Asheville, North Carolina Asheville, North Carolina Downtown Asheville and encircling area Downtown Asheville and encircling area Flag of Asheville, North Carolina Flag Official seal of Asheville, North Carolina Location in Buncombe County and the state of North Carolina Location in Buncombe County and the state of North Carolina Asheville City Hall; Designed by Douglas Ellington, this building epitomizes the Art Deco style of the 1920s Original plan of Asheville, c.
View of downtown Asheville, 1888 Asheville is a town/city in and the governmental center of county of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the biggest city in Western North Carolina, and the 11th biggest city in North Carolina.
It is the principal town/city in the four-county Asheville urbane area, with a populace of 424,858 in 2010. Asheville is home to the United States National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the world's biggest active archive of weather data.
See also: Timeline of Asheville, North Carolina Before the arrival of the Europeans, the territory where Asheville now exists lay inside the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation. In 1540, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto came to the area, bringing the first European visitors along with European diseases, which seriously depleted the native population. The region was used as an open hunting ground until the middle of the 19th century. In 1797, Morristown was incorporated and retitled "Asheville" after North Carolina Governor Samuel Ashe. Asheville, with a populace of approximately 2,500 by 1861, remained mostly untouched by the Civil War, but contributed a number of companies to the Confederate States Army, and a substantially lesser number of soldiers to the Union. For a time, an Enfield rifle manufacturing facility was positioned in the town.
The war came to Asheville as an afterthought, when the "Battle of Asheville" was fought in early April 1865 at the present-day site of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, with Union forces withdrawing to Tennessee after encountering resistance from a small group of Confederate senior and junior reserves and recuperating Confederate soldiers in prepared trench lines athwart the Buncombe Turnpike; orders had been given to the Union force to take Asheville only if this could be accomplished without momentous losses. On October 2, 1880, the Western North Carolina Railroad instead of its line from Salisbury to Asheville, the first rail line to reach the city.
Almost immediately it was sold and resold to the Richmond and Danville Railroad Company, becoming part of the Southern Railway in 1894. With the culmination of the first stockyards , Asheville experienced a slow but steady expansion as industrialized plants increased in number and size, and new inhabitants assembled homes.
The 21-mile distance between Hendersonville and Asheville of the former Asheville and Spartanburg Railroad was instead of in 1886. By that point, the line was directed as part of the Richmond and Danville Railroad until 1894 and controlled by the Southern Railway afterward. (Asheville's final passenger train, a coach-only remnant of the Southern Railway's Carolina Special, last ran on December 5, 1968.) Asheville had the first electric street stockyards lines in the state of North Carolina, the first of which opened in 1889.
Thomas Wolfe House at 52 Market Street in downtown Asheville Rush Oates Plaza in downtown Asheville Asheville prospered in the decades of the 1910s and 1920s and at one point was the third biggest city in the state, behind Charlotte and Wilmington.
The Great Depression, the reconstructionof Asheville's history made world-famous by the novel Look Homeward, Angel, hit Asheville quite hard.
On November 20, 1930, eight small-town banks failed. Only Wachovia remained open with infusions of cash from Winston-Salem. Because of the explosive expansion of the previous decades, the per capita debt owed by the town/city (through municipal bonds) was the highest in the nation. By 1929, both the town/city and Buncombe County had incurred over $56 million in bonded debt to pay for a wide range of municipal and transit framework improvements, including City Hall, the water system, Beaucatcher Tunnel, and Asheville High School.
Rather than default, the town/city paid those debts over a reconstructionof fifty years. From the start of the depression through the 1980s, economic expansion in Asheville was slow.
Therefore, Asheville has one of the most impressive, elected collections of Art Deco architecture in the United States. On July 15 16, 1916, the Asheville region was subject to harsh flooding from the remnants of a tropical storm which caused more than $3 million in damage.
In 2003, Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Robert Rudolph was transported to Asheville from Murphy, North Carolina, for arraignment in federal court. Asheville pops up on nationwide rankings for a range of things: "a New Age Mecca" (CBS News' Eye On America, 1996), the "New Freak Capital of the U.S." (Frommer's, 2007), one of the "10 Most Beautiful Places in America" (Good Morning America, 2011), one of the "25 Best Places for Business and Careers" (Forbes, 2012), and one of "20 Great Cities For Writers" (Flavorwire, 2013). Asheville has been listed as one of the "Top 25 Small Cities for Art" in American - Style magazine's annual list from 2000 to 2012 and has reigned the champion "Beer City USA" each year from 2009 to 2012.
In his 2008 book, The Geography of Bliss, author Eric Weiner cited Asheville as one of the happiest places in the United States.
The Huffington Post, March 2015 "America's Best Beer Cities" Conde Nast Traveler, January 2015 "Best town/city in America for locavores" The Daily Meal, 2014 "The hippie capital of the South" Huffington Post, 2014 "#1 most prominent town/city for retirement out of 900+ U.S.
Cities" Top - Retirements.com, 2014 "#1 town to live and work in as a movie manufacturer Movie - Maker magazine, 2014 One of 6 top "Alternative Travel Destinations for 2014" Men's Journal and Business Insider, 2014 "One of 20 metros/cities you should visit in your 20s" Huffington Post, 2014 "#1 of 12 Dreamy Towns for Vegan Living" Veg - News, 2013 "One of 10 Tastiest Towns in the South" Southern Living, 2013 "Hippest City in the South" Fodor's The Carolinas & Georgia, 2013 "One of America's Best River Towns" Outside, 2012 "#1 Beer City USA" Imbibe Magazine online poll, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 "Most Romantic Place in USA and Canada" About.com Readers Choice Poll, 2012 "Top 10 Great Sunny Places to Retire" AARP Magazine, 2012 "10 Fantastically Yoga-Friendly Destinations" Yoga Journal, 2011 Asheville and the encircling mountain peaks are also prominent in the autumn when fall foliage peaks in October.
Asheville is positioned in the Blue Ridge Mountains at the confluence of the Swannanoa River and the French Broad River.
Asheville has a humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa), resembling the rest of the Piedmont region of the southeastern U.S., but with noticeably cooler temperatures due to the higher altitude; it is part of USDA Hardiness zone 7a. The area's summers in particular, though warm, are not as hot as summers in metros/cities farther east in the state, as the July daily average temperature is 73.8 F (23.2 C) and there is an average of only 9.4 days with 90 F (32 C)+ highs annually; the last time a calendar year has passed without 90 F readings is 2009.
Climate data for Asheville Regional Airport, North Carolina (1981 2010 normals, extremes 1869 present) Montford and Albemarle Park have been titled small-town historic districts by the Asheville City Council.
Biltmore Village has been titled a small-town historic precinct by the Asheville City Council. Notable architecture in Asheville includes its Art Deco town/city hall, and other unique buildings in the downtown area, such as the Battery Park Hotel, the initial of which was 475-feet long with various dormers and chimneys; the Neo-Gothic Jackson Building, the first high-rise building on Pack Square; Grove Arcade, one of America's first indoor shopping malls; and the Basilica of St.
This however has allowed Asheville to be a great compilation of Art Deco and truly a style all its own. On the other hand, Biltmore Village, positioned at the entrance to the famous estate, showcases unique architectural features that are found only in the Asheville area.
It was here that workers stayed amid the assembly of George Vanderbilt's estate. Today, however, as with many of Asheville's historical districts, it has been transformed into a precinct home to quaint, trendy shops and interesting boutiques.
Asheville Metropolitan Travel Destination Asheville is the larger principal town/city of the Asheville-Brevard CSA, a Combined Travel Destination that includes the Asheville urbane region (Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, and Madison counties) and the Brevard micropolitan region (Transylvania County), which had a combined populace of 398,505 at the 2000 census. Asheville is the command posts of the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina, which is seated at the Cathedral of All Souls.
Asheville is also an meaningful city for North Carolinian Catholics, who make pilgrimages to the Basilica of St.
Asheville is the biggest city positioned inside the Asheville MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area).
Apart from Asheville, the MSA includes Hendersonville and Waynesville, along with a number of lesser incorporated towns: Biltmore Forest, Black Mountain, Canton, Clyde, Flat Rock, Fletcher, Hot Springs, Laurel Park, Maggie Valley, Mars Hill, Marshall, Mills River, Montreat, Weaverville and Woodfin.
7 City of Asheville 1,000+ 10 Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College 1,000+ 13 Asheville City Schools 500 999 Downtown Asheville is a primary attraction for tourists.
The City of Asheville operates under a council-manager form of government, via its charter.
The town/city council appoints a town/city manager, a town/city attorney, and a town/city clerk. In the absence or disability of the mayor, the vice-mayor performs the mayoral duties.
Merrill Lynch building in downtown Asheville, designed by famed architect I.M.
BB&T, a financial institution based in Winston-Salem, has a large office in downtown Asheville.
Another look at downtown Asheville In 2009, a group of Asheville people challenged the legitimacy of Cecil Bothwell's election to the City Council, citing the North Carolina Constitution, which does not permit atheists to hold enhance office. Bothwell has described himself as a "post theist" clean water an atheist and is a member of a small-town Unitarian Universalist congregation.
See also: List of mayors of Asheville, North Carolina Van Duyn represents most of the town/city of Asheville.
The town/city of Asheville is based in both North Carolina's 10th congressional precinct and North Carolina's 11th congressional district, represented by Patrick Mc - Henry (R-Gaston County) and Mark Meadows (R-Jackson County), in the order given.
Asheville High School Main Entrance (designed by Douglas Ellington) Public Asheville City Schools include Asheville High School (known as Lee H Edwards High School 1935 1969), School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville, Asheville Middle School, Claxton Elementary, Randolph Learning Center, Hall Fletcher Elementary, Isaac Dickson Elementary, Ira B.
Asheville High has been ranked by Newsweek periodical as one of the top 100 high schools in the United States.
The Buncombe County School System operates high schools, middle schools and elementary schools both inside and outside the town/city of Asheville.
Asheville was formerly home to one of the only Sudbury schools in the Southeast, Katuah Sudbury School.
It is also home to a several charter schools, including Francine Delany New School for Children (one of the first charter schools in North Carolina), Art - Space Charter School, and Evergreen Community Charter School, an Outward Bound-Expeditionary Learning School, recognized as one of the most surroundingally conscious schools in the country. Two private residentiary high schools are positioned in the Asheville area: the all-male Christ School (located in Arden) and the co-educational Asheville School.
Other private schools include Carolina Day School, Veritas Christian Academy and Asheville Christian Academy.
Asheville and its encircling area have a several establishments of higher education: Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (Asheville) Lenoir-Rhyne University - Center for Graduate Studies of Asheville (Asheville) University of North Carolina at Asheville (Asheville) South College - Asheville (Asheville) Asheville is served by Asheville Regional Airport in close-by Fletcher, North Carolina, and by Interstate 40, Interstate 240, and Interstate 26.
A milestone was accomplished in 2003 when Interstate 26 was extended from Mars Hill (north of Asheville) to Johnson City, Tennessee, completing a 20-year half-billion dollar assembly universal through the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The town/city operates Asheville Redefines Transit, which consists of sixteen bus lines providing service throughout the City of Asheville and to Black Mountain, North Carolina.
The inhabitants of Asheville are served by the Buncombe County Public Libraries, consisting of 11 chapters positioned throughout the county with the command posts and central library, Pack Memorial Library, being positioned downtown. The fitness also includes a law library in the Buncombe County Courthouse and a genealogy and small-town history department positioned in the central library.
Drinking water in Asheville is provided by the Asheville water department.
Asheville offers enhance transit through the ART (Asheville Redefines Transit) bus service that operates athwart the City of Asheville and to the town of Black Mountain.
The town/city of Asheville is home to a Duke Energy Progress coal power plant near Lake Julian.
This power plant is designated as having Coal Combustion Residue Surface Impoundments with a High Hazard Potential by the EPA. In 2012 a Duke University study found high levels of arsenic and other toxins in North Carolina lakes and rivers downstream from the Asheville power plants coal ash ponds.
And North Carolina surroundingal regulators proposed a settlement in the lawsuit that stated coal ash threatened Asheville's waterworks.
The town/city of Asheville claims a clear focus on sustainability and the evolution of a green economy.
The Asheville City Council's goal is to reduce the overall carbon footprint 80% by the year 2030.
This means 4% or more reduction per year. In 2009 the reduction was made when the "City installed over 3,000 LED street lights, managed its water fitness under ISO 14001 standards for surroundingal management, improved the transit framework and management of many of its buildings, and switched many employees to a 4-day work week (which saves emissions from commuting)." Asheville is recognized by the Green Restaurant Association as the first town/city in the U.S.
Live music is a momentous element in the tourism-based economy of Asheville and the encircling area.
Asheville has a strong tradition of street performance and outside music, including festivals, such as Bele Chere and the Lexington Avenue Arts & Fun Festival (LAAFF).
Asheville also plays host to the Warren Haynes Christmas Jam, an annual charity event which raises cash for Habitat For Humanity, and attracts nationally touring acts; in addition to regular performers Haynes himself, and the band he plays with, Gov't Mule, past acts include The Allman Brothers Band, Dave Matthews Band, Ani Difranco, Widespread Panic.
Other big acts that have played the Asheville region in recent years are bands such as Dawes, Porcupine Tree, Broken Social Scene, Ween, the Avett Brothers, Gillian Welch, Cat Power, Ghost Mice, Loretta Lynn, the Disco Biscuits, STS9, Pretty Lights, Primus, M.
The town is also home to the Asheville Symphony Orchestra and the Asheville Lyric Opera and there are a number of bluegrass, country, and traditional mountain musicians in the Asheville area.
A residency at small-town music establishment the Orange Peel by the Smashing Pumpkins in 2007, along with the Beastie Boys in 2009, brought nationwide attention to Asheville. The Seattle based modern band Band of Horses have also recorded their last two albums at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, as have the Avett Brothers (who have also traditionally played a New Year's Eve concert in Asheville).
Christian vocal group the Kingsmen originated in Asheville.
Asheville City SC Soccer 2016 National Premier Soccer League Memorial Stadium Name Sport Founded League Venue Years in Asheville Asheville Smoke Ice hockey 1991 United Hockey League Asheville Civic Center 1998 2002 Asheville Aces Ice hockey 2004 Southern Professional Hockey League Asheville Civic Center 2004 Asheville Altitude Basketball 2001 NBA Development League Asheville Civic Center 2001 2005 Area universities and universities, such as the University of North Carolina at Asheville, compete in sports.
Many kayak manufacturers have their bases of operation in the Asheville area. Some of the most distinguished whitewater kayakers live in or around Asheville. In its July/August 2006 journal, the group American Whitewater titled Asheville one of the top five US whitewater cities. Asheville is also home to various Disc Golf courses.
There are two youth soccer clubs in Asheville, Asheville Shield Football Club and HFC.
The Asheville Hockey League provides opportunities for youth and adult inline hockey at an outside rink at Carrier Park.
Because hundreds of miles of trails are in close adjacency to Asheville, trail running is also a prominent small-town sport. Sculpture in Downtown Asheville of a young lady drinking from a fountain shaped like a horse.
The Asheville Community Theatre was established in 1946, producing the first amateur manufacturing of the Appalachian drama, Dark of the Moon. Soon after, the young actors Charlton Heston and wife Lydia Clarke would take over the small theatre. The current ACT building has two performance spaces the Mainstage Auditorium, which seats 399 patrons (and titled the Heston Auditorium for its most famous alumni); and the more intimate black box performance space 35below, seating no more than 49 patrons. The Asheville Lyric Opera jubilated its 10th anniversary in 2009 with a concert featuring Angela Brown, David Malis, and Tonio Di Paolo, veterans of the Metropolitan Opera. The ALO has typically performed three fully staged experienced operas for the improve in addition to its vibrant educational program.
Asheville Vaudeville, Asheville's only monthly vaudeville range show, performs new material each month from small-town magicians, jugglers, comedians, musicians, stilt-walkers, knife-throwers and more. Asheville has been home to many small, experimental theatre companies over the years, such as Consider the Following..., Betterdays Productions, Black Swan Theatre, Dark Horse Theatre and Pleiades Productions. The Asheville capoeira performance boss was solidified with the arrival of world-renowned Mestre Pe de Chumbo to the region in 2006.
Due to this group's cumulative accomplishments in the art of capoeira and in developing improve the Asheville Culture Project (ACP) was established in 2010.
Anam Cara Theatre Company, which opened its doors in West Asheville in February 2011, produces eclectic, avant garde theatre aimed at building community, sparking dialogue, and promoting progressive civil change.
Asheville is the home to Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance and The Asheville Ballet.
Places of worship in Asheville include the Roman Catholic Basilica of St.
Luke's Church, Jesus People Church of Asheville, Conservative Jewish Beth Israel Synagogue, and The Asheville Jewish Learning Institute. Although the region has had a long history with the entertainment industry, recent developments are cementing Asheville as a potential expansion area for both film and TV.
The Asheville Film Festival has instead of its sixth year.
However the City of Asheville, which funds the festival, has announced that it will no longer fund the festival.
The initial logo for URTV Asheville Public Access channel.
Asheville also hosts the Action - Fest Film Festival 2010 2012.
See also: List of newspapers in North Carolina, List of airways broadcasts in North Carolina, and List of tv stations in North Carolina Asheville is in the "Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville-Anderson" tv DMA and the "Asheville" radio ADI for the city's airways broadcasts. The major tv station in Asheville is ABC partner WLOS-TV Channel 13, with studios in Biltmore Park and a transmitter on Mount Pisgah.
Other stations licensed to Asheville include WUNF, a PBS station on Channel 33 and The CW partner WYCW on Channel 62.
Asheville is also served by the Upstate South Carolina stations of WYFF Channel 4 (NBC), WSPA-TV Channel 7 (CBS), WHNS-TV Channel 21 (FOX), My - Network - TV station WMYA Channel 40 and 3 - ABN station Channel 41.
The Asheville Citizen-Times is Asheville's daily journal which covers most of Western North Carolina.
WCQS is Asheville's enhance airways broadcast.
Main article: List of citizens from Asheville, North Carolina See also: List of University of North Carolina at Asheville notable citizens Asheville is featured as a locale in the novel One Second After by William R.
Asheville is the place Natalie, the heroine in the novel Joshua Spassky by Gwendoline Riley, visits to meet the eponymous hero.
Deborah Smith's novel The Crossroads Cafe is set in the mountain peaks above Asheville, and prominent scenes take place in the city.
Sequels to that novel also take place in and around Asheville.
The film The Hunger Games was filmed near Asheville.
James Dashner's novel The Kill Order takes place in and around Asheville.
Official rain records for Asheville were kept at Aston Park from March 1869 to July 1876, various locations in the town/city from August 1876 to August 1964, and at Asheville Regional Airport since September 1964.
"A History of Asheville and Buncombe County" (text/.html).
"Asheville 0 1800 The Early Settlers" (text/.html).
"NC Business History - Railroad - Western North Carolina Railroad history & officers".
The Federal Writers' Project of the Federal Works Agency, Works Projects Administration for the State of North Carolina, "North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State", The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1939, page 139.
The Federal Writers' Project of the Federal Works Agency, Works Projects Administration for the State of North Carolina, "North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State", ISBN 0403 - 021820; The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1939, pages 69, 139.
"Preservation-Asheville, North Carolina: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary".
University of North Carolina at Asheville.
"Preservation--Asheville, North Carolina: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary".
"NOAA records for August Asheville, NC".
"Station Name: NC ASHEVILLE RGNL AP".
"Asheville Neighborhoods".
University of North Carolina at Asheville.
"Law Firm in Asheville North Carolina".
"City of Asheville Comprehensive Annual Financial Report" (PDF).
"Asheville councilman atheism debate goes viral: Cecil Bothwell gets wide audience".
"United States - North Carolina - NC State Senate - NC State Senate 48".
"Obama Vacation: First Family To Visit Asheville, North Carolina".
"Evergreen Community Charter School, Asheville North Carolina - Evergreen Community Charter School, Asheville North Carolina".
"I-26 Connector, Asheville, NC".
City of Asheville, NC.
"Asheville Transit".
City of Asheville.
"Local News - The Asheville Citizen-Times - citizen-times.com".
"City of Asheville Carbon Footprint Annual Report : 2011-2012" (PDF).
"Music pumps up economy, enlivens eveninglife"; Michael Flynn; Asheville Citizen-Times; August 22, 2003 "Asheville Community Theatre " PRODUCTION HISTORY".
"Asheville Community Theatre".
"Asheville Community Theatre | Asheville, NC's Official Travel Site".
"The Asheville Fringe Arts Festival - Asheville Fringe Arts Festival".
Asheville Fringe Arts Festival.
"Religious services, festivals: Asheville faith news".
"Asheville's River Arts District hosts 19th annual Twin Rivers Media Festival beginning Friday" (PDF).
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Asheville, North Carolina.
Asheville, North Carolina, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Asheville travel guide by Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau Municipalities and communities of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States University of North Carolina at Asheville
Categories:
Asheville, North Carolina - Cities in North Carolina - County seats in North Carolina - Populated places established in 1784 - Asheville urbane region - Cities in Buncombe County, North Carolina
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