Dirty Dancing

July 25, 2022

I got a long-distance glimpse of western North Carolina’s Lake Lure last year when my daughter Marie and I took the grandsons to nearby Chimney Rock. Out on the Rock’s observation deck, at about 2,300 feet of elevation, I gripped the railing as I squinted. The lake gleamed in the distance.

It’s a pretty spot, semi-famous as one of the filming locations for the 1987 hit movie “Dirty Dancing,” in which Baby (Jennifer Grey) leaps into the outstretched arms of Johnny (Patrick Swayze) while he’s standing in the lake. They still talk about it up there.

In September the Lake Lure folks put on a Dirty Dancing Festival. For about 40 bucks you can wear period clothes like tight jeans and Keds, listen to the movie soundtrack music and, for girls, leap into your own Patrick Swayze’s overhead grasp while he stands in the water. Guys, good luck with that. You’ll have the time of your life.

Sandy likes the movie and Thursday was her birthday, so we went to the lake, about a 90-minute drive up U.S. 25 to I-26 then country roads through Bat Cave to Chimney Rock, at a place called Hickory Nut Gorge. The lake is just east of the Rock.   

We decided in advance we wouldn’t try the lake leap.

The lake is man-made, created by a physician named Lucius Morse, who in 1916 with his brother Asahel bought 8,000 acres around Chimney Rock Mountain and established the Chimney Rock resort. He pushed for construction of a dam on the Broad River to generate power for the resort. The dam flooded the low stretch the lake now occupies, submerging the town of Buffalo. The lake was born in 1927. Morse’s wife Elizabeth thought up the name “Lake Lure.”

That same year Morse built the sixty-room Lake Lure Inn and Spa in a so-called Mediterranean style. The Inn overlooks the lake, along with a nearby Architectural Commerce Building, the Haynes Hill Mansion, and the Lake Lure schoolhouse, which later burned down. During World War II Army officers came to the Inn for R&R, enlisted troops stayed at the architectural building. The owners call the Inn “the Little Waldorf of the South.”

After “Dirty Dancing” became a hit the locals took advantage. The rural spot where Johnny hoisted Baby was turned into a sandy tourist beach, admission $10. You can sunbathe and swim, kids can ride a water slide. Then too, in recent decades stories circulated that a young bride was murdered at the Inn and returns to haunt the place. A “paranormal investigative” outfit named the Heritage Hunters Society visited and took blurry photos, which tour guides say may show spirits wandering the hallways at night. You can find them on the internet!

This cute spot, a “sister city” of Italy’s Lake Como, nestles among rugged, sheer rock-faced western North Carolina mountains at the southern end of the Blue Ridge. Asheville is around 25 miles north, itself built into mountains. Here in northwestern South Carolina the TV weather people have a separate forecast for “mountains.” 

We had lunch at a place across the highway from the beach and got a table under an eave that shielded us from the sticky heat smothering the country. We enjoyed the fresh air and the view. Below was the western channel of the lake, which leads into a central bay. Another long channel extends north. The main road from Chimney Rock, Memorial Highway, bounds the lake on the south but only past the beach.

Birthdays are always fun, but they become more special the more you pile up. My last dozen or so flashed by in a blur. This one was big for Sandy, since three years ago she celebrated it—“observed” would be better—in a hospital ICU in Pennsylvania. It was a Sunday; first thing that morning she had an MRI. This year it would be Lake Lure.

We didn’t see much of the lake. As you approach the beach you pass acres of pontoon boats tied up, you can take a boat tour. Memorial Highway turns southeast away from the water, which I guessed is accessible from local streets. The lake was a one-day junket for us, in line with our tourist chops. I looked into staying at the Inn, but we shy away from resort vacations, even resort overnights. For us it’s generally see the place, take a photo, head home.

Not far from the lake we stumbled on the Flower Bridge. Across and on both sides of a stone bridge over the Broad River, which feeds the lake, local folks have donated their time and skills to planting and cultivating a vast garden that explodes with lush color. The brick path across the bridge winds past exotic but lighthearted artwork and statuary that conveys the gentility of mind and heart of a few dozen folks, young and not so young, who give their labor to the place.

We breathed the sweet air of the garden. In the blazing sunlight and stifling humidity the volunteers watered, hoed, pruned, and seeded, as we strolled in awe, enjoying the abundance of brilliant colors of every flowering plant native to Hickory Nut Gorge and surrounding forests. A few others passed us on our walk over the bridge and our return, nodding and smiling.

After not quite an hour we left the garden, looking to escape the heat. But it touched us as an achievement of nobility and beauty, humble yet passionate. It became Sandy’s birthday gift. The lake then looked to be what it is: a pretty manufactured and marketed tourist attraction.

We looked up and around again at the pine-covered rocky peaks towering above the Gorge. From the road we could see the flag that waves atop Chimney Rock. We turned to watch the sharp turns back through the mountains. Our jaunt across the Flower Bridge lifted our spirits and carried us past the souvenir shops, cafes, and ice-cream stands. We said so long to the Dirty Dancing memorial, without getting wet.