At one time, WMIT was one of the strongest operating FM stations in the country, post-World War II. It was put on the air by Gordon Gray, who owned WSJS 600 AM in Winston-Salem. Originally the station operated at 44.1 MHz in the original FM band, but went to 106.9 FM after the War. If you look through old Broadcasting magazine issues of the late 1940's, you'll see several ads for it. Gray believed in FM radio and was one of the pioneers. My records show the station to have operated with 250,000 watts from atop Mount Mitchell for many years, but the original power may have been higher. Back then stations outside the Northeast did not have to reduce power for every antenna foot above average terrain. From atop Mt Mitchell (their official ID at one point was "Clingsman's Peak" and was later changed to "Mount Mitchell) they covered a large amount of the Carolinas and adjacent states. But times were rough for FM radio until the hi-fi craze took off in the mid-1950's, thanks largely to college students who were then with FM what young 'uns today are with wi-fi and i-pods. But a lot of commercial operators had tired of carrying expensive, non-revenue making FM stations and the deletions of operating FM stations continued in sizeable numbers until about 1960. Perhaps because of its uniqueness, WMIT was never deleted, but the station was silent for some time, and it was finally sold. The new owners founded WFGW (AM) and about the same time the ID was changed to "Mount Mitchell."
One of my wife's friends of many years grew up in North Carolina, and he told me that as a kid his parents loved it for its classical music, and they could listen to it --if I can remember correctly-- throughout the area, even into eastern North Carolina. If this sounds unreal, remember it was running 250,000 watts from the top of Mitchell, 6600+ ft asl and the FM band had very few stations, especially at the high end of the dial, in the 1950's and 1960's.
Myself, I've always thought it would have made a heckuva public radio signal.
