How About Them Apples? Be in the Know in Hendersonville

1

2

How ‘Bout Them Apples?

Be in the Know in Hendersonville

CRUDEN BAY BOOKS 3

On the Cover...the Henderson County Tourism Development Authority bear

There are sweet things ahead...

HOW ‘BOUT THEM APPLES? BE IN THE KNOW IN HENDERSONVILLE Copyright 2016 by Cruden Bay Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Cruden Bay Books Flat Rock NC 28739 International Standard Book Number 978-1-935771-34-0 Manufactured in the United States of America

4

How ‘Bout Them Apples?

Be in the Know in Hendersonville What’s Up With... 5

those things that make Hendersonville uniquely Hendersonville

Living in Hendersonville 35 Brush with Greatness around Hendersonville...

Celebrating around Hendersonville...

Dogwalking around Hendersonville...

Driving around Hendersonville...

Eating around Hendersonville...

Exploring around Hendersonville...

Learning around Hendersonville...

Playing around Hendersonville...

Meet Your Neighbors... 67

5

Prologue So you are thinking of moving to Apple Country. Or are moving or are already here. You’ve certainly come to the right place.

In these pages you’ll learn the explanations behind the quirks, the traditions and the secrets that make Hendersonville uniquely Hendersonville. How ‘Bout Them Apples?

Be in the Know In Hendersonville will help you join the club in no time.

Why all the dancing? Solved. Why is that boat in the middle of a field? A mystery no more. The reason for all these bears? Identified. What are all these summer campers doing here? Revealed.

Celebrating around Hendersonville...Dogwalking around Hendersonville...Driving around Hendersonville...Eating around Hendersonville...Exploring around Hendersonville...Learning around Hendersonville...Playing around Hendersonville...even a Brush with Greatness around Hendersonville.

This book will have you speaking like a native in no time.

Because the next best thing to having lived all your life in Hendersonville is being able to pass like you have.

6

What’s Up With... (those things that make Hendersonville uniquely Hendersonville)

7

What’s Up With…Leonard Henderson?

Hendersonville is named for Leonard Henderson. Don’t bother looking around for memorials and remembrances to the honorable Mr. Henderson. He never visited here. In fact he was dead and buried five years before anyone ever dreamed of building a town along the Buncombe Highway that ran from Greenville to Asheville.

By the 1830s that road was carrying a steady stream of newcomers to Buncombe County - so much so that some folks began to agitate for a new county. To curry favor for their plan with influential eastern North Carolina legislators the westerners offered to name the proposed new county after someone in their ranks. That man was Leonard Henderson. Leonard was a lawyer from a family of lawyers and one of the jurists named to North Carolina’s first Supreme Court in 1818.

Henderson became the state’s second Chief Justice in 1829 and died in 1833. That’s about all you need to know about Leonard Henderson.

So the county was named for Henderson in 1838 but he also got the city of Hendersonville when it was incorporated in 1841, which seems overly generous. Especially since a fellow named Mitchell King donated most of the 79 acres for the townsite. King was a native Scot who arrived in Charleston in his youth with, as his admirers liked to say, “wits and his learning his only capital.”

King was also a lawyer and became a major landholder around Charleston. In 1828 he built the second large summer home in Flat Rock which King called Argyle, across from today’s Kenmure on the old Buncombe Highway.

His contribution of land was gratefully accepted but he never had a champion to get the town name wrenched away from the memory of Henderson. Mitchell King did, however, get one of the city’s three major northsouth streets named for him.

8

What’s Up With…Those Serpentine Twists in Main Street?

The city shapers have all had strong visions of Hendersonville’s Main Street from the very beginning. When Judge Mitchell King donated the original land he specified that Main Street be 100 feet wide so “a carriage and four horses could turn around without backing.” That also left room for him to plant shade trees that could juice real estate sales. Poles with oil lamps would one day be installed right down the middle of the wide thoroughfare.

The roomy expanse seemed to work well enough long after the horse-drawn phaetons gave way to the automobile. Until those cars started zipping along too fast and roaring past the Main Street merchants on the four-lane state highway. In 1964, a 57-page report was commissioned on the need for a downtown Hendersonville makeover. Nothing was done.

The 1970s were hard times for Main Street businesses. Many boarded up and the spectators for the nightly drag races down the straight, wide strip of asphalt outnumbered the shoppers. Desperate, community leaders blew the dust bunnies off their decade-old manifesto and flew out to Grand Junction, Colorado to check out that city’s traffic-calming, pedestrian-friendly street designs.

Reluctantly, Hendersonville waved goodbye to its long-lived fourlane Main Street with head-in parking on both sides of the streets. In came curb extensions known as “bulb-outs.” They reached so far into the old roadway that the mid-block crosswalks barely require ten steps.

A city gardener was hired, paid for partly by merchants. Brick planters followed along the length of the street. By 1978, $235,000 later, Hendersonville’s new Downtown Shopping Park was ready.

The serpentine strategy on Main Street has been a hit; there have been awards, a revitalization of business and a closer observance to the 20 mph speed limit. Everyone is happy - except perhaps for the occasional drover forced to back up his oxen to get in and out of town.

9

What’s Up With…All the Nicknames?

When your stock in trade is selling your city to visitors, a catchy slogan can come in handy - and Hendersonville has tried several. Boosters of the Western North Carolina mountains began popping up after the Civil War, spreading word of the “healing springs and healthy climate” to outsiders. In 1876, a 29-year old native of Salisbury named Frances Fisher wrote a novel about her adventures growing up in “Mountains that like giants stand, sentinel enchanted land.” Fisher, who crafted over 50 books under her pen name of Christian Reid, called her novel The Land of the Sky. The name was an instant star. In short order hotels from Caesar’s Head in South Carolina to Asheville were luring out-of-town guests to this magical place called “The Land of The Sky.” When the Southern Railway began pushing track out of Charleston into the mountains the entire region - Flat Rock, Tryon, Saluda, Hendersonville and other

10

points - were lumped into The Land of The Sky. The Southern worked the slogan hard. The railroad published regular promotional guidebooks to the Land of The Sky and its copywriters tried to give each mountain town a beguiling personality. Asheville became the “Madonna of the Mountains.” Saluda was “Charming, Healthful, Recuperative” and Flat Rock was “Historic and Exquisitively Picturesque.” Waynesville was “A Natural Resort of Great Beauty and Fine Climate” and Hot Springs was “An Ideal Autumn and Winter Resort.” Brevard resided “in the Exquisite Land of Waterfalls.” Lake Toxaway was “A Wonder-spot of Scenic Beauty.” And Hendersonville was the “Gem City of the Western North Carolina Mountains.”

If we are scoring at home, I think we can agree that Brevard won the hyperbolic name game competition - Transylvania County still uses the “Land of Waterfalls” moniker a century later. But Hendersonville was a close second. After all, it is a gem of a city and the Land of the Sky abounds in gems and minerals so the slogan delivers two-way action. The city adopted the nickname and used it into the 1930s when the United States Postal Service initiated all-North Carolina airmail service. Each letter was stamped with the slogan of its city of origin and Hendersonville was “The Gem City.” Asheville, incidentally, had not yet purloined The Land of the Sky slogan for its own yet and was still scuffling in the branding game - it was “Men to Match our Mountains.” Not exactly a tourism magnet.

After World War II, Hendersonville cashed out “Gem City” and decided to chase tourist dollars as the “Friendly City.” There are plenty of other “friendly” cities in America and even others in North Carolina - in the days of U.S. Postal Service airmail stamping Charlotte was the “Friendly City.” By the 1970s the Chamber of Commerce was ready to jettison the slogan and recruited the owner of WHKP radio and long-time morning radio host Kermit Edney for help. Speaking directly to the retirees he had seen around town who had wearied of the sameness of the Florida climate, Edney coined the slogan “City of Four Seasons.” And it has stuck ever since, although don’t look to buy very much swag with the tagline on it.

11

What’s Up With…the World’s Third Oldest River?

Some say the French Broad River is the third oldest river on the planet. Only the Nile River and the New River, another North Carolina stream, were here first. Others place the French Broad River only in the Top Ten. Dating rivers is not an exact science after all. By any account the river that begins in Transylvania County and flows northwest completely through Henderson County on its way to help form the Tennessee River near Knoxville is old. So old it predates life - since there were no organisms to die and sink to the bottom the French Broad River contains no fossils.

Apparently early settlers had a limited imagination for place names since there were two Broad Rivers in North Carolina. This one flowed into territory controlled by France and became the “French Broad River.”

When the location for the new county seat that would become Hendersonville was being debated there were two choices - one on the post road and one on the French Broad River. The post roaders won and so the river does not flow through the city as it does in Asheville.

The Army Corps of Engineers showed up in the 1870s with plans to turn the French Broad into a navigable river but it didn’t work. Today the vessels that ply the French Broad in Henderson County are mostly canoes and kayaks meandering gently through open farm fields.

But the waters are not without their hair-raising moments. The Siren of the French Broad has her origins in early Cherokee times and the gorgeous dark-haired temptress had her coming-out party in an 1845 poem. The Siren comes to male travelers on the river in visions, luring them to the water. They gaze at her beauty under the surface and inevitably reach down for her - at which moment the Siren’s flesh turns scaly and she yanks the love-struck dupe to his watery doom.

12

What’s Up With…All the Bears around Hendersonville?

Back in 2003 the streets of American cities were being invaded by animals on parade - pigs and cows and horses painted by local artists.

Jim Kastetter, executive director of Downtown Hendersonville, and his board decided to try the same thing with bears. “If this works,” suggested Kastetter, “in three years we’ll select another kind of critter.”

It indeed worked but the lifesize whimsically painted acrylic bears have become an institution in Hendersonville. No other animal need apply - although you still may run into an occasional Hendersonville lamb which snuck into town while the bears hibernated through 2009.

The current crop of bruins appear on Main Street sidewalks (and now the 7th Avenue District) each spring after a much-anticipated reveal and linger until fall when the Bearfootin’ bears are auctioned off to new homes. Over the years the ursine fundraisers have brought over $220,000 into the coffers of local charities. You can still see bears from yesteryear in local businesses and private homes.

13

What’s Up With…All the Dancing?

The people of Hendersonville turned out to dance in the street with returning soldiers from the Great War in 1918 and haven’t stopped since. There was dancing in the Carolina Theater and the State Theater and at the casino in Laurel Park and on the pavilion of the Wheeler Hotel. And street dances on Main Street. Hendersonville was the “dancingest town in America.”

Mostly that dancing meant clogging, the descendant of the fancy steps the Irish and Scotch settlers brought with them when they migrated to the Southern Appalachian mountains. Clogging builds on the traditional figures of square dancing and injects lively heel-and-toe movements from old-fashioned buck dancing, executed on the downbeat to the rapid-fire tempo of bluegrass music.

When the North Carolina Apple Festival got under way after World War II the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival was the centerpiece of the then 10-day event. By that time team clogging had been a competitive event for over two decades and Hendersonville hoofers were in the first rank of Southern clogging. One of the biggest fans of clogging was Carl Sandburg, newly arrived in Flat Rock. In 1948 Sandburg’s Connemara Farms square dance team won the competition at the Apple Festival and was soon off on an all-expenses paid trip to the writ-

14

er’s hometown of Chicago to perform three days at the Rock Island Railroad Fair, spreading the word of the dancing prowess in Hendersonville.

It was freestyle clogging in those days and the town’s North Carolina Cloggers were some of the best at it, regularly winning the Apple Festival contest and adding a couple world championships before retiring. Meanwhile a new generation of cloggers with a love of choreography were coming on the scene, led by a 24-year old James Kesterson and his Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers. The “precision” clogging, as it came to be known, took the Hendersonville reputation around the globe. The Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers were at the Newport Folk Festival and the 1964 New York World’s Fair and the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Kesterson’s troupe was so dominant that some festivals asked the Hendersonville dancers to stay home and sometimes the Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers broke up and competed against themselves because of the lack of entrants willing to take them on.

The talent of Hendersonville cloggers is still on display during Monday evening Street Dances on Main Street during the summer. There is plenty of space for new dancers looking to learn so bring your stylish Right Hand Across, your best Open the Garden Gate and flashiest Shoe Fly Swing.

15

What’s Up With…All the Old Cars?

Hendersonville has been all-in on the automobile since the first engines were being cranked. The first car reported on Hendersonville streets was in 1902 and within a couple years the sycamores and pine trees on Main Street were being pulled and macadam laid down on top of the rutted dirt surface. The first gas pump in town was installed conveniently for drivers right on the sidewalk on Main Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

Speed was all the rage for Western North Carolinians at the time. In 1910 Hendersonville’s own Carl Thompson made national headlines when he motored from Spartanburg to Hendersonville, a distance of 50 miles with no pavement and no service facilities in between, in a jaw-dropping four hours and 23 minutes. At one point Thompson revved his Willys Overland Touring Car to a death-defying 21 miles per hour!

In 1913 the Greater Henderson Club staged a full week-long love fest for the horseless carriage. The showcase event was a Hendersonville to Atlanta automobile run which had been planned for almost a year. There were races, a parade with new automobiles draped in flowers, hill climbing contests and a blow-out Automobile Ball at the end.

Hendersonville’s fervor for vintage automobiles has hardly waned over the past century. Enthusiasts of classic metal began getting together in 1990 and formed the Hendersonville Antique Car Club. The club maintains a busy schedule of Cruise-Ins, including Friday evenings in conjunction with Music on Main Street when members drive in their Model Ts, 1955 Corvettes, 1964 Mustangs and 1972 Datsun 620s, pop the hoods and wow the nostalgic crowds with their machines.

16

What’s Up With…the Hendersonville Meteorite?

When it comes to things falling randomly from the sky the Meteoritical Society has been on the case since 1933. In that time the organization has identified some 1,700 meteorites that have struck the United States. The space debris has been found in almost every state and North Carolina claims 29 known strikes. Meteorites are named after the geographical area in which the stones were recovered and Hendersonville got its very own meteorite in 1904.

The Hendersonville Meteorite was found about three miles northwest of downtown on land owned by the county near Stoney Mountain Road. Today it is the Stoney Mountain Activity Center; a century ago it was a county home for the elderly. It was roughly a cube, six inches in each direction, and weighed about 11 pounds, six ounces which made it an average-sized meteorite found in America. There is no way to date unseen meteorites and a wild guess pegged the arrival of the visitor from outer space in 1876 but no one knows.

Charles French Toms did know the strange rock was something special. Toms, whose father Marion Columbus Toms was a prominent businessman and owner of Toms Hill that lords over southwest Hendersonville at the “Busy Bend” in Kanuga Road, would later control a zircon mine in the Green River Valley. He obtained the meteorite and displayed it in one of his family’s stores for two years after it was discovered in 1901. The alien rock was then donated to Vanderbilt University for analysis.

Pieces of the Hendersonville Meteorite would wind up as far away as the British Museum but the bulk of the stone, including a polished slab, ended up in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. But thanks to various museum loan programs pieces of the Hendersonville Meteorite have returned home to spend time in the Mineral & Lapidary Museum.

17

What’s Up With‌the White Squirrels?

Where would science fiction writers be without the nefarious circus train crash to kickstart their hair-raising sagas? Madison, Florida suffered one of those dreaded circus transport incidents in 1949 when a carnival truck left the road and tipped over. But the consequences were not that scary. Some white squirrels scurried off from the accident scene and took up residence in a nearby pecan grove.

The farmer eventually scooped up two of the critters and sent them to live with his niece in Brevard. She kept them inside as pets hoping the snow-kissed rodents might breed. No such luck. Eventually one escaped and the other released. Despite their lack of amorous success in captivity white squirrels soon began appearing around town. Or so the story goes.

The white squirrels are not pigment-starved albinos as they boast dark beady eyes. Other towns claim fealty to their white squirrels but those imposters are bred from albinos. Botanists do not recognize a distinct species of white squirrels and these are probably the offspring of hooking up with gray squirrels. The gray squirrel is the official State Mammal of North Carolina but the folks in Brevard go way beyond that - in 1986 the city council declared the entirety of the city a sanctuary for all squirrels - gray, white or in between. Today squirrel census counters estimate that more than 25% of all the squirrels scurrying around Brevard are white.

One of the best places to spot one of these rascals is on the leafy campus of Brevard College. But they are visible in backyards around Hendersonville as well. One time of year you are guaranteed to spot the rare breed is during the White Squirrel Festival held each May. Always in attendance is Pisgah Pete, a rescued white squirrel.

18

What’s Up With…the Unsolved Triple Murder?

Hendersonville has its own Crime of the Century. There were prominent victims. There was sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There was voodoo. There were mysterious strangers and double lives. There was police bungling and disappearing evidence. There was politics. And there was the last official outlaw in North Carolina. All scrunched up in 1960s Hendersonville.

It was the middle of July in 1966 when two men were clearing brush out near Lake Summit when they happened upon three bodies, two men and a woman, arranged in a small semi-circle. The victims had been bludgeoned to death and objects placed across their bodies so they resembled crosses. One of the men and the woman had multiple puncture wounds; the woman had been sexually violated by the ratcheting bar of a car jack. There were empty wallets found near the bodies.

The men were quickly identified as Vernon Shipman and Charles Glass who had been reported missing five days earlier. They were partners in the Tempo Music Shop on Main Street in Hendersonville. Shipman bankrolled the business and Glass managed the store. No one knew who the woman was.

The most sensational crime scene in the history of the county was already compromised by a week of hot weather and summer thunderstorms. Law enforcement officers from several different agencies - the Henderson County Sheriff ’s Office, the Buncombe County Sheriff ’s Office, the Hendersonville Police Department, the Henderson County Rescue Squad, the North Carolina Highway Patrol, and eventually the State Board of Investigation - all descended on Lake Summit without coordination. In short order there would be little that could be called evidence.

The ensuing police investigation would be as fruitless as the crime scene. Shipman and Glass were seen driving around Hendersonville 19

and Flat Rock in the hours before the crime was believed to have taken place. In the back seat were a woman, unrecognized by witnesses, and a man who was also not identified. Both Shipman and Glass were gay - friends, not lovers - and their lifestyle was known around town. But no one else was so open with his sexuality and no one came forward to volunteer information about the men’s whereabouts in the days and hours leading up to the murders.

On the other hand, no one in town seemed to know the woman even after she was identified as Louise Davis Shumate of Asheville. As her story unspooled it turned out her family and co-workers did not know her either. Her driver’s license showed her date of birth as 1911 but it was really 1904, making her 61 years old at the time of her death.

She had no telephone or personal effects in her apartment and picked up her mail at the post office in Horse Shoe. She was known to enjoy the company of men and partying but it was never discovered if her circle of friends included Shipman and Glass. How she ended up in their car is unknown. Her own car, a 1962 Ford Fairlane like Shipman’s, was found off Route 191 near where it crosses the French Broad River. It is surmised that she may have been picking blackberries there. It could just be that Louise Shumate was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Charles Glass was the go-to source for what was new and hot in the 1960s music world. Back in the ‘50s Glass had written a song called “Screamin’ and Dyin’” he and Shipman recorded as a 78-rpm single on Magnet Records that received some national air play. He was a big fan of rhythm and blues and was a friend of blues and soul singer Esther Phillips who visited him in Hendersonville. He was also obsessed with Asian culture and authored a booklet called “Tales of Voodoo and Black Magic” which sparked speculation that the killings may have been ritualistic.

But that was all investigators could muster - speculation. As for suspects, there was a Shipman friend who owed him money and a former neighbor who had a beef with Glass over missing rent payments. There was a possible jealous gay acquaintance. There were a few known criminals to track down. No connection to Shumate led

20

anywhere.

Three people murdered in a small town like Hendersonville and no word on the killer? Four months later an uneasy county voted the sheriff out of office - the only Republican on the ballot to lose that year. The new sheriff, James Kilpatrick, made an arrest based on a jailhouse confession that quickly proved to be false. After four years there was still no progress on the case and Kilpatrick was drummed out of office in 1970. The transition was not a smooth one. The three boxes of physical evidence relating to the case turned up missing in the move to the new courthouse, never to be seen again.

By that time another suspect had emerged. Less than one month after the killings Edward Thompson was arrested in Hendersonville for using threatening language against a woman. He was convicted and sent to prison for two years but escaped from the Henderson County jail in October 1966. A two-year crime spree followed that included a reputed 11 kidnappings, five rapes and two murders. Edward Thompson became the last felon in North Carolina history to be declared an outlaw.

Thompson received five concurrent life sentences that would keep him incarcerated for a minimum of 136 years. He only lasted 20 before dying from complications of AIDS in Raleigh’s Central Prison at the age of 58. Despite resemblances to the crimes he was convicted of and the triple slaying in Hendersonville, there was never any attempt to tie Thompson to the unknown fourth man in the Shipman Ford Fairlane.

There was also never a formal confession to the crime.

By 2006 there was no longer any evidence and only one suspect the aggrieved neighbor - was still alive, and he just barely. The 40-year old ice cold case attracted the attention of a Court TV documentary series called Haunting Evidence which puts a “team of unconventional investigators” - a psychic profiler, a medium and a paranormal investigator - on the scent of unsolved crimes. Like all of the show’s 22 investigations “North Carolina Burning” case remained unsolved after their out-of-the-box examinations. To this day Hendersonville’s Crime of the Century is still an open case.

21

What’s Up With…the Ferris Wheel on Asheville Highway?

This probably isn’t what George Washington Gale Ferris had in mind for the Great Wheel he invented for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. No, much to the dismay of the young of heart everywhere, the Hendersonville Ferris wheel is not for riders but for advertising signs.

And always has been.

Back in the 1970s Bill Tillman owned a contracting business on Asheville Highway. A friend of his had an old wooden water wheel and wanted it restored. Tillman did the job and left the wheel out front by the road. His friend did not pick up the wheel for months and in the interval it became a landmark of sorts for delivery drivers looking for his company.

So Tillman got to thinking. Why not build a great wheel and instead of seats he could install advertising signs. So up went a 55foot Ferris wheel right by the highway. His sales pitch to Hendersonville businesses was simple: Ride your advertisements on my wheel. And for a while the battery-powered wheel did rotate.

But Tillman’s big idea was too good for its own good. There were wrecks on Asheville Highway and drivers complained of being distracted by trying to read the signs.

So Tillman pulled the plug on the rotating wheel and got out of the advertising business. He kept the signs to promote the different services his business provided.

In 2007 Jackson Steel purchased the property and retained Tillman’s wheel, giving it the same promotional job - even if it is a somewhat ironical mission. Plasma arc burning, welding and sheet metal fabrication are all shilled for by a decades-old wooden Ferris wheel.

22

What’s Up With…the Boat in the Field?

Off Dana Road behind the busy commercial corridor of Four Seasons Boulevard, sits a speedboat moored in an open field thousands of leagues from the sea. It turns out the boat is merely the tip of the eclectic collection of advertising statues amassed by Todd Thompson before his death in 2015. In its working days it was promoting a longgone seafood restaurant on the main drag.

The bulk of Thompson’s collection is on display at the family’s restaurant nearby - Harry’s Grill & BBQ and Piggy’s Ice Cream. The business started in 1979 as a combination ice cream and antiques store. After the restaurant opened in 1993 Todd’s treasures began crowding around. Colonel Sanders is here and so is Ronald McDonald. Bob’s Big Boy is up on the roof, along with a trumpeting pink elephant. A waving Yogi Bear once did duty for a Lake Lure restaurant for a quarter-century before Thompson rescued him from a campground and put him back to work.

His pal Boo-Boo is a rare survivor of the Yogi Bear Honey Fried Chicken that served vittles in Yogi Bear-sanctioned picnic basket boxes beginning in 1968. As the chain disintegrated many of the fiberglass Yogis and Boo-Boos and Ranger Smiths were unceremoniously dumped near an I-95 landfill area behind a truck stop where mourners called it a “cartoon mass-burial orgy.” Harry’s Yogi is one of the lucky ones.

23

What’s Up With…All the Famous Headstones?

As mountain feuds go, this was one of the feistiest. The centerpiece of the dispute was the muse for Thomas Wolfe’s celebrated debut novel, Look Homeward Angel, in 1929. Here’s the story.

Wolfe drew inspiration for his work of autobiographical fiction from an angel statue that stood on the family porch in Asheville. All parties involved agree on that. Problem is, Thomas Wolfe’s father ran a funeral monument shop so there were a lot of statues hanging around.

In fact, W.O. Wolfe had ordered a bunch of the Italian Carrera marble angels from a dealer in Pennsylvania. There was an angel in a cemetery in Old Fort, another in Bryson City and a third in Oakdale Cemetery in Hendersonville.

Which one was really Wolfe’s “An Angel on the the Porch?” This was no small deal, especially as Wolfe’s novel gained iconic status. For 20 years the towns bickered over who had the real goods?

It eventually got too much for Myra Champion, a Wolfe historian in the Pack Memorial Library in Asheville, to bear. In 1949 she tracked down anyone from the past half-century who had anything to do with a marble angel in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Old Fort had the best sto24

ry - old man Wolfe lost that one in a poker game. But in her definitive analysis Champion declared that the true Wolfe angel was in Oakdale, “marking the grave of Mrs. Margaret Bates Johnson, wife of the late Dr. H.F. Johnson, a minister and former president of Whitworth College in Brookhaven, Mississippi.”

A slight departure from the grave of a young prostitute it marks in the novel. Apparently the tipping point in its identification stands on the Hendersonville angel’s “phthisic foot” - the withered appendage, as described by Wolfe, that was the result of tuberculosis. That same disease that would take the writer’s life at the age of 37 in 1938.

Wolfe’s headstone was not the first to draw curious tourists to Oakdale. Before Thomas Wolfe set pen to paper folks were coming round to Hendersonville to check on “The Sunshine Lady,” one Miss Lela Davidson. Prior to her death the young governess requested that she be buried in such a way that the sun would alway shine on her.

So in the early 1900s Oakdale built its first ever above-ground vault with thick plate glass squares placed on top. So many people showed up to the grave that in 1937 the vault was covered with concrete - as much for the grossness of the visitors as the grossness going on with the decaying remains inside. According to officials, “Many people expectorated on the glass and for sanitary reasons the top will be covered.”

There are no squabbles about the legitimacy of another famous Hendersonville grave marker - the headstone at the Crab Creek Baptist Church Cemetery marking the final resting place of the McCrary twins is the largest granite tombstone in the world.

If anything, when Billy Leon and Benny Loyd were born two minutes apart on December 7, 1946 they were a bit undersized, just five pounds each. But a bout with German measles when the twins were four years old unwired their pituitary glands. The boys weighed 200 pounds each by the time they were ten years old and tipped the scales at over 400 pounds at East Henderson High School. At their heaviest, when they were 22 years old, Benny weighed 814 pounds and Billy 784 with 84-inch waists and 90-inch chests.

Nonetheless, Billy and Benny were surprisingly nimble. They would tool around Hendersonville on mini-bikes (the machinery weighed 25

less than they did) and one year a photographer from Life magazine snapped a shot of the twins at the North Carolina Apple Festival. The publicity helped launch the McCrarys on a show business career that included stints as rodeo clowns and a Vegas casino act.

The twins parlayed their love of mini-bikes into a deal with Honda that had them ride across the country - 100 miles a day for 30 days. Billy and Benny considered themselves “mini-bike stars” until they were lured into professional wrestling as a popular tag-team duo. Since Japanese ring announcers struggled pronouncing their name the Hendersonville stars wrestled as the “McGuire Twins.”

The McGuires went undefeated for years, even though they were often forced to battle three wrestlers since they were so big. Few opponents recovered from a McGuire “Tupelo Splash” which the boys explained was roughly akin to “a rolling pin flattening dough.” Their fame spread and there were appearances on The Tonight Show (“We can’t drown,” Benny told Johnny Carson, “We pop right up like a cork.”), The Merv Griffin Show and the David Frost Show.

26

In 1978 the McCrarys were officially confirmed by Guinness World Records as the “World’s Heaviest Twins.” They remain the world record holders to this day. Despite all the acclaim, as Billy said in a People magazine profile, “I’d trade it all in a second if I could be 150 pounds.”

Billy was the first to die, too young, the following year at the age of 32.

There were complications from a mini-bike stunt gone wrong in Niagara Falls. After that Benny retreated from the spotlight and came back to Hendersonville, working as an auctioneer and running a Pawn Shop at the Busy Bend on Kanuga Road down the street from his house.

He eventually lost half of his weight and became a golfing evangelist, known for a deadly short game.

Benny’s heart gave out 22 years later, in 2001. He was buried beside his brother at the Crab Creek Baptist Church cemetery on an open promontory on Jeter Mountain. The three-ton grave marker is engraved with a Honda mini-bike for each of the McCrary twins with the inscription “A big man with a big heart, loved around the world, with a legend as big as the mountains around him.”

27

What’s Up With…All the Movie Cameras?

Hollywood of the East. That is how movie folk talk about North Carolina. It all started back in the early 1980s when big shot Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis was looking for a Southern mansion to stand in for an elegant Virginia plantation in the screen adaptation of Steven King’s Firestarter. De Laurentiis happened to see a photo of Orton Plantation in Brunswick County on the cover of a magazine and soon he was on a plane to North Carolina to shoot his movie with nine-year old ingenue Drew Barrymore in the lead. In addition to filming around Wilmington the production moved to Western North Carolina to shoot footage around Lake Lure and Chimney Rock.

After the crews were finished with Firestarter in 1984 everyone assumed De Laurentiis was through with the state. Instead, he stayed in Wilmington and constructed the largest television and movie production facility in America outside California. So many productions used North Carolina that it became known as the “Hollywood of the East.”

It was not the first time the silver screen had been smitten with North Carolina in general and the mountains in particular.

At the dawn of the silent film era in 1914 the Edison Motion Picture Company began making short pictures in Western North Carolina. Thomas Edison, who had been summoned to Asheville years earlier to install an electric trolley, tipped off his movie company about the natural beauty of the region. Downtown Asheville and the surrounding countryside would be used as the backdrop for some 20 movies in the following years before almost all productions beat a retreat to the convenience of Hollywood sound stages in the 1920s.

When De Laurentiis rekindled Hollywood’s interest in the Tar Heel State it did not take long for Western North Carolina to start piling up credits in classic movies. Lake Lure did its best impersonation of a 1950’s Catskills, New York resort for Dirty Dancing in 1986. All of the famous interior dancing scenes - Baby carrying a watermelon and practicing with Johnny in his cabin - were filmed in an old boy’s camp that is now Firefly Cove on the north side of the lake. Each summer since 2010 the town has celebrated its part in the movie by staging the 28

Dirty Dancing Festival.

Meanwhile, intrepid location scouts were discovering DuPont State Forest in southwestern Henderson County.

The waterfalls along the Little River were tabbed to play New York on the big screen for The Last of the Mohicans.

Hooker, Triple, High and Bridal Veil Falls all took star turns in the Fenimore Cooper saga. So too did Hickory Nut Gorge at Chimney Rock State Park for the film’s climax. But the most memorable waterfall scenes - with Daniel Day Lewis in a cave behind a pounding wall of water - were not shot Edith Taliaferro starred in the first in WNC, or anywhere else. feature film shot in Western North You may hear folks tell you Carolina - The Conquest of Canaan, they were shot here but they released in 1916. were not. Day Lewis is pledging “I will find you” in front of computer generation.

The DuPont State Forest was also used as the backdrop in the wildly popular Hunger Games in 2012 as were many other Western North Carolina locales. Although the lush forest is not discernible on screen there are pivotal scenes shot in pools at the base of Bridal Veil Falls and Triple Falls.

Hollywood has found other uses for Hendersonville as well through the years. Back during World War II days Aaron “Albert” Warner was plucked from a day job of handling financial matters for his family’s famous movie studio, Warner Brothers, and put to work making propaganda films for the U.S. Army. “Major” Warner was also apparently an early “prepper” who was convinced the American coasts were under 29

imminent attack. He had read in a military publication that Asheville and Hendersonville were among the “safe” places to reside and so he purchased the Crail Farm on Crab Creek Road.

The Major provisioned Crail Farm so well, including a herd of dairy cows, that it was said his family could live on the property “for an indefinite period” should the need arise. During his stay Warner hosted several of the studio’s big name stars for vacations in his hideout. Crail Farm retained its Hollywood ties all the way until it was turned into the Crooked Creek Golf Club (the current clubhouse was stately Warner manor) in 1968. In the honorary foursome for the Grand Opening was none other than Jethro Bodine himself, Max Baer, Jr. of the hit television show, The Beverly Hillbillies. Baer was a crack golfer; a two-time Sacramento junior champion and the winner of that year’s pro-am at the Andy Williams San Diego Open.

30

What’s Up With…All the Wild Water?

Western North Carolina is known for its abundance of waterfalls.

Transylvania County next door has greedily usurped the title “Land of Waterfalls” but Henderson County is no slouch in the hydrospectacular race - especially if one does not swear a strict fealty to artificially drawn county borders. Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah National Forest.

Triple Falls, High Falls and Hooker Falls in the DuPont State Forest.

Pearson’s Falls in Tryon. Hickory Nut Falls in Chimney Rock. Little Bradley Falls and Big Bradley Falls in the Green River Game Lands. All are famous waterfalls so close that you can stand in Henderson County and feel their spray.

What Henderson County lacks in calendar-worthy waterfalls it makes up for in excitement. The boulder-choked Green River, which features a series of plunges and pools, is the wildest river in Western North Carolina. Whitewater addicts come from around the world to test their skills on the Green, especially on a section called the Narrows, where the river is pinched to a creek-like four feet in spots. The churning water produces nine rapids classified as class IV and eight as class V, the most difficult runnable rapids. The three most notorious have been rated a notch higher - “Go Left and Die” (5.1), “Gorilla” (5.2) and “Sunshine” (5.2). Kayakers have been seriously hurt and two paddlers have lost their lives in the Green River.

A complete descent of the Green River was not accomplished until 1988 but by 1996 the kayaking community was making a race of it.

Entrants are required to sign a waiver before competing that includes such cautionary phrases as “extensive dental damage” and “I have been warned of the stupidity of this activity.” It is no wonder that fewer than 600 people have competed in the Green River Narrows Race through the years, with participation now hovering about 125 entrants each November. Even though the racers are doing battle with the river - and their own inner demons more than each other - the winning times have dropped by more than 20% since that first race in 1996.

31

What’s Up With…Summer Camps?

Summer camps began in Long Island, New York in the 1850s but many believe they weren’t perfected until they began opening in North Carolina a half century later. One of the first started in 1916 when two Jacksonville, Florida women, Florence Ellis and Fannie Holt, led a group of wide-eyed young girls from the Atlantic coast to the Carolina mountains to establish Keystone Camp. It is now the oldest private summer camp in the Southeast.

Soon the lakes and rivers of the Blue Ridge were speckled with so many camps that North Carolina stamped “Camp State” on its license plates for a spell in the 1920s. Many of these historic camps are still in operation, run by fourth- and fifth-generation family members. All told, some 50,000 acres of forest are given over to the camps, which helps prevent the land from being developed.

Chances are you won’t see too many of the tens of thousands of young summer campers since they are off in the woods. But you are likely to run into parents who hover around Hendersonville and pump an estimated $350 million into the region every summer, making camps one of Western North Carolina’s most reliable industries.

32

What’s Up With…North Carolina’s Longest Serving Mayor?

Al Edwards came into office at the start of the Great Depression, served through World War II and the British Musical Invasion and left office with Americans about to walk on the moon. All told it was 37 years as mayor of Hendersonville, a longer tenure than any municipal leader in North Carolina history.

Albert Victor Edwards was born in 1891 and was said to have been named for a couple of prominent leaders in their own right - England’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Growing up he watched his father’s construction company pave Main Street and build the domed Neoclassical county courthouse. Edwards survived the battles of Saint-Mihiel and Argonne Forest in France during World War I and came home to run Hendersonville Hardware.

When he was elected mayor in 1932, at the age of 39, things were so bad in Hendersonville Edwards shut off the traffic lights in the winter to save $20 a month. Although he was challenged through the years, Edwards never lost another election. He organized the Mayors Boys Club, helped launch the North Carolina Apple Festival and cajoled Hendersonville High School students into building the trademark green benches on Main Street. When he retired in 1969, with an armful of civic awards, the city staged Al Edwards Day. Two years later he died at the age of 79.

33

What’s Up With‌the Builder of Hendersonville?

Chances are, if you have admired a building in downtown Hendersonville it was designed by Erle Stillwell. Stillwell was born into a wellto-do Hannibal, Missouri family in 1885 and moved to Hendersonville with his widowed mother in 1903. He began investing in real estate, married a local girl - the daughter of the developer of Laurel Park and developed an interest in architecture. To stoke his new passion he studied at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and apprenticed with an Atlanta designer. He returned to Hendersonville in 1913 and pursued his new vocation in earnest.

About that time the county became awash in Florida land boom spillover money. Stillwell was kept busy drawing up plans for Tudor Revivals, Georgian Revivals and Mediterranean-style houses that mimicked the summer owners’ main houses in Florida. And he became the go-to architect for civic and commercial projects downtown.

Hendersonville City Hall is the accomplished handiwork of Erle Stillwell.

34

Among the buildings still standing from Stillwell’s resume are Hendersonville High School, Hendersonville City Hall, St. James Episcopal Church, the Jackson Park administration building and the Citizen’s National Bank and State Trust and Citizen’s Bank across from each other at the intersection of Main Street and Fourth Street.

When the Great Depression hit and the Florida money well dried up Stillwell made his way as a prolific designer of Art This classical vault was designed by Deco-flavored movie theaters Stillwell for the Citizen’s National Bank across the South. When World in 1921. The corner clock was mounted in 1927 and restored in 2013; it was War II struck, Stillwell and five manufactured by the O.B. McClintock Asheville architects teamed up to Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the nation’s foremost seller of burglar better pursue large government alarms to United States banks in the projects. Stillwell remained with early 20th century.

Six Associates for thirty years but was only pried away from his Hendersonville office when he became president in 1950 and was forced to spend more time in Asheville.

Of the scores of buildings Stillwell designed in Hendersonville during his 50year career, two were his own houses in the West Side Historic District. The first is a handsome brick Tudor at 1300 Pinecrest Drive constructed in 1926 and the second was a rambling Craftsman-style house at 541 Blythe Street that he occupied until his death in 1978. Both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

35

What’s Up With…the Memorial on Highway 64?

In July, 1967, Piedmont Airlines’ first passenger jet, a Boeing 727, Flight 22 collided shortly after takeoff with a Cessna 310 private twin-engine airplane at 6,132 feet in the clouds over Hendersonville killing all 82 passengers aboard both planes.

The jet was enroute from Atlanta to Washington and had just deplaned passengers at the Asheville Airport; it was in a climbing left turn when the Cessna hit the jet. The wreckage fell alongside Interstate 26 and within 50 yards of a summer camp, Camp Pinewood, which is now approximately where Outback Steak House is located off Four Seasons Boulevard. It was the ninth worst U.S. aviation accident at the time. The cause was given as pilot confusion and muddled air traffic control instructions.

A notable passenger aboard the jet was John T. McNaughton who was scheduled to become the new Secretary of the Navy in two weeks.

McNaughton, age 45, died with his wife and young son. In 2004, a bronze memorial plaque on a granite slab named all the victims. A U.S. flag flies above the memorial near the intersection of Jack Street, Orr’s Camp Road and Mitchelle Drive off US 64.

36

Living in Hendersonville

37

Brush With Greatness around Hendersonville...

Over the years the famous have come to live in and around Hendersonville for a spell‌ The Manassa Mauler. By 1926 Jack Dempsey had been the heavyweight boxing champion of the world for eight years, although he had taken some time off to court and marry Delaware actress Estelle Taylor, one of the great vamps of the Hollywood silent film era. That year Demsey and Taylor came to Hendersonville to train, lured by a large check from promoter J. Perry Stoltz who was drumming up publicity for his massive 15-story Fleetwood Hotel being built on Jump Off Mountain in Laurel Park.

The Dempseys checked into the Kentucky Home Hotel that then stood at Washington Street and Fourth Avenue. Dempsey was preparing for a title defense with a brawling marine named Gene Tunney and sparred at the Laurel Lake Casino and sometimes at the hotel construction site. Dempsey stayed for a month as hundreds of newspapermen filtered through the town to report on his activities.

The Fleetwood Hotel would never open. The Florida-fueled Hendersonville building boom collapsed shortly after Dempsey left.

Things did not go well for the greatest fighter of his age, either. He

38

lost his title to Tunney in front of a record sporting crowd of 120,557 in Philadelphia. There were rumors the champ had been debilitated by a disease he picked up in Hendersonville. Dempsey, however, was less conspiratorial. “I forgot to duck,” he told his wife.

The Poet of the People. In 1945 Carl Sandburg was 67 years old and had lived high in dunes above Lake Michigan for almost 20 years.

He had gained national adulation as a poet, biographer and folk performer and was known as the Poet of the People. “I love it here. I love to skip stones,” he said of the Sandburg home in Harbert, Michigan.

But Lillian Sandburg was tired of the brutal, windswept winters on the lake. The family would move and the relocation would be up to her.

Lillian Sandburg needed a place to manage her burgeoning goat herd so she concentrated her search on a farm. In Flat Rock she found a 245-acre property underneath Glassy Mountain with a manor house that had been constructed in 1845 by Christopher Memminger who would be a future Secretary of the Treasury in the Jefferson Davis administration during the Civil War; his portrait appeared on the Confederate $5 bill. Connemara Farm had been on the market for three years and Lillian Sandburg decided it offered the perfect blend of grazing lands and writerly inspiration. When Carl came to inspect the farm he immediately added his endorsement, and the couple paid $45,000 for Connemara.

Soon a trainload of Sandburg possessions was chugging from Michigan to Flat Rock, including 16,000 books. Carl Sandburg could be expected to relax on the slopes of Glassy Mountain.

But when he wasn’t fixing up the century-old house Sandburg would produce more than a third of his life work on the farm in his remaining 22 years and win a second Pulitzer Prize, this time for poetry.

Lillian Sandburg was as renowned in hircine circles 39

as Carl Sandburg was in literary circles. Her Chikaming goats were world famous for the quality of their milk from the Connemara Farms commercial dairy. At its peak, the herd numbered about 200 goats. Jennifer II, a Toggenburg dairy goat, was the world’s top producing Toggenburg in the world in 1960. After Carl Sandburg died in 1967 Lillian turned the property over to the federal government which maintains Connemara as a national historic site, including descendants of the original Chikaming goats.

The King (almost). Sarah Ophella Colley became famous as Minnie Pearl and was a star of the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years. Her older sister Mary left their Centerville, Tennessee home and settled in Hendersonville where she watched Minnie become a staple of Southern culture. In the early days Minnie would visit her sister by train but she later married Henry Cannon, a former World War II fighter pilot who ran a charter air service for country music stars. One was Elvis Presley.

There came a time when Graceland became a prison for Elvis. He was said to long for a small town like that of his hometown in Tupelo, Mississippi. He wanted to live in a place where he could move about without platoons of bodyguards and just be “one of the boys.” He was told, perhaps on one of Cannon’s flights, that Hendersonville was such a place. There were 700 millionaires in town, town boosters said with dubious accounting. No one would pay Elvis Presley any mind.

In the early 1960s Beaumont Mansion, including 204 acres on Kanuga Road, was on the market. Beaumont already had its own notoriety - owner/builder Andrew Johnstone had been murdered in his 1839 Greek Revival mansion during the Civil War by Confederate deserters after he had given them dinner. Elvis reportedly came to Hendersonville and toured the property. He was interested but when word was leaked to the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis the deal fell apart.

It was not the first time Hendersonville had missed out on the King.

In the early days of the North Carolina Apple Festival emcee Kermit Edney was out in Memphis scouting for performers. He was introduced to an up-and-coming singer named Elvis Presley who wanted $300 to play the festival. Edney passed.

40

Mr. C. Perry Como lived the life in Saluda that Elvis Presley craved. The crooner was looking for a private hideaway to escape from show business and in 1980 he constructed a home on 13 secluded mountaintop acres. The Como property sported a heavy fence and 24-hour security but he scarcely needed it. During his summer stays Como, usually attired in a floppy hat, went about his business in Saluda and Hendersonville completely unbothered.

There was the story that one time the pioneer of the television musical variety show called up a neighbor and warbled “Happy Birthday.” The grateful man exclaimed, “Why Perry, I didn’t know you could sing.”

Como was just another hiker with his grandchildren when he was out on the local trails. But that does not mean Como did not receive the occasional perk during his two decades in Saluda before his death in 2001. Como loved to play golf on the Hendersonville area courses and when he joined Kenmure Country Club he was honored with Membership Number One. It’s Howdy Doody Time. Buffalo Bob Smith loved to play golf as well. And he had earned the time off. Beginning in 1947 Buffalo Bob presided over 2,543 television shows in Doodyville, orchestrating the antics of a red-headed marionette named Howdy Doody. The puppet had 48 freckles, one for every state in the Union. The children’s show was the first to air 1,000 broadcasts.

41

After “The Hoody Doody Show” went off the air in 1960 Smith assumed he had seen the last of his freckle-faced friend. He was prepared to settle down with his three radio stations and a liquor store in Florida. But by 1970 Smith was getting requests from nostalgic baby boomers to make appearances on their college campuses. The team was together again for two more decades. When he put his memoirs down in writing Smith, born Robert Schmidt, called it Howdy and Me: Buffalo Bob’s Own Story.

When he retired the choice for a golden years home was between Maine and Florida but his son suggested North Carolina. Smith had a friend who lived in Hendersonville and during a visit he saw the Kenmure golf community in Flat Rock. He fell in love with the view and the Smiths moved in during September of 1992. Howdy lived the next six years of his life in a glass case on a pedestal overlooking the 16th green.

Howdy was always considered to belong to the puppet’s original builder who had loaned it to Smith. Following Smith’s death there was a fierce custody battle for Howdy, who was considered one of the most valuable pieces of memorabilia from television’s formative days. Eventually creator Velma Dawson prevailed and Howdy Doody was donated to the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan, where he spends his days dreaming of the good times he had in Apple Country.

42

Celebrating around Hendersonville...

North Carolina Apple Festival Downtown Hendersonville Labor Day Weekend North Carolina apple growers tell us that America’s favorite fruit is good for your teeth, stomach, complexion, nerves and overall good health. The warm days and cool nights of the Western North Carolina mountains are ideal for growing crisp, juicy apples. Henderson County grows 65 percent of the state’s four million bushels of apples, the seventh biggest producing county in the United States.

The celebration of the region’s signature crop takes place in Hendersonville for four days over Labor Day. While most North Carolina apples are of four varieties (Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Rome Beauty and Gala) the star of the festival is usually the tasty Honeycrisp which is one of the earliest apples to market. The Apple Festival has been a tradition since the 1940s; highlights include a nine-block street fair and Labor Day parade. Make sure you keep at least one hand free to carry a half-peck bag home.

43

Coon Dog Day Festival Saluda July Saluda is mostly known as a railroad town but on a Saturday around July 4 the town’s 700 residents and about 10,000 welcomed guests take to Main Street to honor Western North Carolina coon dogs. The festival began back in the 1960s when the local Coon Club started serving a chicken dinner to raise money. Activities these days include a comic parade, live music and runners tackling the Saluda Grade, the steepest mainline tracks in America. In addition to marching in the parade, the stars of the day - the coon dogs - get their own Bench Show and a shot at the Treeing Contest where the dog with the most bawls at a fake raccoon is the winner. By the way, North Carolina is one of only 11 states with an official state dog breed - but it is not the Coon Hound, it is the Plott Hound that was originally bred for hunting boar.

44

Garden Jubilee Hendersonville Memorial Day The Garden Jubilee festival is the second largest festival in Hendersonville. It actually started in the early 1990s in the parking lot of the Visitor Center and was called The Garden Party. The Southeast Tourism Society has selected the Garden Jubilee as a Top 20 Event.

On Saturday and Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend Main Street in the heart of Hendersonville is where you will enjoy a lovely garden party. There are over 200 incredible vendors representing over 45 local and regional nurseries with thousands of annuals, perennials, vegetables, herbs, and exotic plants on display. Crafters display handmade goods such as garden art work, lawn furniture, wind chimes, birdhouses, planters, pottery and so much more.

Experts host green thumb workshops and gardeners can dig for helpful tips throughout the festival. The Garden Jubilee is a great way to enjoy the day and the beginning of summer.

North Carolina Mountain State Fair Fletcher September Corndogs. Carnival Rides. Funnel Cakes. Alligator wrestling. Pig races on the Hogway Speedway. Deep-fried-anything-on-a-stick.

Crafters in the Mountain Heritage Circle demonstrating the whys and wherefores of molasses making, woodturning and blacksmithing. A chuck wagon. Bluegrass musicians are on hand. And more rides.

But at its core the North Carolina Mountain State Fair remains an agricultural showcase for the nearly 200,000 visitors that come to the WNC Agricultural Center over ten days. For many the real action isn’t out on the midway but in the animal sheds and exhibition halls. The fair stages competitions in everything from art to preserving to extreme crops to barnyard beauty contests - in addition to thousands of multi-colored ribbons nearly a quarter-million dollars in prize money is awarded. North Carolina staged its first state fair in 1853; Western North Carolina got its own version in 1994.

45

Art on Main Hendersonville first full weekend in October You can’t spell “Hendersonville” without a-r-t. OK, maybe you can but you can’t ignore the presence of art in Hendersonville. Back in 1959 the Art League of Henderson County staged the first Art on Main. It was a casual affair with the artists displaying their work on benches and planters along Main Street.

In 2003 the Arts Council of Henderson County that promotes live arts and culture assumed ownership responsibilities. The Council broadened the scope of the street festival to include juried competitions in a broad range of mediums, display tents for artists around the Southeast and live art demonstrators.

If you are not one of the thousands of art lovers to indulge in Art on Main, you can immerse yourself in local art during regular Third Friday Gallery Hops every month. And you can view the artists in their actual habitats each September when the Art League sponsors a weekend Open Studio Tour where painters, sculptors, woodworkers and more welcome guests on a free, self-guided tour of studios across the county.

And artists of all ages and talent levels can become a Hendersonville artist for a day during Chalk It Up!, when Main Street sidewalks become canvasses until the next rain. The event, started in 1996, is free to view and enter, although reservations are required to get your free pallette of 20 colored chalks. There are prizes in six different categories in one of America’s oldest and largest chalk art extravaganzas.

46

Dogwalking around Hendersonville...

Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site (Little River Road, Flat Rock). On over five miles of groomed hiking trails the Carl Sandburg Home offers something for any level of canine hiker.

For easy jaunts with your dog there is a splendid undulating trail around the picturesque Front Lake beneath the house - go around three times for 1.2 miles. For more spirited canine hiking, there is a 623-foot climb in 1.5 miles to the views atop the Big Glassy Mountain rockface. Halfway up the mountain, exactly when your panting dog will welcome a breather, is a dammed creek reservoir that forms an ideal canine swimming hole. If that hike sounds a bit too ominous, you can content yourself with a trip around Little Glassy Mountain on the Memminger Trail. And if athletic dogs are whimpering for more, you can abort the trip around and go over the summit of 2,426- foot Little Glassy Mountain that abounds with Lady Slipper’s orchids in the spring.

Fletcher Community Park (85 Howard Gap Road, Fletcher).

Many times Fletcher Community Park has been voted the best family park in Western North Carolina. In addition to the ballfields and playgrounds the Morris Broadband Dog Park, with two fenced-in areas for large dogs and small dogs, opened in 2013. Walking trails circle the large, flat park and duck into shady woods on crushed stone on the Cane Creek Greenway. The picturesque creek is reliably deep enough to 47

offer canine aquatics. You can also take your dog for a round of disc golf.

Jackson Park (801 Glover Street, Hendersonville). With the prodding of Henderson County Commissioner Clyde Jackson and $120,000 in initial funds, groundbreaking ceremonies for this park were held on April 29, 1974. Today Jackson Park encompasses 212 acres and is the largest county-owned park in Western North Carolina.

The park’s dominant natural feature is Mud Creek that drains most of the precipitation that falls in Hendersonville and eventually deposits it in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Jackson Park Nature Trail trips easily through forest swamps, oak-hickory climax forests, open meadows and piney hillsides that will run your dog away from the action on the ballfields. Further explorations can be taken on dirt side trails that poke into crevasses in the wetlands. A paved ribbon called the Oklawaha Greenway also dogs Mud Creek for two miles through greenspace to Patton Park. Oklawaha is a Cherokee word translating roughly to “slowly moving muddy waters.”

But for all the tranquility Jackson Park, a designated Significant Natural Heritage Area by the State of North Carolina, dishes out the standout attraction for dog owners here is the dog park. The large open space, fenced in by chain link and Mud Creek and its tributaries, is user-operated in agreement with the park. For water-loving dogs, avoid the mucky creek behind the tent pavilion and go instead across the park to Mud Creek - the water under the railroad trestle is reliably deep enough for dog-paddling.

Perry N. Rudnick Nature and Public Art Trail (1181 Broyles Road, Hendersonville). Perry N. Rudnick owned a printing business in New York City and collected sculpture. After retiring to Laurel Park in 1982 he fell under the spell of the Blue Ridge Mountains and traded his sedentary lifestyle for not only hiking trails but building them. By 1985 he had earned a certificate of achievement for climbing 40 designated peaks in the Southern Appalachians. In 1989 he was recognized by the United States Forest Service for having logged 10,000 hours of trail maintenance and construction.

Before Perry Rudnick passed away at the age of 86 in 2000 he set up a foundation which funded the creation of the Nature and Public 48

Art Trail in 2002. The University of North Carolina-Asheville property was once the summer home of Kathryn A. Kellogg, whose husband’s fortune came from inventing the switches and electrical circuits built by the Square D (for Detroit) Company in Michigan.

The Rudnick Art Trail moves peaceably from meadow to hemlock grove to hardwood forest. Ferns and trillium often sprout by the soft dirt and grassy footpaths. But of most interest are the 14 public art works on the grounds and trail. The first commissioned piece can be found around a bend in the woodlands here where Harry McDaniel’s Fiddleheads wave like elephantine ferns opening is spring.

The most sought out piece on the Rudnick Art Trail is David Tillinghast’s “Bell Rhododendron,” an earth work featuring a functional underground bell. Pull the bronze handle at the top of the mosaic of moss-colored stones and the muted sounds of the bell waft up from inside the hollow space underground. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Tillinghast traded hunting and fishing in the Mississippi delta for art at Clemson University. In 2006, this work was recognized as “one of the top forty public art projects in the country” by Public Art Network of Americans for the Arts. The full tour of both the North Trail and the South Trail will cover about one mile and is so agreeable your dog is likely to demand touring again.

The Park at Flat Rock (55 Highland Golf Drive, Flat Rock).

For 19 years prior to 2013 these 66 acres in a floodplain of the King Creek were a delightful nine-hole public golf course that wound charmingly through trees, wildflowers and grasses. It looked so much like a public park that the Village paid over one million dollars for the property and turned it into one. The cart paths became a perimeter walking trail that covers 1.5 flat, open miles. On your walkabout keep an eye out for Canadian geese, Blue Jays and Red-winged Blackbirds.

49

Driving around Hendersonville...

The road builders of North Carolina have singled out 51 scenic byways that show off the best of beauty and culture in the Tar Heel State. Three of those marquee routes travel along Henderson County roads. What will you see…

Drovers Road (US 74A). There were only two ways for early settlers to reach Asheville through the Blue Ridge Mountains. One was up the Hickory Nut Gap, beginning in Bat Cave. So many farmers drove herds of livestock to market through the gap that the “Hickory Nut Highway” officially became Drovers Road. Some of the structures built from that time still cling to the steep hillsides in the gorge.

One is Bedford Sherrill’s Inn, a rambling white frame house built by the man entrusted with keeping Asheville’s main commercial conduit to the world open in the 1840s.

More are found in the community of Gerton which began life as Pump, named for the water pump that grateful travelers could avail themselves of when plying the Hickory Nut Highway. If they were grateful enough to leave a small token of appreciation they could expect to find a different sort of thirst quencher upon their return - a jar of moonshine.

Historic Flat Rock Scenic Byway (NC 225, Greenville Highway). When the early 19th century Southern aristocracy fled the stifling summer heat of the South Carolina coast, this is where they came. The leafy village still contains many of their impressive homes built along the Buncombe Turnpike beginning in 1824. There is the Mansouri Mansion formerly known as the Farmer Hotel when constructed in 1852 and the stately columned Mountain Lodge built by rice planter Charles Baring. Many of those Lowcountry rice plantations belonged to a wealthy widow named Susan Heyward who Baring married when he was 24 years old in 1798.

The Baring money also fueled the first Episcopal Church in Western North Carolina, St. John-in-the-Wilderness in 1833. Unusual at that time was that white people and slaves sat together in church. The first wedding performed in St. John’s was between two slaves. Lat50

er, both slaves and free blacks were buried in the tiered slopes of the church’s cemetery. A hand-carved granite cross was dedicated in 2016 to honor the 100 or so nameless souls buried on a pine straw covered hillside on the church’s north lawn.

Black Mountain Rag (NC 9 and US 64). Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto used this route in 1540 on the epic gold hunt that would eventually kill him on the banks of the Mississippi River. It is said that the 44-year old conquistador spent most of his time in the Carolina Blue Ridge resting with his horses while his men scouted for valuable ore. You will salute de Soto’s wisdom as you negotiate the parade of hairpin turns on this scenic byway that twists from Black Mountain to Bat Cave. The Hickory Nut Gorge descends almost 2,000 feet along the way.

Once in Bat Cave the tour breaks into two prongs, one to Lake Lure and the other piercing into Henderson County towards Edneyville past some of America’s finest apple orchards. The route grinds to a halt at Mills Gap Road, named for William Mills who was the first European settler in Henderson County. Mills, a loyalist on the run during the Revolutionary War, found a respite here from patriotic fervor. He planted fruit trees and became the first of what are now 200 some apple growers surrounding Fruitland.

And the North Carolina list does not even include the Blue Ridge Parkway that spends some of “America’s Best Drive” in Henderson County between the entrances at US 276 and NC 191. This stretch includes the landmark peak of 5,721-foot Mount Pisgah and the Pisgah Inn at Milepost 408.6. This area has been a popular resort since 1918 - twenty years before the Parkway was built.

51

Eating around Hendersonville...

Philadelphia has its cheesesteaks. Maine has its lobsters. North Carolina has its barbecue. More ink - and vinegar - has been spilled on North Carolina barbecue and the best places to find it than all other Tar Heel culinary topics combined. After moving to Hendersonville you will either quickly discover your barbecue sweet spot or join the search for your favorite ‘cue castle (and you will need to cast a wide net since there are no barbecue joints in Henderson County on the 24-stop North Carolina Barbecue Society Historic Barbecue Trail). There are only a couple of things you need to know first.

Over the decades two types of barbecue have evolved, not always cordially, across the North Carolina. In Eastern style “every part of the hog except the squeal” is slow-cooked; in Western style (also known as Lexington style) only the pork shoulder of the pig is used. Eastern style barbecue sauce is vinegar and red pepper-based; Western style barbecue includes ketchup or tomato products as a third main ingredient. You may also run into mustard-based sauce - that sneaks up from South Carolina.

A proper Hendersonville barbecue meal features the mandatory sides of hushpuppies, cole slaw (“red slaw” tosses out mayonnaise in favor of the Lexington-style barbecue sauce), and banana pudding.

You traditionally wash it all down with sweet tea but if you are going all-in on North Carolina...you need to “Taste the Legend.”

Over in New Bern, back in 1893, Caleb Davis Bradham’s medical career was derailed by his father’s failing business and so he returned to his hometown and opened the Bradham Drug Company store. Soon he was offering a new con52

coction, “Brad’s Drink,” at his soda fountain which he believed helped ease digestion. By 1898 he was calling his blend of “carbonated water, sugar, pepsin, kola nut extract, vanilla and rare oils” Pepsi-Cola and North Carolina’s most famous soft drink was born. But not North Carolina’s most beloved soda pop.

That would be Cheerwine. About the same time Pepsi-Cola was being mixed by hand in the back of Caleb Bradham’s pharmacy Lewis D. Peeler, a general storekeeper in his mid-thirties in Salisbury, was getting interested in the new soft drink business. He began experimenting with flavors in the basement of his store on Council Street, near the railroad station. In 1913 Peeler bought a franchise from the Mint-Cola Bottling Company in Kentucky to manufacture its drink in North Carolina. When World I cut off critical supplies of sugar and Mint-Cola went bankrupt. Peeler and some investors bought the assets to start the Carolina Beverage Company.

Peeler went searching for a carbonated beverage that wouldn’t require so much sugar. He found the answer in 1917 when a flavor salesman from St. Louis came calling with a wild cherry flavor pulled from the oil of almond. The core extract was blended with 11 other flavors into the Mint Cola base, given extra carbonation and out came Cheerwine, so named for its rich burgundy hues. In 1926 Peeler trademarked the name and the following year he began bottling Cheerwine in Charlotte, where it is still created today.

The coming of the Internet helped leak out the secret of the “Nec53

tar of North Carolina” and the soft drink has achieved something of cult status in recent years, even garnering a feature article in the New York Times in 2011. To help slake demand for its cherry soda sensation Carolina Beverage - the oldest soft drink company in America run by the same family - has created a Cheerwine finder on its website. Luckily for Western North Carolinians they can just stop into their local store to “Taste the Legend.”

Snacking in Hendersonville means boiled peanuts, obtained from roadside stands. Peanuts have been favorites in the Carolinas since they first arrived on slave ships in the 1700s. The legumes were pulled raw from the ground and boiled in salt water that delivered a distinctive twang. As peanuts became popular around the country the preparation of choice was roasting. Only a swath of North and South Carolina clung to the traditional boiled peanut. When a northern newspaper account in the 1920s tried to explain that the most popular seller at Southern fruit and peanut stands was the boiled peanut, it added that most readers would not recognize a peanut boiling unless “you have visited the ‘goober’ sections of the Carolinas.”

The roadside shacks begin appearing in May and continue dispensing the salty snack until about November or so. Only buy what can you can eat since boiled peanuts don’t last long fresh.

They will, however, last forever if frozen. If you are a true traditionalist you can dunk your boiled nuts into a bottle of Coca-Cola for a sweet-andsalty taste sensation. And don’t be afraid to go at the stubborn soggy shells with your teeth.

54

Exploring around Hendersonville...

Copywriters have left few arrows in the quiver while promoting the Western North Carolina mountains over the decades. Consider this effort from the Southern Railway Passenger Department in a 1915 pamphlet: “The increased ozone in the atmosphere for the autumn and winter months make the joy of living each day greater than the day before. . .Throughout this glorious region the facilities for the enjoyment of outdoor life are incomparable.” A century later, there are still no dissenting words to that sentiment around Hendersonville…

Bearwallow Mountain (North Bearwallow Road, Edneyville).

There are some things that science just can’t explain. One of those is the presence of “balds” that are found only in the Southern Appalachian mountains. Balds are mountaintops that are covered only with dense swards of native grasses or blankets of evergreen shrubs - but no trees. Why some summits are bald and some are not is a total mystery. Clearing by indigenous peoples has been ruled out. So has predation by insects and lightning fires and unrelenting winds. Whatever their origins, balds are a treat for Western North Carolinians to enjoy.

Such is the case with Bearwallow Mountain that lords over eastern Henderson County at an elevation of 4,232 feet; it is the second-highest point solely in the county.

The lack of trees enable windspeeds to accelerate to many times that which may be buffering hikers at lower elevations, sometimes exceeding 100 mph. Trees that are hundreds of years old are the height of youngsters and in places the wind has scooped out depressions from the thin soil that resemble the bunkers 55

on windswept, seaside Scottish golf courses. With the coming of the communications age Bearwallow was a magnet for tower construction and today the summit is peppered with all manner of electronic apparatus.

In 2009, the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy placed a conservation easement on 81 acres at the top of Bearwallow Mountain with plans to preserve almost another 500. A well-engineered, switch-backing and stepped footpath battles the 537-foot gain in elevation and in less than a half-hour you will be bursting out of the trees into the wide open meadows to join the free range cattle on the summit.

On clear days the panoramic summit serves up 100-mile views; hopefully you have remembered your binoculars. From the top of the abandoned 47-foot firetower, built in 1937 and decommissioned in 1994 and now off-limits, ten counties could be scanned for forest fires.

You will have to be content with long views into Asheville and beyond Apple Valley into Hendersonville.

DuPont State Forest (Staton Road, Hendersonville). The E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company began on a pristine stream in northern Delaware in 1802 to grind explosive black powder. In the 1950s, by then an international chemical giant, the DuPont Company once again went searching for pure water and crisp air but this time it was to manufacture sensitive X-ray film. They landed in 12,000-acre Buck Forest outside Brevard where the DuPont plant was the first in the country to conjure up medical X-ray films on polyester film. In 1996 DuPont sold the business and 2,700 surrounding acres. The remaining land was sold to North Carolina for conservation for nickels on the dollar and this became the foundation for the 10,415-acre DuPont State Forest. The diva of the forest is the Little River that makes several picturesque plunges, each unique in its own way, as it flows through the woodlands.

56

There are more than 90 - yes, 90 - named trails in DuPont State Forest and the main trailhead in Henderson County is at Guion Farm.

This lot off Sky Valley Road is a good place to create hiking loops of a half-hour or more through an attractive mixed forest including on the Shoal Creek Trail and Hickory Mountain Road, which features some openair hiking around the farm. This is also a place to tag Stone Mountain, the highest point in the forest at 3,620 feet; the peak also has its own small parking area 1.5 miles further up Sky Valley Road at the Rocky Ridge Trailhead. From Guion Farm the elevation gain is over 1,000 feet but the hard pulling doesn’t begin until the narrow Stone Mountain Trail is reached. Don’t let the tame ridgeline lull you into thinking the climb is over before the final ascent to the summit. Your purchase on these slabs of granite are views across the entire DuPont State Forest.

Green River Game Lands (Big Hungry Road, Hendersonville). The Environmental and Conservation Organization began in the early 1990s as a hiking group and has evolved into stewards of the natural heritage of the Carolina mountains. They are responsible for the creation of 16 miles of trails through an undeveloped wilderness of 10,000 acres known as the Green River Game Lands. Owned by the state, hunting is what these lands are all about. But there is no hunting on Sundays and most of the summer, so there is plenty of opportunity for a safe eye-opening hike of discovery.

This is an undisturbed land of steep ravines, plunging waters and towering trees. The trail system is a blend of abandoned jeep roads and foot trails and much of untamed Green River valley can be overgrown and downright indecipherable in places - starting with the trailheads.

The brown trailhead markers are placed several yards into the trails and not visible from the road. Even following the exacting directions in the excellent park brochure (available only at area tourist centers) can leave you scratching your head. The two main trails penetrating Green River are the scenic 3.25-mile Pulliam Creek Trail from the Big Hungry Road and the Green River Cove Trail, a splendid ramble that traces the river for over three miles. You can also reach the famed Green River Narrows, down a steeply-pitched side trail. Easier access to the Narrows is from the Green River Cove Trail on Green River Road.

57

Holmes Educational State Forest (Crab Creek Road, Hendersonville). John Simcox Holmes was appointed North Carolina’s first State Forester and Warden in 1915 and when this forest was created during the Great Depression of the 1930s it was named for him. The Civilian Conservation Corps, nicknamed “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” established a seedling nursery here for many of the 15 million trees that were planted in the state between 1933 and 1938. This was Holmes State Park until 1973 when North Carolina included the park in its new Small State Forest System as “a supplement to the state park system with the primary mission of explaining the forest and forestry.”

Renamed “educational forests,” today North Carolina boasts six such properties and the 235-acre Holmes tract is the westernmost.

There is something on the hiking menu in Holmes Forest to satisfy any level of explorer. Looking for a leg-stretcher for a novice hiker?

The Crab Creek Trail moves easily along the meanderings of Crab Creek for a halfmile. Fire-fighting equipment such as helicopters and tractor plows enhance the walk.

For an appetizer, follow the Talking Tree Trail as it slides across the lower slopes surrounding the Forestry Center.

The marquee walk is the 3.5mile Demonstration Trail that makes a steep 400-foot ascent before mellowing out and evolving into a first-rate ramble as it swings along the slopes. Along the way various forest management practices are explained. The steepest trail in the forest is the half-mile Wildcat Rock Trail that picks its way up outcroppings of granite gneiss that is speckled with shiny flecks of mica. The Wildcat Rock Trail can be combined with the Demonstration Trail to form a sporty one-hour loop - take it clockwise to come down Wildcat Rock.

Pisgah National Forest (Highway 280, North Mills). The Pisgah National Forest was one of the first national forests in the Eastern 58

part of the United States and now spreads across more than a half million acres. The Biltmore Forest School started by George Vanderbilt when he owned about 125,000 of those acres introduced the United States to scientifically managed forests. Today it is the Cradle of Forestry outdoor museum.

There are two major Pisgah trailheads in Henderson County. Turkeypen Gap, so named because Cherokee Indians once used this valley to round up wild turkeys, was set up by the U.S. Forest Service in the 1930s for groups of big game hunters to spend in a wilderness camp.

All provisions and equipment were packed in on a five-mile hike. After that the hunters were on their own with the only restriction being a limit of one deer or bear per hunter.

Despite access only via a narrow, vicious dirt road the Turkeypen Gap trails get plenty of play from the horse and bike crowds seeking long, scenic treks. From the trailhead you make your way downhill to the lively waters of the South Mills River either via a steady trail to the left of the information board or a wide serpentine service road that curves down to the riverbed. There are more than a dozen water crossings along the 12-mile South Mills Trail and only a pair of swaying suspension bridges to help out. Once on the other side, big hiking loops await - and even more water traverses on the Pounding Mill Trail, with rocks this time.

The North Mills Recreation Area is a favorite for fishermen and campers. There is plenty of hiking and biking on the trails of Trace Ridge which stretch all the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The pristine waters of the two Mills Rivers support one of the last populations of prehistoric giant aquatic salamanders known as hellbenders.

Disturbing the rocks of the stream bed can doom the habitat of these two-foot long “dragons” so don’t move the rocks when you visit.

59

Learning around Hendersonville...

With a roster of big-city worthy museums and innovative community programs there is no reason NOT to know Hendersonville…

Bullington Gardens (95 Upper Red Oak Trail). Bob Bullington spent most of his life as a New York City policeman preparing to indulge in his passion for ornamental plants. He retired with his wife Sally to Hendersonville in 1979 and opened Flora Knoll Farms. The Bullingtons interspersed their native plant nursery with unique specimens from around the world.

Today the 12-acre nursery serves as an outdoor public botanical garden that immerses students of all ages in the world of horticultural. Bullington’s volunteer staff maintains many theme gardens, including a spectacular Dahlia Garden that greets visitors with hundreds of multi-colored cultivars. A Native Woodland Garden weaves through an old growth rhododendron stand and unique mature trees like a Tanyosho Japanese red pine and a Sargeant’s weeping hemlock pepper the grounds. Bullington Gardens is free to the public and open weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Henderson County Heritage Museum (1 Historic Courthouse Square). Located in the beautiful gold-domed Neoclassical Revival courthouse built in 1905, the Museum has six rooms and approximately 2000 square feet to display cultural and historical artifacts of Henderson County. An extensive collection of never-before-seen military weaponry and uniforms dates back 150 years including a sesquicentennial anniversary exhibit of the Civil War. 60

A unique exhibit is the Saluda Grade diorama built by the Apple Valley Model Railroad Club to show the nation’s steepest standard-grade mainline railroad. A live model train running near the ceiling is the Carolina Special which ran from 1911 to 1968 and provided a vital passenger link between South Carolina and the Midwest. The Museum is open Wednesday-Saturday: 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Admission is free.

Historic Hendersonville Train Depot (650 Maple Street). Passenger train service in Hendersonville began in 1879 and stopped in 1968. The current historic Craftsman-style depot was the second to be erected in the town and was completed in 1904 at a cost of $2,613.

At its peak the station saw six passenger trains a day from as far away as Cincinnati and Charleston. Most summer Saturdays 500-600 young campers would arrive and the same number depart from the previous week’s camping sessions. The Norfolk Southern Railroad (NSR) continued to run trains on these tracks until 2002.

Although still owned by the NSR, the depot was leased to the Apple Valley Model Railroad Club in 1992, caretakers of the largest club layout in Western North Carolina. The HO scale exhibit extends 100 x 22 feet inside the depot and boasts over 2,000 feet of track and more than 225 switches. The highly detailed layout is prototypical of Hendersonville, Saluda, Asheville and Western North Carolina scenery. Outside is a G (for garden) scale layout. A special children’s exhibit lets youngsters operate a Thomas the Tank train and visitors can tour a retired Southern Railways caboose. Admission is free on Saturdays from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. and Wednesdays from 1:003:00 p.m.

61

Mineral & Lapidary Museum of Henderson County (400 North Main Street). On a lazy Sunday in 1799 Conrad Reed played hooky from church and went down to frolic in Little Meadow Creek on the family farm (east of modern day Charlotte). Young Conrad found a shiny yellow rock and brought it home. A silversmith in nearby Concord was unable to identify the rock, purported to weigh 17 pounds, so for several years it served as a doorstop in the Reed home.

Finally in 1802 a jeweler recognized the rock as being gold and the Reed family began searching in the creek for other valuable deposits - but only in late summer after the crops were in. Soon America had its first gold mine and its first gold rush. By 1824 the Reeds had collected an estimated $100,000 worth of gold from their creek and underground mining began. Western North Carolina has been obsessed with gems and minerals ever since - the state was the nation’s biggest producer of gold until California came along in 1848.

Henderson County experienced its own gold rush of sorts with zircons that were chased in the Green River Valley in the late 1800s.

Thomas Edison sent an agent to secure a supply of the industrial crystals. The inventor even made an appearance in town in 1906 and was mobbed like a rock star.

The Mineral & Lapidary Museum of Henderson County opened in the 76-year old Neoclassical shell of the former Citizens National Bank in 1997, culminating years of work by Larry Hauser to have a place to teach the earth sciences. Highlights include fossils, a Tyrannosaurus rex model, a fluorescent room and, of course, gems and minerals from around Henderson County.

The geode cracker is always ready to spring into action. The museum is open weekdays from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Saturdays 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; admission is free.

62

Sheriff ’s Citizens Academy (100 North Grove Street). An indepth 14-week interactive program provides education and crime prevention skills through personal involvement to persons 21 years of age or older. It covers the Sheriff ’s office operations and programs, emergency communications (E-911) and self-help crime prevention techniques. The course meets once a week and is more fun and knowledgeable than watching the TV crime shows.

Special enforcement teams such as the bomb squad, K-9 and SWAT teams give demonstrations. Activities include a detention center tour and a ride-along with a Sheriff ’s Deputy, if desired. A graduation dinner with the Sheriff concludes this exciting look at Henderson County law enforcement. Very few law enforcement jurisdictions offer such an in-depth education course for its citizens. A small program fee (approx. $30) covers all class material, student handbook and graduation festivities. Sign-up information is available at 828-694-2742.

Western North Carolina Air Museum (1340 E Gilbert Street).

When he was 13 years old in 1926 Oscar Meyer built a bi-plane glider, strapped on some roller skates and tied the contraption to a friend’s motorcycle to be towed through the streets of Hendersonville. When the cycle hit 20 miles per hour the glider would catch enough air to get 10 feet off the ground and stay aloft for a couple of hundred feet.

63

Meyer had no doubt inherited a mechanic’s gene. His uncle, Thornwell Andrews, was a pioneer car builder in Charlotte and later became the first to buzz the Queen City in an airplane in 1912. In high school Meyer and a friend cobbled together some poplar wood and Sears and Roebuck bedsheets to build a real airplane - sort of. They towed their 680-pound flying machine to the Asheville-Hendersonville airport but no pilot would dare get behind the controls - which consisted only of a throttle and an oil pressure gauge. So Meyer taught himself how to fly.

And so was born a Western North Carolina aviation legend.

Meyer made money selling rides for a business he called Meyer’s Flying Service and eventually bought a three-place bi-plane in 1932 for $600. He needed a place where he could take off and land so he bought a cornfield in the Barker Heights section of Hendersonville and the town had its first airport.

It was the height of aviation barnstorming and many of the country’s elite fliers bumped down on the grass strip near todays Blue Ridge Community College. One of those top pilots was Meyer who estimated he taught thousands of people to fly. During World War II Meyer was training fighter pilots twenty at a time. He was the first command64

er of the Western North Carolina Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol.

Meyer also made money giving acrobatic demonstrations, flying power line patrol, doing aerial photography and scouting for forest fires for the U.S. Forest Service. He also became a Cessna dealer for many years before selling the airport in 1969, five years before Hendersonville Airport received its first runway.

Founded in 1989, the Western North Carolina Air Museum at Hendersonville Airport evokes the feeling of small-town aviation in the 1930s and 1940s with a variety of 19 airplanes ranging from World War I replicas through 1988 general aviation aircraft and other unique aircraft memorabilia. There is a meticulously crafted life-size replica of the Wright Brothers’ first flying machine. Rare aircraft include a three-place J-5 Piper Cub with a bungee cord starter, a 1929 Curtiss Robin airplane such as Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan flew 28 hours to Ireland, and several homebuilt aircraft.

During the first week in June each year, the museum sponsors a two-day Air Fair with fly-ins, antique cars and food. Located on the 3,000-foot grass Johnson Airfield, the museum is open on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Admission to the museum is free and is an exciting look at early aviation.

65

Playing around Hendersonville...

Hendersonville has been recognized as one of the best towns in America for retirees; for one thing it never lacks for things to do…

Shuffleboard. Shuffleboard dates back to the 1400s, when the English played a game called “shove-groat.” This was simply sliding a large silver coin, called a “groat” down a table. It began to take a shape of its own, with markings for the coins to stop, which made it easier for players to receive a higher score. Shuffleboard was introduced to America by the first colonists as well as the English soldiers.

In the 1840s shuffleboard found its way to cruise liner decks. Shuffleboard courts spread across the country during the 1930s, rising to a crescendo in the 1950s. In Hendersonville Frank Harrison, a member of the USA National Shuffleboard Hall of Fame, led the charge of Florida transplants to the courts. Originally playing in Boyd Park, the Hendersonville Shuffleboard Club was entrenched in Toms Park by the 1970s with indoor and outdoor courts for year-round play.

Today the Whitmire Activity Center at Toms Park boasts 27 shuffleboard courts and regularly hosts national tournaments. Shuffleboard has a throwback appeal to when times were more wholesome and easy going and the club welcomes everyone - even those who weren’t around for those halcyon days.

66

Pickleball. Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the U.S. created for all ages and skill levels. In the summer of 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington, three friends, Congressman Joel Pritchard, William Bell, and Barney McCallum made up this game to provide a sport for their entire family. It is described as a cross between tennis, badminton and ping pong.

The paddle game is quick for newcomers to pick up and challenging for the the expert. Henderson County Parks & Recreation offers free instructional sessions to get you going. It is a great way to meet new folks, stay active and have a lot of fun as well. Find a game at the Henderson County Athletic/Activity Center (708 S. Grove Street), Jackson Park (801 Glover St) or the Lelia Patterson Center in Fletcher (1111 Howard Gap Road).

Hendersonville Community Theatre. In 1966 The Man of LaMancha invited theater-goers to “Dream the Impossible Dream� as it won the Tony Award for best Broadway musical. That same year a small dream started in Hendersonville, in a storage building on Haywood Road. The Hendersonville Little Theatre put on its first production.

Everyone, from the actors and directors to the set builders and box office staff are volunteers.

More than a half-century later the all-volunteer community theater is still going strong, through a name change to the Hendersonville Community Theatre and differing locations. The current digs, in a former church on Washington Street, were first occupied in 2012. The troupe puts on a half-dozen events on the Main Stage and a myriad of other productions, including those from local playwrights, on the Second Stage out back. And yes, the Hendersonville players have delivered their take on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

67

Music around town. Hendersonville has never been shy about broadcasting its love of music. On the morning of October 24, 1946 WHKP - the call letters stood for “Where the Heavens Kiss the Peaks” - became the first radio station in Henderson County with a live performance from the stage of the now-defunct Carolina Theatre. When FM radio arrived the station was awarded the maximum of 100,000 watts of power and was one of the most powerful FM stations in the Carolinas.

By that time, in the 1970s, Hendersonville was regularly producing its own sweet notes. Chauncey “Chan” Harbour had retired to Henderson County in 1962 and after a few years he reckoned the community could use a symphony orchestra. Harbour was not a professional musician but he tirelessly recruited area musicians until the first Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra (HSO) performance in the Hendersonville High School auditorium took place to rave reviews during the holiday season in 1971. The volunteer community orchestra continued until Greenville conductor Peter Rickett took the baton in 1977. Rickett transformed the orchestra into an all-professional ensemble as it has been ever since.

James Stokes, the musical director of Hendersonville High School who conducted the first HSO performance, organized the Hendersonville Community Band (HCB) in 1991 after he retired from scholastic duties. Response from local professional musicians, amateur players, and students was enthusiastic from the start and over a quarter-century later the volunteer band - about 75 strong - performs regularly at the Blue Ridge Community College.

Jerry Zink was one of the early players in the HCB and he hooked up with members of a local ‘80s dance band called the Stardusters to start the Hendersonville Swing Band in 1996. The musicians deliver the Big Band sound for local fundraisers.

Hendersonville welcomes performers from out of town as well.

During the summer if you have the feeling that you are hearing music in your travels about town it is probably not your imagination. Friday evenings at the Visitor Center stage means Music on Main performances and the 3rd Thursday of each month brings artists from around the Southeast for Rhythm & Brews right on Main Street.

68

Meet Your Neighbors...

69

Little Charleston of the Mountains Less than four miles south of Hendersonville is the charming Village of Flat Rock built around a very large outcrop of granite once used by the Cherokee Indians and early traders. Beautiful large homes and wooded estates surround the original wood frame post office from 1845 in this small, quiet historic village.

Place to See: The Flat Rock Playhouse sits on the large flat granite slab from whence Flat Rock got its name. Honored as the State Theater of North Carolina, the Play- Yes, North Carolina, there is a “flat rock.� house produces a variety of plays, musicals, dramas, comedies and concerts for approximately 100,000 patrons annually. They also have a college apprentice and intern programs plus year-round classes and workshops for aspiring performers.

70

Where Hendersonville Went to Play As the trains brought new residents and many tourists to Hendersonville in the early 1900s, the Town of Laurel Park, two miles away, became a popular place to live and to play.

Visitors from the downtown inns would ride the "Dummy Line" railcar to Laurel Park for swimming in the lakes, dancing in the pavilions and even some gambling at the Laurel Park Casino.

Place to See: Rising 1,000 feet above Laurel Park is Jump-Off Rock, so named by an ancient Cherokee legend. After losing her lover in a tribal war, a young maiden would climb to the rock each day to watch for his return. Upon news of her lover's death, she went out on the rock and jumped to her own demise. Ghostly legends today say the maiden can still be seen longing for her lover on Jump-Off Rock. If you don’t encounter the forlorn spirit you can still marvel at the panoramic view of surrounding mountain ranges.

Where Hendersonville Does Business There was a post office in Fletcher, named for a family of early homesteaders, in 1886 but the city did not incorporate until 1989. The original Asheville-Hendersonville Airport was here where the region’s first air passenger service began on June 27, 1941. A growing Asheville was feeling dragged down by little Hendersonville so when a new airport was proposed the county traded its naming rights for the old airstrip property. A business park went up on the site.

Place to See: Billing itself as the largest flea market in the Carolinas, Smiley's Flea Market sees 12,000 - 17,000 visitors each weekend and 71

offers everything from peanuts to bulldozers for sale. Smiley's has over 600 tables outside that can be rented for $15/day or inside space available for vendors. Open Friday to Sunday, 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Where They Still Have a Soap Box Derby Brevard is famous for so many things the town can’t fit it all on one marquee. It is a mecca for mountain bikers as the gateway to Pisgah National Forest. It is the jumping off point for tours of Transylvania County’s 250 waterfalls. Music lovers from around the country mark off their calendars each summer for the Brevard Music Center Festival. The downtown shopping has attracted the attention of USA Today which called O.P. Taylor’s one of the Top Ten toy stores in the world. And there is that soap box derby that is a centerpiece of White Squirrel Days when the town honors its signature rodent.

Place to See: The Brevard Music Center hosts 400 high school and college musicians, ages 14-29, worldwide each summer who study and give over 80 public performances and attracts tens of thousands of listeners each year. The students reside on the 180 wooded acres nestled against the Blue Ridge Mountains. Keith Lockhart, Conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, has been the Artistic Director since 2007.

The Bread Basket of Hendersonville There are farms in Mills River that have been in the same family for seven or eight generations after the first deeds were handed out following the American Revolution. These farms were so productive Mills River was called the “fertile crescent.” The town was stitched together and incorporated in 2003.

Place to See: With over 200 snakes in glass displays Serpentarium Magic claims to be the largest snake zoo east of the Mississippi River.

The star of the collection is a two-headed corn snake. A scaleless corn snake is one of several serpents that allow visitors get a hands-on experience with the serpents. No one gets touchy feely with the cobras and rattlesnakes, however.

72

Where Engineers Dared To Go Saluda was a crossroads town for traders and herders called Pace’s Gap before ingenious railroad men figured a way to crest the Blue Ridge Mountains for the Spartanburg and Asheville Railroad in 1878.

The result was the Saluda Grade, 13 miles of track that is still today the steepest standard-gauge mainline railway grade in the United States (4.2% to 4.9% steepness). Spectacular crashes took the lives of 29 men on the deadly run by the 1890s but no passenger was ever lost on the “Carolina Special” before the last train rumbled over the Saluda Grade on September 13, 1989. Norfolk Southern ceased operations in 2003, but there are ongoing discussions for a train excursion route or Railsto-Trails conversion.

Place to See: The one-street downtown looks much like it did when the first trains arrived. A Thompson has been running a store on Main Street since 1890 - the current rendition is Thompson’s Store and Ward Grill. The Saluda Historic Depot from 1903 has been transformed into a train and heritage museum.

73

74