Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
This North Carolina corner of Appalachia offers an unexpected range of traditional riches.
Apr 21, 2000 | During the 1800s, magazines in the northeastern United States began carrying stories about the "unusual" behavior of people in other places. They were called "local color" stories and tended to focus on "bizarre" behavior. One of the areas targeted for this type of story was Appalachia.
The Civil War devastated Appalachia. Many people ended up poor, isolated and uneducated, and they became the subjects of these magazine stories. They were presented as "backward mountaineers living in a region within, but not part of, modern American life."
Of course, there were thousands of people in the Northeast who were also poor, isolated and uneducated, but readers preferred imported stories of poverty rather than hearing of their own domestic problems. The stories about Appalachia were distorted. They focused on the peculiar and the outrageous. They ignored the natural beauty of the area, and the skilled, intelligent and responsible people who lived there. I recently traveled through the Appalachian districts surrounding Asheville, N.C., to see what this part of the world is really like.
Ancestors of the Cherokee settled in North Carolina over 10,000 years ago. The first European to arrive was the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto, whose expedition marched through in the 1540s. Other early inhabitants were Scottish, Irish, English and African. During the late 1700s, wealthy plantation owners trying to escape summer heat of the low country began visiting the mountains around Asheville. By the 1800s, wealthy people from all over America were stopping in.
George Vanderbilt was one of those visitors. Vanderbilt had inherited a fortune from his grandfather, the shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, and he decided to use some of that wealth to build a house in Asheville. He ended up with Biltmore -- the largest private home in America. Today it's a historic site open to the public. The entrance fee is $32, and believe me, even though it is owned by descendants of Cornelius, they need the money.
George Vanderbilt read in eight languages and collected over 20,000 books. The library, his favorite room, contains a hidden door that leads to a spiral staircase to the guest rooms, making it easy for Vanderbilt or his guests to enter the library without passing through the main part of the house, take a book, meet fellow bibliophiles and return to their rooms unnoticed. There are guided tours of all the major rooms in the home, as well as the grounds, all well worth your time.
Biltmore was the most impressive, but not the only, evidence that Appalachia had been discovered. The railroads opened up the western part of North Carolina, and travelers came in during the summer trying to escape the unhealthy conditions in the cities. Tuberculosis was the plague of the time and people felt that clean mountain air and recreation would help protect them.
Get Salon in your mailbox!