50 Fun Facts About Asheville

Asheville was renamed in 1797 in honor of which North Carolina governor?

Samuel Ashe was 70 when the legislature elected him governor in 1795, and he served the constitutional maximum of three one-year terms.

What was Asheville's population at the 2020 census?

94,589 at the 2020 census made Asheville the most populous city in Western North Carolina and the state's 11th-largest.

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

The French Broad, often called one of the world's oldest rivers, meets the Swannanoa at Asheville and flows north-west into Tennessee.

Roughly how high above sea level is Asheville?

2,130 ft: Asheville's elevation of roughly 2,134 feet keeps its summers cooler than the lowland Southeast, with only a handful of 90-degree days in a typical year.

Asheville's nickname 'Land of the Sky' was popularised by an 1876 novel written under which pen name?

Christian Reid was the pen name of Frances Tiernan of Salisbury, NC; her 1876 travel-romance 'The Land of the Sky' gave the mountains, then the city, the nickname.

The Cherokee name for the site of Asheville, Untokiasdiyi, is usually translated how?

'Where they race' is the usual rendering of Untokiasdiyi, the Cherokee name for the open ground at the meeting of the two rivers where Asheville later grew.

Which word for empty talk comes from Felix Walker's rambling 1820 speech 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: the skirmish of 6 April 1865 took place along what is now the University of North Carolina at Asheville grounds, and the Union column withdrew toward Tennessee.

After the 1930 crash, Asheville spent about how many years paying off its debts rather than defaulting?

50: Asheville chose to repay rather than default and retired the last of its Depression-era debt in 1976, which left downtown's 1920s buildings largely untouched.

Which architect designed Asheville's 1928 Art Deco City Hall, Asheville High School and the S&W Cafeteria?

Douglas Ellington's City Hall was meant to be twinned with the county courthouse, but the county chose a taller Neoclassical tower by another firm and the connecting wing was never built.

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's monument shop stood on the tiny Pack Square lot, and the 13-storey neo-Gothic Jackson Building that replaced it was the region's first skyscraper.

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

Richard Morris Hunt, the first American trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, toured Loire chateaux such as Blois and Chambord with Vanderbilt in 1889 before designing the house.

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

Frederick Law Olmsted, unimpressed by the worn-out land, proposed a park around the house, farms along the river and a managed timber forest across the rest.

Biltmore House, the largest privately owned home in the United States, contains how many rooms?

250 rooms, including 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces, plus an electric Otis elevator and a basement bowling alley.

In what year did Vanderbilt open Biltmore House to family and friends on Christmas Eve?

1895: after six years of construction that began in 1889 with about 1,000 workers and a private rail spur, Vanderbilt welcomed family and friends on Christmas Eve 1895.

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

Netherlands: the Vanderbilts' ancestor came to New Amsterdam from the Dutch village of De Bilt in the 17th century.

During WWII, which Washington institution shipped 62 paintings and 17 sculptures to Biltmore for safekeeping?

The National Gallery of Art stored 62 paintings and 17 sculptures, including Gilbert Stuart's George Washington and works by Rembrandt and Raphael, in Biltmore's unfinished Music Room from 1942 to 1944.

The first US forestry school opened on the Biltmore grounds in 1898 under which forester?

Carl A. Schenck, the German forester who had replaced Gifford Pinchot as Biltmore's forest manager, founded the Biltmore Forest School on the estate in 1898.

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.

Biltmore Village, built as a company town for estate workers, was previously a settlement called what?

Best, a small railroad-stop village, was bought up by Vanderbilt in the 1890s and rebuilt as an English-style estate village around All Souls church.

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.

Which untrained son-in-law of Grove sketched the design for the Grove Park Inn?

Fred Seely, Grove's son-in-law and no trained architect, sketched the granite hotel, which about 400 workers finished in under a year before its July 1913 opening.

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed in rooms 441 and 443 in 1935-36, drinking heavily, while Zelda was a patient across town.

Which former president resigned as Chief Justice while staying at the Grove Park Inn in 1930?

William Howard Taft, the only person to head both the executive branch and the Supreme Court, sent his resignation from the inn on 3 February 1930 and died five weeks later.

Which country's government operated in exile from a cottage at the Grove Park Inn during World War II?

Philippines: President Manuel Quezon's exiled Commonwealth government worked from a cottage on the grounds in 1944, after the inn had interned Axis diplomats early in the war.

The Grove Park Inn first staged the National Gingerbread House Competition in which year?

1992: the competition began that year as a small local contest and grew into a national event drawing entries from across the country.

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

The National Climatic Data Center, keeper of the nation's weather records, filled the 1929 building until 1995; the Arcade reopened as a public market in 2002.

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.

Who wrote 'The Gift of the Magi' and is buried near Thomas Wolfe in Asheville's Riverside Cemetery?

O. Henry, the pen name of William Sydney Porter, married an Asheville woman and was buried in Riverside Cemetery after his death in New York in 1910.

Zelda Fitzgerald died in a March 1948 fire at which Asheville institution?

Highland Hospital: the fire on the night of 10 March 1948 began in the kitchen and climbed the dumbwaiter shaft, killing Zelda and eight other patients on the upper floors.

In which year did Black Mountain College, remembered by a museum on Asheville's Pack Square, close?

1957: the college, founded in 1933, closed after 24 years; its Lake Eden campus, a former summer resort, became the Camp Rockmont boys' camp.

Which faculty member built the first large-scale geodesic dome with students at Black Mountain College?

Buckminster Fuller raised his first large geodesic dome with students at Black Mountain in 1949; the college also saw Merce Cunningham found his dance company there.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, whose headquarters is near Asheville, runs how many miles between Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks?

469 miles: the Parkway was begun in 1935 and finished in 1987 with the Linn Cove Viaduct around Grandfather Mountain, linking the two parks.

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

Mount Mitchell stands 6,684 feet and is reached from the Parkway via NC 128 at milepost 355.

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

Grand Rapids shared the 2012 'Beer City USA' title with Asheville in Charlie Papazian's online poll, then won it outright in 2013.

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

Mills River, in Henderson County near the Asheville airport, was chosen in 2012; the brewery reused trees felled on the site as lumber and earned LEED Platinum certification.

Moog Music, headquartered in Asheville, moved in 2010 into a former dealership for which car brand?

By 2015 the company's 62 employees owned 49 percent of its shares; it was bought by inMusic in 2023.

Which Spanish architect designed Asheville's Basilica of St. Lawrence and is buried in its crypt?

Rafael Guastavino, master of the self-supporting tile vault seen at Grand Central Terminal and Ellis Island, came to build Biltmore's vaults and was entombed in the basilica crypt in 1908.

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

Pritchard Park, a small triangle where Patton Avenue meets College Street, became the drum circle's home in 2001, open to anyone who turned up with a drum.

UNC Asheville opened in 1927 as a county-funded two-year college under what name?

Buncombe County Junior College became Asheville-Biltmore College in 1936, moved for a time into Overlook Castle on Sunset Mountain, and settled on its north Asheville campus in 1961.

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

Bulldogs: UNC Asheville's men's basketball team reached the NCAA tournament as Big South champion in 2003, 2011, 2012 and 2016.

Hurricane Helene's Asheville flooding broke river records set by a great flood in which year?

1916: Helene pushed the two rivers to crests of 24.67 and 26.1 feet, above the marks set by the great flood of July 1916.

Hurricane Helene devastated Asheville in the autumn of which year?

2024: Helene struck on 27 September 2024; landslides cut I-40 in the Pigeon River Gorge and the wrecked water system left the city without safe tap water for weeks.

Which 2012 blockbuster was filmed in the forests and mill villages near Asheville?

The Hunger Games shot its arena scenes in DuPont State Forest and its District 12 in the abandoned Henry River Mill Village, both within an hour of Asheville.

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

Dairy goats: Lilian Sandburg's Chikaming herd won national milk-production prizes, and descendants of her goats remained part of the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.

In which year did Bascom Lamar Lunsford's Mountain Dance and Folk Festival begin in Asheville?

1928: Lunsford, a lawyer and banjo player nicknamed the Minstrel of the Appalachians, staged the first festival as part of the city's Rhododendron Festival that year.

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 band's 2007 residency at the Orange Peel club helped put Asheville on the national music map?

Smashing Pumpkins played a nine-night residency at the Orange Peel in June and July 2007, the club's most famous booking.

Asheville's minor-league baseball club, at home at McCormick Field, plays under what nickname?

Tourists: the nickname dates to 1915, and the club's home, McCormick Field, opened in 1924 and saw Babe Ruth play an exhibition there in 1931.