Asheville, North Carolina

When the kids were young, before the Internet (in fact, before personal computers!) I would travel, by car, with a full set of encyclopedias.  I would have them look up different things as we traveled - just like I occasionally Google things for the blog.  For me, it's not enough to say, "That's a pretty town," or "That's a pretty building."  I want to know the STORY behind things.  Usually, when I research, there is a piece of information that is memorable or remarkable, and that's what I include in the blog posting.

Well, not so with Asheville, North Carolina!  There's so much interesting info I don't know where to start! 

Geographically, it is nestled between the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountain ranges.  That's cool enough in itself.  We're in the way-far western part of North Carolina - within spittin' distance of Tennessee.  Gatlinburg (Tennessee) is only 70 more miles west.  There are trees - forest of them - everywhere (which is probably why there is so much furniture built in North Carolina.)  We were surprised at how many hardwood trees there are vs. soft pine.  (All the better to build furniture with!)  Pine would have been prettier year round, but you can't beat hardwood for fall foliage - or furniture.  Unfortunately, it's winter, so there is NO foliage, but not winter enough for snow.  We didn't come for the scenery though - this time.  We came to see the Biltmore Estate.

But back to Asheville itself.  According to Wikipedia:

Asheville pops up on national rankings for a variety of things:
Modern Maturity named it one of "The 50 Most Alive Places To Be,"  
AmericanStyle magazine called it one of "America's Top 25 Arts Destinations,"  
Self magazine labeled it the "Happiest City for Women," 
it is one of AARP Magazine's "Best Places to Reinvent Your Life",  
and was proclaimed the "New Freak Capital of the U.S." by Rolling Stone. 
Asheville has also been called "a New Age Mecca" by CBS News' Eye On America,  
In August 2006 Asheville was named one the "Best Outside Towns" by Outside Magazine. 
In the 2008 book, The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner, Asheville was cited by the author as one of the happiest places in the United States. 

In 2011 Asheville was picked as one of the “10 Most Beautiful Places in America” by Good Morning America. 

In 2007, Asheville was named one of the top seven places to live in the U.S. by Frommer's Cities Ranked and Rated, 

and #23 of 200 metro areas for business and careers by Forbes. 
It was also named one of the world's top 12 must-see destinations for 2007 by Frommer's travel guides.

WOW.  What else is there to say?


Well, in the beginning, probably even the beginning of the beginning, the land around here belonged to the Cherokee nation.  (We all know how that turned out: The Trail of Tears.)  But the misery Europeans brought started way before the Trail of Tears.  De Soto came in 1540 and brought all kinds of European diseases the Cherokee had no resistance to, and the Cherokee died by the droves.  Even so, for the next 300 years this area was simply free hunting ground for game.


Asheville the town actually began as Morristown in 1793, and located where two Indian trails crossed.  (That's less than 20 years after the American Revolution.)  Morristown incorporated and changed it's name to Asheville in 1797.

Ten years earlier a soldier came and built a log cabin in the area.  Cherokee hunters kidnapped and killed him.  Bad idea.  He had a twin brother and brother-in-law.  We all know how that works.  After they got his body back the whole family came and settled here in the Swannanoa Valley at Bee Tree Creek.  And thus began the European (now American) occupation of the Cherokee Nation.


There were a couple of itty-bitty Civil War battles fought here - just because it was here.  There were no railroads to or from here, and it was of no real strategic value, literally nothing worth dying for.

The first railroad TO reach here was in 1880, and it became part of the Richmond and Danville Railroads.  (Hey!  I know where Danville is!)  The railroads brought steady growth to Asheville, but the last passenger train ran in 1968.  (Anybody here ever road a passenger train?  I did a couple of times back in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  Quite an experience.)


Asheville had the first electric street railway lines in the state of North Carolina, the first of which opened in 1889.  They were replaced by buses in 1934.

With the collapse of the stock market in the late 1920's, eight of the nine banks in Asheville failed.  The town itself had issued so many bonds to pay for the construction of city infrastructure that it was $56 MILLION in debt in 1929.  Instead of defaulting on those bonds, Asheville took it's time and paid off every penny of that debt.  Took them FIFTY years, but they did it.  Now, THAT's my kinda town.  Woo-hoo!  Good for y'all!  That's so cool it makes me want to move here!

So, that's pretty much Asheville.  You'll have to come back tomorrow to learn the story about the Biltmore Estate.  (I love to "talk story," as they say in Hawaii.)