Asheville Citizen-Times

WNC History Column

Carl Sandburg, an iconic American, gets a reappraisal

Carl Sandburg, an iconic American, gets a reappraisal

Carl Sandburg, the prolific and widely-admired poet, Lincoln biographer, reporter, singer, folklorist, critic, and champion of the working class, has largely fallen from public or scholarly attention over the decades since his death. Western North Carolina audiences...

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WNC History: The ghost at Inn Around the Corner

WNC History: The ghost at Inn Around the Corner

“Are you aware you have a spirit at this inn?” Nancy Schnepp, the then-proprietor of Black Mountain’s Inn Around the Corner bed-and-breakfast, remembered a guest saying to her at breakfast one morning in the late 1990s. Surprised and having never experienced the...

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WNC History: A ghost in Black Mountain

WNC History: A ghost in Black Mountain

Ghost stories give us glimpses of our past. Often in these stories, real people from the past inhabit present-day spaces, living on in legend as ghosts long after their demise. One such ghost is Petunia, who is said to haunt Abbott Hall at Blue Ridge Assembly in Black...

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1882 Cowee Tunnel Disaster heroism, mistaken identity

1882 Cowee Tunnel Disaster heroism, mistaken identity

“To shorten a bend in the Tuckasegee River just west of Dillsboro, the (Western North Carolina Railroad) planned Cowee Tunnel. Each day hundreds of convicts, camped along the east bank of the stream, were ferried across to the site of the cutting. ... On that fateful...

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MLK’s trips to Black Mountain & Montreat

MLK’s trips to Black Mountain & Montreat

“I had the privilege of meeting Martin Luther King (in 1964),” Black Mountain resident Inez Daughtery recalled in an early 2000s interview. “And he talked to me at length about the things he was going through and the things he was doing. And he told me … ‘Mrs....

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WNC History: The Revolutionary journeys of 2 young WNC women

WNC History: The Revolutionary journeys of 2 young WNC women

The Glades as it appeared c1950 after many additions. The section on the left is the original home.   “Disguised as an old woman, and riding horseback, she went from her home … near the Catawba River (in North Carolina) to the Fort at Ninety-Six, South Carolina....

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WNC History: Bettie Sims was not a typical moonshiner

WNC History: Bettie Sims was not a typical moonshiner

“I didn’t set fire to the jail,” Bettie Sims calmly told a representative from The Charlotte Observer on Dec. 11, 1906. The reporter had tracked down the 29-year-old Polk County native the day before she was to appear on bond in front of a federal judge on charges of,...

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WNC History: Rumbling Bald was rumbling in 1874

WNC History: Rumbling Bald was rumbling in 1874

The mountains of Western North Carolina occasionally experience earthquakes and seismic activity. These instances often pass without much notice or damage. In 1874, however, the mountains at the eastern edge of the Hickory Nut Gorge — along the northern arm of modern...

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