My initial intention for this post (one in a series on Enka) was to investigate the presence of Black workers at the Dutch-owned American Enka plant in Buncombe County’s Hominy…
Read more“The Best and Most Prosperous City”: American Enka and the Imagined Transformation of Asheville
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 moreMoving on Up to Pisgah Heights: The Whisnants in West Asheville
This is the story of a street railway operator and his family moving from a small rented house (their home for 16 years) on an in-town estate in downtown Asheville…
Read moreThe Down Side of the Land of the Sky: The Rudisills in Asheville and West Asheville, 1922-1951
This post is lovingly and admiringly dedicated to my father-in-law Frank Joseph Mitchell (February 12, 1927 – July 25, 2017). Lifelong student, prodigious reader, indefatigable writer, fearless preacher and unforgettable…
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…
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