City Lights visible from Wiseman's View

Photography from the popular Wiseman's View observation site on December 1, 2012 clearly shows some city lights of Lenoir, NC.

Brown Mountain is the distant flat-top mountain in the center of the image
The prominent ridge in the foreground is the east rim of Linville Gorge with Hawskbill Mtn to the left edge of the image and Table Rock Mtn to the right edge of the image
Canon EOS REBEL T3i DSLR camera, f/9, 1/200 second, ISO-100

 

City lights of Lenoir, NC
The single white light above the ridgeline in the center of the image is a lighted tower atop Hibriten Mtn
The adjacent orange light is Lenoir's Christmas Star which is only lighted during the holidays each year
The dark profile of Brown Mountain comprises the foreground of the image
Canon EOS REBEL T3i DSLR camera, f/98 3 second, ISO-800

 

City lights of Lenoir, NC
A wide-angle view of Lenoir
 The lighted tower & Christmas Star atop Hibriten Mtn are visible
The Google Data Center is the row of orange lights near the right edge of the image
The dark profile of Brown Mountain comprises the foreground of the image
Canon EOS REBEL T3i DSLR camera, f/6.3, 3 second, ISO-100

 

Google Data Center, Lenoir, NC
 This is the same building visible in the daytime from our Jonas Ridge BML Cam1 site
Canon EOS REBEL T3i DSLR camera, f/0, 10 second, ISO-800

Wiseman's View, named for the spot where Fate Wiseman first saw the Brown Mountain Lights (BMLs), lies on the western rim of Linville Gorge and may have been the site of the very first BML sightings.  As an old man, Fate Wiseman told his nephew, Scotty Wiseman, about seeing mysterious lights atop Brown Mountain when he (Fate Wiseman) was a very young man----this would have been about 1854, +- 10 years .  Although not proven, this is the earliest 'verifiable' report of the BMLs.   The sightings of mysterious lights seen over the top of Brown Mountain from Loven's Hotel at Cold Springs, NC weren't reported until the late 1890s and early 1900s.  It was the sightings from Cold Springs, popularized by newspaper articles, that first ignited the public's imagination and initiated the legend of the BMLs.

 

Since Fate Wiseman's sightings, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of others have reported seeing similar lights from his observation spot. 

 

Note that although a vast expanse of Linville Gorge is clearly visible from Wiseman's View, no one at the time, including Fate Wiseman, reported seeing mysterious lights down in the gorge itself.  However, since about the 1950s, mystery lights down in Linville Gorge have been reportedly seen from Wiseman's View and elsewhere along the rim of the gorge.  These lights, called the Linville Gorge Lights (LGLs), are not the same thing as the BMLs; and the two should not be confused with each other.  The lights that gave rise to the legends of the BMLs were seen over the top of Brown Mountain when viewed from distant observation sites, like Wiseman's View and Cold Springs, that are located in the higher mountains west and north of Brown Mountain.  The sightings of mystery lights in Linville Gorge itself are a more-recent phenomenon and undoubtablely have a different source than the BMLs.