97 Fun Facts About Asheville

Asheville, Asheboro and Ashe County are all named for Samuel Ashe, who held which office in the 1790s?

Governor: the legislature elected Samuel Ashe at 70, after 18 years as a judge, and the mountain county seat of Morristown took his name in 1797 while he was still in office.

What arrival in 1880 set off Asheville's first boom?

The railroad reached Asheville in October 1880 over a mountain grade and tunnels cut by convict labourers, and summer visitors and health-seekers from the hot lowlands soon poured in.

Asheville sits at the confluence of the Swannanoa River and which larger river?

The French Broad runs north through Asheville, takes in the Swannanoa, and crosses into Tennessee, where it meets the Holston at Knoxville to form the Tennessee River.

Biltmore House's limestone walls were quarried in which Midwestern state?

Indiana limestone was shipped in for the walls, while a brick kiln and a woodworking factory were built on the estate to supply the rest of the house.

Which nickname for Asheville and its mountains was borrowed from the title of an 1876 novel?

Land of the Sky was Christian Reid's 1876 novel about summer travellers flirting their way through the mountains, and travel promoters later borrowed the phrase to sell the trip.

In the late 1800s, patients flocked to sanitariums in Asheville's mountain air seeking a cure for which disease?

Tuberculosis: doctors promoted the mountain climate as a cure, and Karl von Ruck's Winyah Sanitarium, opened in 1888, soon drew patients from all over the United States.

Which word for empty talk comes from Felix Walker's 1820 speech in Congress, made 'for' his home county?

Bunkum: Walker said he was 'speaking for Buncombe', and the county's name became a word for nonsense, later shortened to 'bunk' and giving us 'debunk'.

The April 1865 'Battle of Asheville' was fought on ground now occupied by what?

UNCA campus: Home Guardsmen and soldiers on leave manned earthworks there and traded fire with an Ohio regiment for hours, until its colonel pulled his men back toward Tennessee after dark.

Douglas Ellington's 1920s Asheville City Hall, S&W Cafeteria and Asheville High School are landmarks of which style?

Art Deco: Ellington meant City Hall to have a matching twin in the county courthouse next door, but the county built a taller, more conservative classical tower instead.

The 1924 Jackson Building, western North Carolina's first skyscraper, rose on the lot of Thomas Wolfe's father's what?

Tombstone business: W.O. Wolfe drew customers to his monument shop with an angel statue, the one his son later made famous in Look Homeward, Angel.

Biltmore House was designed in the Châteauesque style by which New York architect?

Richard Morris Hunt, long the Vanderbilts' family architect, modelled the house on French Renaissance chateaux but died in 1895 before it was finished, leaving his son to complete the work.

Which landscape architect, famous for Central Park, laid out the Biltmore grounds?

Frederick Law Olmsted, unimpressed by the worn-out land, advised keeping the park close to the house, with farms along the river and the rest of the estate put to work.

Besides a swimming pool and gym, what did Biltmore House's basement offer guests?

Bowling alley: Vanderbilt's guests bowled below stairs in a house that had electricity, central heating and indoor plumbing when many of its neighbours still used outhouses.

George Vanderbilt first opened Biltmore House to family and friends on which 1895 occasion?

Christmas Eve 1895 was the house-warming, and under a towering tree in the banquet hall Vanderbilt had gifts stacked for the families of his estate workers.

'Biltmore' pairs an old word for rolling land with De Bilt, a town in which country?

Netherlands: the family's founder, a farmer from De Bilt, reached the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1650 as an indentured servant, two centuries before his descendants were America's richest clan.

During World War II, which Washington institution sent paintings and sculptures to Biltmore House for safekeeping?

The National Gallery of Art moved its treasures by train in 1942 in case Washington was attacked, and they waited out two years in Biltmore's unfinished Music Room, among them Gilbert Stuart's George Washington.

America's first school for which profession opened on Biltmore estate land in the 1890s?

Forestry: the Biltmore Forest School trained its students in Vanderbilt's own woods, and the tract they worked later joined Pisgah National Forest, where the school site is kept as the Cradle of Forestry.

Which Best Picture winner is among the films that shot scenes at Biltmore Estate?

Forrest Gump shot scenes on the estate's tree-lined approach road; Biltmore has also doubled for locations in Being There, Richie Rich, Patch Adams and Hannibal.

Which visitor attraction opened in 1985 in the barn that once housed Biltmore's cattle?

A winery: William Cecil planted his first vines in 1971, disliked the first bottling, and brought a winemaster over from France before the converted barn opened to the public.

E. W. Grove made his fortune with a 'Tasteless Chill Tonic' sold as a remedy for which disease?

Malaria: Grove's tonic masked the bitter taste of quinine, the standard malaria remedy, in a sweet syrup, and its sales paid for the Grove Park Inn he opened in 1913.

The Grove Park Inn's massive walls were built in 1912-13 from which local material?

Granite boulders: Grove's son-in-law Fred Seely, who had no training as an architect, sketched the design himself, and some 400 labourers finished the inn in under a year.

Which novelist lived at the Grove Park Inn in the mid-1930s while his wife got psychiatric care nearby?

F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the summers of 1935 and 1936 at the inn, and a New York Post interview he gave there on turning 40 portrayed him to the whole country as a broken drunk.

Which former president resigned his last public office in 1930 while resting at the Grove Park Inn?

William Howard Taft, by then Chief Justice and gravely ill, sent in his resignation from Asheville on 3 February 1930 and died in Washington the following month.

Which country's exiled government set up headquarters at the Grove Park Inn in 1944?

Philippines: President Manuel Quezon arrived with his family and staff in 1944 and ran his government-in-exile from the inn, which two years earlier had held Axis diplomats awaiting deportation.

The Grove Park Inn's holiday competition, begun in 1992, is for builders of what?

Gingerbread houses: it began as a small holiday display made by people in the community, and only became a contest after visitors kept asking which house had won.

Which federal agency occupied Asheville's Grove Arcade until 1995?

The National Climatic Data Center's stay began after Washington took over the arcade in 1942 for the war effort, turning out its shops and offices with less than a month's notice.

In Thomas Wolfe's 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel, Asheville appears under what fictional name?

Altamont: Wolfe's portrait of the town featured more than 200 thinly disguised locals, and the uproar kept him away from Asheville for eight years, until 1937.

The boarding house Wolfe's mother ran, now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, was named after which state?

Kentucky: 'Old Kentucky Home' was the boarding house Julia Wolfe ran from 1906; an arsonist set it ablaze during the 1998 Bele Chere festival and was never caught.

Which North Carolina-born short-story writer is buried near Thomas Wolfe in Asheville's Riverside Cemetery?

O. Henry, the pen name of William Sydney Porter, lies in Riverside Cemetery, where visitors leave $1.87 in coins on his grave, the sum Della has saved at the start of 'The Gift of the Magi'.

Which singer, born in nearby Tryon, graduated as valedictorian of Asheville's Allen High School for Girls in 1950?

Nina Simone, then Eunice Waymon, attended on money raised by supporters in her hometown, who hoped to see the young prodigy become a concert pianist.

Which Bauhaus refugee led Black Mountain College's art teaching from 1933?

Josef Albers lost his post when the Bauhaus closed under Nazi pressure; the architect Philip Johnson, then a curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, arranged the job, and Albers taught at the college until 1949.

Which visiting teacher worked on early geodesic domes with students at Black Mountain College in the late 1940s?

Buckminster Fuller taught the summer sessions of 1948 and 1949: the first dome he and his students tried to raise would not stand, but the next summer's, built of sturdier materials, held.

Which peak near Asheville is the highest point in mainland North America east of the Mississippi?

Mount Mitchell is named for Elisha Mitchell, the professor who measured it as the East's highest peak in 1835 and fell to his death at a waterfall there in 1857 while returning to prove it.

In a 2012 online poll Asheville tied for the title 'Beer City USA' with which Michigan city?

Grand Rapids tied Asheville in Charlie Papazian's 2012 online poll and won by a landslide in 2013, after which Papazian retired the contest and left the title in Michigan for good.

Sierra Nevada opened its 2014 East Coast brewery in which community just south of Asheville?

Mills River, beside the Asheville airport, was picked in 2012 for the Californian brewer's eastward expansion, and the brewery that opened there two years later earned LEED Platinum certification.

Which Spanish architect, who emigrated in 1881, designed Asheville's Basilica of St. Lawrence and is entombed there?

Rafael Guastavino, master of the self-supporting tile vault seen at Grand Central Terminal, came south to build Biltmore's vaults, retired to the mountains nearby, and was laid in the church he designed after his death in 1908.

Asheville's long-running weekly drum circle gathers on Friday evenings in which downtown green space?

Pritchard Park, a downtown triangle that spent some 60 years as the city's main bus terminal, reopened as a park in 2001, and the drummers soon made its little amphitheater their own.

Which country star, who grew up in Asheville, co-organised 2024's Concert for Carolina to raise money after Helene?

Luke Combs moved to Asheville as a boy and sang in school choirs there; he and Eric Church filled Charlotte's football stadium in October 2024 for a benefit that raised over $24 million.

UNC Asheville's Division I teams compete in the Big South Conference under what nickname?

Bulldogs: UNC Asheville won its first NCAA tournament game in 2003, in overtime, and as a No. 16 seed in 2012 pushed top-seeded Syracuse to a seven-point finish.

Helene broke Asheville flood records set in 1916 by what?

Two hurricanes: the remains of one soaked the mountains from the Gulf coast, and within a week a second, which came ashore near Charleston, sent the rivers to marks that stood for 108 years.

Helene washed part of which interstate west of Asheville into the Pigeon River?

I-40 lost its eastbound lanes in the Pigeon River Gorge, and the main freight route to Tennessee stayed shut for five months before reopening with a single lane each way.

Which 2012 blockbuster filmed woodland scenes around the waterfalls near Brevard, south of Asheville?

The Hunger Games shot its arena among the waterfalls of DuPont State Forest and turned the abandoned Henry River Mill Village into Katniss's District 12.

Carl Sandburg's home Connemara in Flat Rock doubled as a farm for his wife Lilian's champion what?

Dairy goats: it was Lilian Sandburg's need for milder winters and more pasture for her prize Chikaming herd that moved the poet from Michigan to Flat Rock in 1945.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford, founder of Asheville's long-running folk festival, also wrote which song about moonshine?

Mountain Dew: Lunsford, a lawyer and song collector, composed 'Good Old Mountain Dew' in the 1920s, and his festival began in 1928 as an offshoot of Asheville's Rhododendron Festival before striking out on its own two years later.

Which future Ben-Hur star and his wife took over the Asheville Community Theatre in the late 1940s?

Charlton Heston and his wife Lydia Clarke directed and acted at the theatre in 1947-48, a decade before Ben-Hur; its auditorium was later named for him.

Which reunited rock band played a 2007 residency at Asheville's Orange Peel club during its comeback?

Smashing Pumpkins, back on stage after seven years apart, settled into the 1,050-capacity club for a run of shows that was filmed for the documentary If All Goes Wrong.

Asheville's minor-league baseball club has played under what nickname for most of the years since 1915?

Tourists: local sportswriters pinned the name on the Asheville Mountaineers in 1915, and a 1924 club that started out as the Skylanders soon gave in and took it too.

Which Native American nation used the river confluence at present-day Asheville as open hunting and meeting grounds?

Cherokee speakers knew the spot by a name meaning "where they race", long before settlers founded a town at the meeting of the two rivers.

Biltmore House in Asheville, finished for George Vanderbilt in 1895, holds which record among American homes?

Largest privately owned house in the United States, it spreads over about four acres of floor space, with 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces.

George and Edith Vanderbilt of Biltmore changed plans at the last minute and missed sailing on which ill-fated liner?

Titanic sailed without them because they switched by telephone to her sister ship Olympic, which reached New York first. A servant who stayed with their luggage went down with the ship.

Which 1980s dance film was shot partly at a former Boy Scout camp on Lake Lure, southeast of Asheville?

Dirty Dancing needed a stand-in for the Catskills, so the crew combined Lake Lure with a Virginia hotel. Only the stone steps where Baby practised survive at the old camp.

Bob Moog, who spent his later years teaching and building instruments in Asheville, invented the first commercial what?

Synthesizer design made Moog famous from 1964, and his portable Minimoog has been called the most influential ever built. A museum of his work, the Moogseum, opened in Asheville in 2019.

Which baseball star collapsed in Asheville in spring 1925, an illness one sportswriter blamed on hot dogs and soda?

Babe Ruth was put on a train to New York, and rumours of his death spread so fast that British newspapers printed an obituary. The real cause of the collapse was never confirmed.

Which evangelist, who lived for decades at nearby Montreat, gave his name to The Cove training center outside Asheville?

Billy Graham's name is also on the I-240 freeway through Asheville, and the city's children's health center named for him and his wife Ruth appears on the back of their 1996 Congressional Gold Medal.

The founder of which car company is listed with his friend Thomas Edison among guests of Asheville's Grove Park Inn?

Ford's founder shares the list with Harry Houdini, Will Rogers and George Gershwin, and Helen Keller was among the very first guests after the inn opened in 1913.

Which Hollywood comedian has toured and recorded bluegrass albums with Asheville's Steep Canyon Rangers since 2009?

Steve Martin plays banjo with the group, and their first album together was recorded at a studio in Asheville. It earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album.

Which European ruler once owned the ivory chess set that George Vanderbilt of Biltmore received on his 21st birthday?

Napoleon Bonaparte played chess at its gaming table during his exile on St. Helena, and after his death in 1821 his heart, sealed in a silver urn, was set down on that same table.

Which Hollywood star filmed the royal romance The Swan at Biltmore House shortly before her own wedding to a prince?

Grace Kelly played a princess courted by a crown prince, and the film was released on the very day she became princess consort of Monaco.

Which Civil War novel by Asheville-born Charles Frazier won the 1997 National Book Award and became a 2003 film?

Cold Mountain is a real peak in Haywood County, west of Asheville, and the novel follows a wounded Confederate deserter walking home towards it.

Which baseball film has its veteran catcher end his career with a record home run for Asheville's minor-league club?

Bull Durham shot the scene at Asheville's own ballpark, a 1924 field that ranks among the oldest still used in the minor leagues.

Which 1990s family comedy, though set in Chicago, used Asheville's Biltmore House as its young hero's mansion?

Richie Rich needed a home fit for the world's richest boy, and Biltmore's rooms and grounds supply most of the film's settings.

Which 1990s historical epic filmed scenes at Chimney Rock Park, Lake James and Asheville's Biltmore Estate?

The Last of the Mohicans sets its story in colonial New York, but North Carolina's Blue Ridge stood in, with Hickory Nut Falls appearing near the end.

Biltmore House borrowed from Blois, Chenonceau and Chambord, three châteaux in which river valley of France?

Loire landmarks were on the tour George Vanderbilt and his architect made in early 1889, when they admired the steep roofs, turrets and sculptural ornament.

Which tennis champion played her first competitive match since giving birth at a 2018 Fed Cup tie in Asheville?

Serena Williams lost that doubles match alongside her sister Venus, but the United States had already clinched the tie. Her baby daughter watched from behind the players' bench.

Which three-letter code, printed on luggage tags, identifies Asheville Regional Airport near the town of Fletcher?

AVL lies nine miles south of downtown and opened in 1961, replacing a wartime airfield that was first run by Army engineers.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, which winds past Asheville, was begun as the Appalachian Scenic Highway under which president?

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal agencies did some of the building, and an old friend from his Navy Department days lobbied to route the road through North Carolina.

Asheville native Robert Morgan piloted which famous B-17 bomber through 25 missions over Europe in World War II?

Memphis Belle was the first heavy bomber sent home to sell war bonds, and Morgan went on to fly B-29 raids in the Pacific before retiring to Asheville.

Craggy Gardens, a Blue Ridge Parkway stop northeast of Asheville, turns purple each June with which flowering shrub?

Rhododendron of the Catawba species covers the slopes in mid-June, and a short trail nearby climbs to a stone overlook with views in every direction.

Asheville's Chai Pani won the 2022 James Beard award for Outstanding Restaurant serving which country's street food?

India shaped the menu of chef Meherwan Irani, who grew up in Ahmednagar on the Deccan Plateau and opened the restaurant with his wife Molly in 2009.

Which Colorado craft brewer, maker of Fat Tire ale, opened an East Coast brewery beside the river in Asheville in 2016?

New Belgium traces its Fat Tire recipe to a co-founder's bicycle trip from brewery to brewery in Europe, and its Asheville plant reached full production in May 2016.

In July 2020 Asheville's city council made national news by voting unanimously to approve what for Black residents?

Reparations here meant a pledge to invest in areas where Black residents face disparities, and the vote came during the nationwide George Floyd protests.

Which soul singer of Killing Me Softly with His Song was born in Black Mountain, just east of Asheville?

Roberta Flack left the mountains as a small child when her family moved to Virginia; her father was a jazz pianist and her mother a church organist and music teacher.

Which evergreen of North Carolina's high peaks supplies the 35-foot tree raised in Biltmore's Banquet Hall every year?

Fraser fir grows wild only at high elevations in the southern Appalachians, and it takes about 50 staff to carry the Biltmore tree indoors and stand it upright.

Cedric, George Vanderbilt's companion who dozed around Biltmore House and now names an estate tavern, was which breed?

St. Bernard dogs became a Biltmore tradition: by 1901 five of them filled the billiard room, and Cedric's collar, displayed at the tavern, measures more than 33 inches around.

What name is given to the Grove Park Inn's best-known ghost, a young woman said to have fallen there in the 1920s?

The Pink Lady legend grew from the death of a young guest who fell from a fifth-floor balcony onto the floor of the inn's Palm Court.

What was Asheville called from 1793 until it was incorporated and renamed four years later for Samuel Ashe?

Morristown was laid out as a county seat on a plateau where two Indian trails crossed, at a time when the 1790 census had counted only about 1,000 settlers in the whole area.

Which Civil War-era North Carolina politician was honoured by the obelisk that stood in downtown Asheville until 2021?

Zebulon Vance was born a few miles north near Weaverville, and the 75-foot monument came down after years of concern over his history as a slave owner.

Which pioneering woman doctor taught music at an Asheville academy in the 1840s to save $3,000 for medical school?

Elizabeth Blackwell lodged in Asheville with a clergyman who had once been a physician, and in 1849 she became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.

Which avant-garde composer staged what is often called the first American happening at Black Mountain College in 1952?

John Cage wrote his most famous piece the same year: 4′33″, in which the musicians do nothing but sit through the time named in the title.

Which choreographer formed his modern dance company while teaching at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1953?

Merce Cunningham discarded the traditions of narrative and form, using chance procedures to generate the movement his dancers performed.

In Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe gave his mother's Asheville boarding house, now a museum, which fictional name?

Dixieland stood in for the real house, now a state historic site, where a fire set by an arsonist in 1998 destroyed 200 of the 800 original artifacts.

Which craft community of East Aurora, New York, founded by Elbert Hubbard, furnished Asheville's Grove Park Inn in 1913?

Roycroft artisans were part of the Arts and Crafts movement, and their handmade style suited an inn put up in less than a year by workers who lived in tents on the site.

The Basilica of St. Lawrence in Asheville is reputed to have North America's largest freestanding dome of which shape?

Elliptical in plan, the dome spans 58 by 82 feet and was inspired by a basilica in the Spanish city of Valencia.

Which Scottish-born golf architect, famous for his Pinehurst courses, redesigned the Grove Park Inn's course in 1924?

Donald Ross stepped off the boat in America with only two dollars after spending his savings on the passage, and the Asheville course he reshaped is older than the inn beside it.

Which biblical name, a Hebrew word for summit, belongs to the 5,721-foot peak about 15 miles southwest of Asheville?

Pisgah is reached by a 1.6-mile trail that starts on the Blue Ridge Parkway and climbs steeply to a small observation deck at the summit.

Which dance style developed its team form at Asheville's Mountain Dance and Folk Festival and is now a state dance?

Clogging teams drew a wider following after the Soco Gap Dancers from the region performed at the White House in 1939.

Asheville's WNC Nature Center opened a 2013 exhibit as part of a species survival plan for which native predator?

Red wolf conservation suits a zoo that switched to native wildlife in the 1970s, half a century after it opened in 1925 with animals from far beyond the Appalachians.

Which surname did Biltmore's owners take on when George Vanderbilt's only child married a British diplomat in 1924?

Cecil arrived with Cornelia's husband, first secretary at the British Embassy in Washington; the couple's two sons were born at Biltmore in the same room as their mother.

Which Asheville street festival, once the largest free festival in the Southeast, ended in 2013 after 35 editions?

Bele Chere drew more than 350,000 people at its peak, but the city council dropped it after hearing that ending its support would save about $200,000 the next year.

Which Asheville-born guitarist of the Allman Brothers Band and Gov't Mule began a hometown benefit concert in 1988?

Warren Haynes started the show as a reunion for hometown musicians who were all back in town for the holidays, and the first one was held at a small Asheville club.

Which American painter made the portraits of Biltmore's architect and landscape designer that hang in the house?

John Singer Sargent's two large canvases, both commissioned for the house by George Vanderbilt, hang in the Living Hall on the second floor.

Lawyer Lillian Exum Clement of Asheville, elected in 1920, was the first woman in the South to serve in which body?

State legislature seats in the South had never gone to a woman before Clement, who was also North Carolina's first female attorney to practise without male partners.

Which supermarket chain of the Appalachian Southeast is based in Black Mountain, a few miles east of Asheville?

Ingles opened its first store in Asheville in 1963, started by a second-generation grocer who had worked in his uncle's shop from the age of five.

Which Southern-cooking restaurant chain opened its first café in downtown Asheville in December 2000?

Tupelo Honey was started by Sharon Schott to give locals and visitors a taste of the South made with healthier ingredients, and it has since spread to many other states.

Which 2001 thriller sequel used Asheville's Biltmore Estate as the mansion of the wealthy villain Mason Verger?

Hannibal's makers picked Biltmore to signal the huge personal wealth of Verger, the one victim who had survived Lecter and spent years plotting revenge.

Which British comic actor played the simple gardener Chance in Being There, filmed mainly at Biltmore Estate?

Peter Sellers earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination as the sheltered gardener who is mistaken for a brilliant political pundit.

Pack Square in downtown Asheville is named for George Willis Pack, a philanthropist who made his fortune in what trade?

Lumber wealth let Pack donate the site for a new courthouse, on condition that the old courthouse site became part of the public square that now carries his name.