Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
Summer grazing on Mountain Bald
Print by North Carolina Museum of History
Date: 1906
bald
A adjetive See citations
B noun A treeless area surrounded by forest on a mountain summit or slope, either a grass bald or heath bald; also used in place-names, as in Silers Bald (NC/TN) and Gregory Bald (TN). See 1960 citation. Also called devil’s footprint. See also shrub bald, sods.
1890 Carpenter Thunderhead Peak 139 The mountains are entirely wooded, except on a few summits, called “balds,” where the treeless tracts are covered with luxuriant grass and patches of bush breast-high. 1913 Kephart Our Sthn High 42 The best pasturage is high up in the mountains, where there are “balds” covered with succulent wild grass that resembles Kentucky blue grass. 1961 Stubbs Mountain-Wise (Aug-Sept) 10-11 The two highest mountains in Georgia are both called “Balds.” Brasstown Bald is the higher of the two. The second, which dominates the landscape here, is Rabun Bald. Why “Bald” anyway? The answer is simple: “Bald-headed,” — no trees at the top. The mountains unlike New Hampshire’s were not subject to the effects of glaciation, so we have vegetation most of the way up. But the very tops of some of them are bald, exposed rock. 1968 Powell NC Gazetteer 454 Silers Bald (on Welch Ridge and on the state line in Great Smoky Mountains National Park). Named for Jesse Richardson Siler (1793-1876) of Franklin, who owned this mountain and kept large herds of cattle on it.
—Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English
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