RotoRota.Com    

Mt. Airy is a beautiful small southern town that is most famous for being the inspiration for TV's Mayberry, but Mt. Airy has a lot to offer besides Mayberry. It's a real town with real history and a character all it's own.

Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains is the small town of Mt. Airy.  Mt. Airy is on the Ararat River, the county seat of Surry County, and with a population of just over 8,000 is as pretty a small southern town as you could ask for. 

Mt. Airy is best known as being the hometown of actor Andy Griffith, and the inspiration for the fictitious town of Mayberry in the "Andy Griffith Show".  Every year in the fall the town celebrates with its "Mayberry Days" festival.

www.Mayberrydays.org

Mt. Airy is also on US 52, a great old US highway that runs from Charleston, South Carolina to Portal, North Dakota, on the Canadian border.

For more about US 52 here is a link to its entry in the wonderful US Highways website.

US Highways - US 52

You don't have to go to Mayberry Days to visit Mayberry, the Snappy Lunch actually exists, but get there early if you want to get one of their famous pork chop sandwiches!  Head on down Main Street and visit the Mayberry Jail, right next door to Wally's Service.

At Wally's you can get a cold drink, a tasty snack, souvenirs, and then go for a ride around town in a genuine Mayberry squad car.

But there is more to Mt. Airy than Mayberry, Mt. Airy is also the home of the NC Granite Corporation, an open face granite mine that has been in continuous operation since 1889 and is describes as the largest open pit mine in the world. It's so big it's quite visible from space and yet they believe they can be harvesting granite from the mine for centuries to come. In the Google Earth picture to the right it's the white spot between Flat Rock and Mt. Airy.

www.ncgranite.com