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This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

Title page from The Land of the Sky: A Pictureque Country on the Southern Railway, pamphlet issued by the Southern RailwayLand of the Sky

by Wiley J. Williams, 2006

"Land of the Sky" is a slogan applied to the Mountain region of western North Carolina. It was adopted from the title of a novel, "The Land of the Sky"; or, Adventures in Mountain By-Ways (1876), written by Frances Christine Fisher Tiernan (1846-1920), a native of Salisbury, under the pen name Christian Reid. The story describes the activities of summer travelers who enjoy the scenery of North Carolina's mountainous west while engaging in mild flirtations.

Additional Resources:

Passenger Department of the Southern Railway. "The Land of the Sky: A Pictureque Country on the Southern Railway." Southern Railway. 1904. https://archive.org/stream/landofskypicture00sout#page/n7/mode/2up.

Barker, T.M., Jr. A Souvenir Directory to The Land of the Sky. Asheville, N.C. 1898. https://archive.org/stream/souvenirdirector00bark#page/n5/mode/2up.

Presbrey, Frank. The Land of the Sky and Beyond. Southern Railway. 1895. https://archive.org/stream/landofskybeyond00inpres#page/n3/mode/2up.

Smith, Mae Lucile. Sky-Land magazine. Hendersonville, N.C. 1913. https://archive.org/stream/skyland1913smit#page/n5/mode/2up

Image Credits:

Passenger Department of the Southern Railway. Title page of "The Land of the Sky: A Pictureque Country on the Southern Railway." Southern Railway. 1904. https://archive.org/stream/landofskypicture00sout#page/n7/mode/2up.

Subjects: 
Literature
Slogans, slang, and sayings
UNC Press
Authors: 
Williams, Wiley J.
Origin - location: 
Mountains
From: 
Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press.

1 January 2006 | Williams, Wiley J.

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