Shipley Farms · Vilas, Watauga County, North Carolina

The lay of 115 acres

Shipley Farms is 114.5 acres of hollow, spur and creek bottom on Linville Creek, 2,849 to 3,404 feet up. Here it is from a six-inch aerial photograph, from lidar that sees the ground through the trees, and in three dimensions.

Tract, as mapped: 114.5 acres three parcels, 2.8 mi of boundary
Elevation: 2,849–3,404 ft 868–1,038 m above sea level
Bottom to top: 555 ft 169 m of relief
Typical slope: 29% grade median across the tract

From above

The red line is the boundary of Shipley Farms as the Watauga County tax map draws it: a long tract climbing the north side of the valley, the creek bottom below Linville Creek Road, and a small lot at the south-east corner. The gold dashed line is Valley View: about 62 acres in six parcels that the Shipley family also owns, most of it to the west.

Shipley Farms, Vilas, North Carolina

Aerial: six-inch photograph flown 11 February 2022 by the North Carolina Orthoimagery Program. Terrain: USGS 3DEP lidar bare earth, flown 5–9 March 2017, shaded and tinted by height, with contours every 10 feet and a heavier line every 50. The area shown is 1.4 by 1.2 miles.

Layer

“Where am I?” uses your phone’s location to put you on the map. It stays on your device; nothing is sent to Shipley Farms.

Tap or click anywhere on the map for its elevation.

Mouse: drag to move, click for elevation, Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom. Touch: two fingers to move and zoom, tap for elevation. Keyboard: arrow keys move, + and − zoom, Enter reads the elevation at the centre, 0 resets.

Two trails on Shipley Farms

Both are drawn on the map above: the Summit Trail in purple and the Valley View Ridge Loop in teal. Open every day, dawn to dusk. Tap Where am I? on the map to see yourself on the trail.

Summit Trail

1.16 mi one way · 537 ft up · about 30 minutes to the top · steepest stretch 14.9%.

Where to park: the gravel lot at Shipley Farms store, 1699 Linville Creek Rd, Vilas. The trail starts from the lot, at the blue P on the map.

Where to walk: across Linville Creek Rd, up the wooded draw, through the two cattle gates, then on up through the woods to the top of Shipley Farms at 3,404 ft. Come back down the way you went up.

Valley View Ridge Loop

0.97 mi loop · 246 ft up · about 25 minutes round trip · steepest stretch 12.0%.

Where to park: the loop is on Valley View, the Shipley family's land west of Shipley Farms. Campsite guests start from the campsites. Anyone else, please ask at Shipley Farms store for directions and parking before you go.

Where to walk: from the loop start, at the teal dot on the map, up through the woods to the ridge at 3,053 ft, then back down by a different line to where you started.

Five rules for walking Shipley Farms

Check in at Shipley Farms store when it is open (Wednesday to Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM), so someone knows you are out on the trail. When it is closed, tell someone where you are going.
Stay on the trail shown on this map. The pastures, barns and farmstead are working ground, and the farmstead is seen on a guided tour.
Close every gate behind you and give cattle plenty of room. Never walk between a cow and her calf.
Keep dogs on a leash, and pick up after them.
Carry out everything you carry in. No fires and no smoking.

Before you go. These trails are new and not yet marked on the ground, so follow the line on this map. The Summit Trail crosses Linville Creek Rd: stop and look both ways. Both trails are steep in places; wear proper shoes and carry water.

In an emergency, call 911. Say “Shipley Farms, 1699 Linville Creek Rd, Vilas,” the trail you are on, and what Where am I? shows.

Store closed? Shipley Farms store is open Wednesday to Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM. Any other time, shop Shipley Farms online.

WARNING

Under North Carolina law, there is no liability for an injury to or death of a participant in an agritourism activity conducted at this agritourism location if such injury or death results from the inherent risks of the agritourism activity. Inherent risks of agritourism activities include, among others, risks of injury inherent to land, equipment, and animals, as well as the potential for you to act in a negligent manner that may contribute to your injury or death. You are assuming the risk of participating in this agritourism activity.

The ground under the trees

The Terrain layer is not a photograph. In March 2017, before the leaves came out, an aircraft swept Watauga County with a laser, millions of pulses a second. Most bounced off branches. The last of each, the ones that reached the soil, became a model of the bare ground, one height every metre.

That is why the woods vanish on the Terrain layer and the shape underneath shows: every hollow running down to the creek, the spurs between them, the flat bottom land along the road. The contour lines are drawn from it, ten feet apart.

It also measures what a mountain farm is like to walk. Of the 114.5 acres, only about a quarter is gentler than a 15 per cent grade. Nearly half is steeper than 30 per cent.

How steep Shipley Farms is, from the 1 m lidar model, every square metre inside the boundary counted.
Grade	Share	Acres
Under 15%	26%	30.0
15–30%	26%	29.5
Over 30%	48%	55.0

A 15% grade climbs 15 feet in every 100. Slope is measured on a lightly smoothed surface so that single lidar points do not count as cliffs.

In three dimensions

Five kilometres square of lidar elevation around Shipley Farms, with the 2022 aerial photograph laid over it. The bowl the farm sits in is plain from here. The high ground to the east-northeast, along Curly Mapel Ridge to Grassy Knob at 4,607 feet, is the ridge that holds back the sunrise on the sunlight page.

Shaded relief of the five kilometres around Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina, with the farm's boundary in red on the north side of the Linville Creek valley and higher ridges to the north and east.

Linville Creek leaves the tract at its lowest point, 2,849 feet, and joins Brushy Fork about 1.1 km to the west-south-west. The Tennessee Valley Divide, the rim of the Tennessee River’s watershed, runs 2.0 km to the north-east.

What this map is, and is not

NOT A SURVEYBoth boundaries are county tax-map lines, published through NC OneMap. It is good for seeing the shape of the land. It does not settle where a fence or a corner is.
2022The photograph was flown in February 2022, before Hurricane Helene in September 2024. Anything the storm moved along Linville Creek is not in it. A post-storm survey exists and is not shown here.
2017The lidar is from March 2017. Ground moved since then, by the storm or by a bulldozer, is not in the Terrain layer or the 3D model.
Elevations are feet and metres above sea level (NAVD88). Tap readouts come from a 4 m version of the lidar and are good to within a few feet on open ground.
Acreage here is measured from the mapped boundary: 114.5 acres. Shipley Farms describes the tract as 115 acres; the county record lists the parcels separately.

Sources

Aerial photograph: NC Orthoimagery Program, 6-inch natural colour, flown 2022-02-11. NC Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and NC 911 Board, via NC OneMap.
Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program 1 m DEM from the NC Phase 5 Watauga quality-level-1 lidar, collected 2017-03-05 to 2017-03-09. Public domain.
Boundary: Watauga County parcels, NC OneMap statewide parcel layer. The tax-map line, not a survey.
Streams: USGS National Hydrography Dataset, high resolution.
Place names: USGS Geographic Names Information System, spelled as GNIS records them.
Roads: US Census Bureau TIGER/Line.
Made by: Shipley Farms, October 2026. Every figure on this page is measured from the sources above; nothing is estimated from a regional average.

Shipley Farms · 1699 Linville Creek Rd, Vilas, NC 28692 · No shortcuts since 1872.