Chimney Rock Park owner Dr. Lucius Morse says his family’s decision to sell the 996-acre park to the state of North Carolina for $24 million is about posterity. Morse recalled attending one of the park’s Easter sunrise services where a minister said: “The Morses don’t own the park, God does. They are just stewards of the land.” “And of course I assured him we felt the same way,” said Morse, whose family has owned the mountain landmark, a land of imposing rock cliffs and cascading waterfalls, for more than a century.

Residents of Hickory Nut Gorge in Rutherford, Henderson and other counties have spent months writing letters to newspapers and state leaders calling for the state to buy the park. That came after the family in July hired Sotheby’s International Real Estate to market the land for $55 million, believed the highest asking price for a piece of land in state history. The state will buy the land with $15 million the General Assembly appropriated last year plus grants from the state’s Park and Recreation, Natural Heritage and Clean Water Management trust funds. A private donor contributed $2.35 million for the purchase. Although officially anonymous, most of that money came through the Conservation Trust for North Carolina from the Stanback family of Salisbury, a state official said. Fred and Alice Stanback were among dozens of residents who attended Monday’s ceremony.

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