The folding and fault is the result of the action of plate tectonics.
The Blue Ridge, or Appalachian Mountains were formed in the remote past by collision of two continental plate crusts. These plates are huge sheets of rock that are pushed over and into each other. One rock layer called the Blue Ridge Thrust Sheet was moved over 60 miles to cover what is now Grandfather Mountain.
The mountains were formed in three phases, the first about a billion years ago, the second around 550 million years ago, and the final one about 300 million years ago. The mountains were almost ten times taller then than they are now, and this is because they have eroded over millions of years.
