and summer, wildflowers abound, as do the blooms of rhododendrons and mountain laurels. The flowers' perfume provides a sensory dimension to a stroll along the park's trails, adding yet another reason to pull off the Blue Ridge Parkway for a visit. Moses H.

Cone Memorial Park is open year-round. The manor house and visitor center are open from March 21 to Jan. 6. The park entrance is between mileposts 292 and 295 on the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway (mileage is measured from north to south along the parkway). Nearby stables off U.S.

221 at the edge of Blowing Rock rent horses by the hour or the day. For more information, contact Superintendent, Blue Ridge Parkway, 199 Hemphill Knob Road, Asheville, N.C. 28801; phone 828-298-0398. es, it wasn't unusual to see lots of these cars with trunks that had been pried open, he said. Other head-turners are the Barrister Corvette once owned by Liberace, with a huge brass angel jutting out from the hood; a Dodge electric car Spain says used to scare the daylights out of people because it doesn't make a sound; a 1957 BMW Iset-ta with a door where the hood should be; and the 1985 Triton, a red, white and blue rocketlike car meant to be an eyecatching delivery vehicle for the Domino's pizza company.

Tupelo officials hope a good many of the more than 100,000 tourists who come annually to see the modest two-room shack where Elvis was born will drop in to Spain's car museum. For his part, the tall man with sandy hair just wanted to help his community refurbish a part of downtown while getting all these cars out of storage. "If you have all these things, what are you going to do with them?" Spain says. Tickets for the Tupelo Automobile Museum are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and AAA members, $5 for children 12 and under. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

More information: 662-842-4242. THOMAS WELLS Associated Press Earlie Eddie shines up one of the classic cars on display at the Tupelo Automobile Museum, which opened Dec. 7. All are original except for the oldest, an 1886 Carl Benz reproduction. By Frank Fisher ASSOCIATED PRESS TUPELO, Miss.

Move over, Elvis; there's a new tourist attraction in this north Mississippi town known best as the birthplace of the King. The Tupelo Automobile Museum opened Dec. 7, with more than 100 painstakingly restored cars dating from 1886 to 1994. Visitors to the brand-new, showroom get a tour through automotive history, from the sublime to the bizarre. There's a 1928 Franklin that has a windshield in the back for passengers.

And a 1955 Messer-schmidt, whose cockpit chassis resembles the Nazi fighter plane that it is named after. Another standout is the 1948 Tucker, with its distinctive middle headlight and a sign in front that reads: "51 made, none sold." The ill-fated Edsel can be seen, as can a 1948 Jaguar convertible with headlights as big as dinner plates, a car similar to the one Clark Gable owned. What would a display in Tupelo be without a tribute to Elvis, who was born in a shotgun cabin only a couple of minutes away from the museum? The King's 1976 dark-blue Lincoln which he gave to a Denver police captain shortly after buying it for more than $13,000 is a must-see. The cars are all original, except for the 1886 Carl Benz. That's a replica belonging to Tupelo television station owner and museum founder Frank Spain, whose 30-year collecting habit has taken him all over the country.

It took "a lot of intestinal fortitude" to drive some of the aging vehicles back home, he says. "There are wonderful tales behind some of these cars," says Spain's wife, Jane, who recalls one of them breaking down on the drive from Alaska to Tupelo. Frank Spain hopes the car museum will give his hometown another popular tourist attraction and offer visitors a chance to see the sweep of automotive history. Looking over the expanse of automotive iron on the well-lit floor, the 75-year-old electronics engineer bemoans a lack of daring in today's car designs. "I've been a car nut all my life, and I can't tell one car from another nowadays, or if it's and very civilized 3 Capitals Tour to London, Paris and Rome.

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And one low price covers all. For reservations, see your travel agent I or call Perillo: I 1-800-431-1515 I For free Perillo brochures, mail coupon or call 24 hours: i 1-800-341-2222 I 'The "Free Domestic Airfares" offer is capacity controlled, strictly limited, subject to change andor withdrawal without notice. 3 Valid only on Perillo air-inclusive package tours to Europe. made by Ford or Honda," Spain says. Once the $3.5 million museum building is paid for, proceeds from the exhibition will go toward college scholarships, according to Spain.

The museum will be run by a nonprofit foundation, says business manager Mary Thompson. Spain may be on to something with his latest idea. Car museums are popular tourist stops, reflecting America's infatuation with the automobile, says Robert Sbarge, former board member of the National Association of Automobile Museums and president of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Ind. "We're seeing that the auto museums are quite healthy there are new ones opening all the time, and there are others under planning right now," Sbarge, says, noting that attendance at his museum has been up significantly last year and this year. At the Tupelo museum, visitors can watch through windows as curator Max Berryhill and his crew work to restore dozens of antiques.

In one corner of the showroom, an old-time gas station has been re-created, complete with an antique gas pump, tools, oil cans, and a weathered garage. "When I was a kid, that's where you got your gas and car repaired," Spain recalls. "Anybody 60 years old and over will recognize that." Vintage gas-station signs hang from the rafters and cover the walls. A gift shop sells T-shirts and collectibles. The museum smells of brand-new tires.

Each car on display has a small sign near it that says what it is, when it was built and, if known, how much it sold for at the time. A tape-recorded message provides facts about the vehicle. Spain has an encyclopedic knowledge of cars, and his love of the three- and four-wheel members of his collection is apparent. Looking at a gold 1981 DeLore-an, popularized in the movie Back to the Future, Spain scoffs: "You have to be a pretty good driver to keep it on the road at any speed." Commenting on his favorite, the 1948 Jaguar, Spain says it reflects the classic period of auto-making. Then he shrugs his shoulders: "And it's a sexy-looking machine." The 1982 Maserati Quat-troporte featured an array of electrical switches, Spain says.

The only problem was that sometimes a switch worked, and other times it didn't. Because the trunk could only be opened with one of these switch jnlliM TO SUBSCRIBE, CALL 1-800-222-2765 rSi I spoilt our Easy Pay program, rlSLS and never write a check again..