NOTE TO READERS: This is the second in a series of posts on the coming of the American Enka Corporation plant to Buncombe County’s Hominy Valley in 1928, and its…
Read moreA New Vision for Old Hominy Valley: The Coming of the Enka Plant
The news on a late September Sunday morning in 1928 that the American Enka Corporation was going to build a $10 million plant in Buncombe County pleased virtually everyone.…
Read moreThe Several Lives of West Asheville, Part III: Edwin Carrier in West Asheville
Quick Take on the Early Years: Incorporation, De-/Re-incorporation, Annexation, and Mini-Boom, 1889-1925 When West Asheville–already on the way toward development and modernization–was incorporated on February 9, 1889, the language of…
Read moreThe Several Lives of West Asheville, Part I: Sulphur Springs as Proto-Land of the Sky, 1827-1861
This post arose initially from my effort to understand the West Asheville of the early 1920s, when both my Whisnant and Rudisill grandparents moved there–the Whisnants from fifteen years in…
Read moreOur Mountain Home: Asbury’s Encounter with a Changing Asheville, 1900-1907
A rapidly growing and changing Asheville, 1900-1907: Victor Talking Machines, a street railway workers’ union, black and Jewish professionals and entrepreneurs, bars and tourist hotels, and moving pictures at the Gayety Theater.
Read moreRetrospective I: A Primer on the Sad Truths of Slavery in Asheville, Buncombe County and Western North Carolina
The Consensus Myth: “No Slaves or Slaveholders in the Mountains” John Preston Arthur’s popular 1914 history put the matter of slaves and slaveholders in the mountains succinctly and unambiguously::…
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