Long Hunters
The long hunters were the legendary woodsmen of the 17th and 18th century who were among the first white people to see the vast American wilderness. The term refers to the men who undertook extended hunting trips across the Blue Ridge.
Zebulon Vance
Perhaps the most influential figure to emerge out of the mountains of Western North Carolina was Zebulon Baird Vance. Vance would become known to history as “North Carolina’s Civil War Governor.” His life represented the challenges, struggles, and accomplishments that...
William Holland Thomas
William Holland Thomas, born in Haywood Country in 1805, was befriended and adopted by the Cherokee leader, Yonaguska. Thomas’s close ties to the Cherokee promoted his success as a merchant. It is difficult to image their survival as a tribe without his tireless...
Walker Calhoun
Several hundred years ago the Cherokee people lived in parts of what are now Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Virginias. The Cherokee people were not migratory. Instead they farmed, hunted, and tended livestock.
Ray Hicks
Whether you are visiting the Coney Island Appalachian Festival, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, or the Lake Eden Art …
George W. Vanderbilt
George W. Vanderbilt, heir of the vast Vanderbilt family fortune, first visited the Asheville area as a young man in 1888. He fell in love with the mountains and began construction of a country home, which he called Biltmore. He also bought 125,000 acres of forest...
Tonya Carroll (B.A., 2007 M.A., 2009) with Bruce Frazier (Carol Grotnes Belk Endowed Professor in Commercial & Electronic Music) in the recording studio.