Moses H. Cone Memorial Park preserves the country estate of Moses Cone, a prosperous textile entrepreneur, conservationist, and philanthropist of the Gilded Age. Its centerpiece is Flat Top Manor, a gleaming white 23-room mansion of almost 14,000 square feet, built in 1901. From this location near one of the original entrances to the estate, the view of Bass Lake is the same one the Cone family often enjoyed. The park reflects how life in the mountains, often thought of as primitive and isolated, was also influenced by nineteenth-century landscape architecture design and America’s country estate movement. Those influences remain visible in the orchards, carriage trails, and remnants of the managed forests that were important to this prosperous mountain family. The North Carolina mountains and foothills were designated the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area in recognition of their natural beauty and living traditions of music, craft, agriculture, and Cherokee culture.