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 moreFamily Challenges in the ‘Teens: A Strike, a Flood, and an Epidemic
This post focuses on the Asheville Street Railway Strike of 1913; the great Asheville flood of 1916; and the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920, in which my father nearly died.
Read moreInto the Asheville Bowl: Channels and Streams
Having in the previous post delineated some major features of Asheville’s geophysical situation (elevation, rings of mountains, rivers, gaps), the eradication and removal of the Cherokees, and early land speculation,…
Read moreToward the Asheville Bowl: The Geophysical Context and Greed for Land
In summer the winds prevail from the southern points of the compass; they come to Asheville cooled by passage over the high mountains, and slightly tinctured with balsamic odors gathered there-from. In winter,…
Read more“The Land of the Sky”: How a Phrase Went So Far, So Fast, and Lasted So Long
One of a three-part series, best read in order: 1. Asheville as “The Land of the Sky”: The Novel, and a Phrase That Stuck 2. “The Land of the Sky”:…
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