Archive for December, 1999

Posted on December 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

Black Mountain’s Challenge

The “Front Porch of Western North Carolina” revitalizes its links to the past.In just a few months, 150 or more runners will assemble at Black Mountain’s Lake Tomahawk. Their destination: the highest peak east of the Rockies. Come daylight February 26, runners from states nationwide will set off, one group running a full marathon–26.2 miles–to the Blue Ridge Parkway and back, the other group running an ultra-marathon to the summit of Mount Mitchell–40 miles roundtrip.

The event is one of the most challenging races in the country. The weather alone can be an intimidating factor. Starting an elevation of 2,360 feet, the runners for the 40-mile Mount Mitchell Challenge will pass through three climatic zones before reaching the 6,684-foot summit. At that elevation, conditions at Mount Mitchell resemble those of New England and the southern reaches of Canada, several hundred miles north. While it may be 45 or 50 degrees down in Black Mountain, where the average annual snowfall is about a foot, temperatures at Mount Mitchell, which gets on average 104 inches of snow yearly, could be well below freezing.

Two years ago, race participants had to run atop six-to-eight-foot snowdrifts on the summit. Last year, they trudged through a foot of soft snow. Conditions can be so challenging that race organizer Jim Curwen has posted this warning on his web site: “Do not underestimate the dangers or the difficulties inherent in this event!”

Curwen notes that the rough terrain coupled with the forces of nature make it “quite likely” that a competitor will suffer some sort of injury, ranging from “abrasions, contusions, or sprains . . . to hypothermia . . . to animal encounters, as this is still the natural habitat to the wildcat and the black bear.”

No, They’re Not Nuts

The upcoming annual event, Black Mountain’s third, underscores a larger, ongoing effort by merchants and town officials to revive historical links that will help drive tourism. “The Black Mountain Marathon and Mount Mitchell Challenge,” for example, was originated in part to stimulate business during the off months. The runners, who hail from as far away as California, lodge and shop locally for the days surrounding the event. “We’re inviting people in so that they can find out that in fact the town does not close down in the winter,” Curwen says.

More important for some in the town is that the race achieves a “rebirth” between Black Mountain and Mount Mitchell, something that race organizer Wendell Begley has been eager to do for nearly two decades.

In the early 1980s, Begley helped organize a cross-country ski challenge, but too much snow thwarted the event the first year and too much rain the next. Interest dissipated by the time the third annual challenge rolled around.

A few years later, Begley and a group of others worked to re-establish the narrow-gauge railroad that once took visitors from Black Mountain to Mitchell’s summit. The railroad had been used primarily to transport fir and spruce logs from the mountaintop to a sawmill in town. Then in 1915, protesters won a battle against logging on the Black Mountain Range–Mount Mitchell became North Carolina’s first state park, and the Mount Mitchell Scenic Railroad was established. The railroad ran for about six years until a toll road, which was less expensive to operate and maintain, replaced it in 1921.

The effort to revive the railroad “got a great deal of press,” Begley says. Unfortunately the old tracks had been removed, and in the end the cost to pump steam into the venture was too great.

The marathon, on the other hand, is comparatively inexpensive to operate and fairly weather-resistant. Moreover, it maintains important historical connections by following the old toll road, which originated in Black Mountain and followed the Continental Divide for nearly the entire route to the summit of Mitchell.

Swannanoa Valley Museum’s Curator Harriet Styles traveled the toll toad as a child. “People drove up in the morning and headed back in the afternoon,” she says. “It was so narrow that traffic could only travel one way.”

The “Mount Mitchell Motor Road” was billed as the “World’s Greatest Automobile Trip.” The “privilege of use of Road” was $1, the same cost as breakfast or “supper” at Camp Alice. The owners of the road advertised the trip to the top of Eastern America as the “Greatest one day outing trip every offered to the American people.”

An early brochure promoting the natural spectacles along the road reads: “A few people just a little while ago awoke to the fact that in a little 120-mile circle about Asheville is indeed the high altitude area of Eastern America. Very few know it, but in this area just mentioned are 44 peaks over 6,000 feet above the sea level, while our Mount Mitchell rears its majestic head 6,711 feet into a sky more beautiful and glorious than the Italian skies of song and story.” (The spirited brochure copywriters enthusiastically added 27 feet to the mountain’s elevation.)

In 1939, the Blue Ridge Parkway opened, severing the umbilical tie between Black Mountain and Mount Mitchell. Since then, “about every ten or 15 years, someone gets excited about re-establishing the link,” Styles says. “Highway 9, for example, was supposed to go from Myrtle Beach to Mitchell, but it stops short at Montreat.”

Einstein Slept Here

Likewise, to attract tourists, the arts and crafts community also is trying to reestablish connections to Black Mountain’s past. Local artists and owners of the town’s 11 art galleries frequently mention Black Mountain College, an experimental school that operated from 1933 to 1956. With its emphasis on the arts, the school attracted such thinkers as R. Buckminister Fuller, who designed geodesic domes; Josef Albers, the German-born American painter who fled Germany when the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis; and American composer John Cage. Such was the school’s reputation that Albert Einstein once gave a lecture on the campus.

The Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center is currently spearheading a campaign to find a permanent home for archives and artifacts collected from the old campus. Recently, the state’s Department of Cultural Resources awarded $40,000 to the Center. The money will be used to conduct oral histories with faculty and alumni.

Few people know about the college. The Center’s founding director emeritus first heard about the school when she moved to Paris in 1980. “I was amazed that this little town in North Carolina kept popping up in Paris all the time,” says Mary Holden, who now lives in Sylva. Holden noticed that biographies of artists in galleries frequently mentioned the school. In 1992, while still in Paris, she began planning a museum to honor the college.

While Black Mountain College no longer exists, artists still are drawn to the region. Glass artist Casey Phillips stumbled upon Black Mountain on a trip from her home in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. She was looking to relocate in Spruce Pine or Burnsville, but both towns were too far from the highway for Phillips, who frequently attended shows to display her wares. On the way to Asheville, she stopped in Black Mountain. “I could just feel the artistic energy here,” says the happy resident of five years now.

Judith Hollifield, whose father and brother run Black Mountain Gallery, felt the same energy when she returned here from Los Angeles for a visit. “It’s a place of power,” she says. “Artists and creative people come here for inspiration and renewal. It’s invigorating. I think people sense that Black Mountain presents them with the way life is supposed to be lived.”

Since the early 1900s, the area has attracted religious groups seeking a place for spiritual renewal. Today, there are more than half a dozen religious conference centers whose denominations have purchased large tracts of property to hold retreats that attract nearly 700,000 visitors a year.

The best known of these is Montreat. Its beautiful stone buildings are tucked into a cove at the foot of the Black Mountain Range. From here, one could hike to Mitchell’s summit on leaf-strewn trails under a canopy of rhododendrons. Runners will trudge through here, in fact, on their way up to the peak in February.

Because of the conference centers’ land holdings and the fact that the sloping hillsides form the second largest watershed in the United States, the area will likely retain the natural components that visitors and residents find so appealing, according to Bob McMurray, executive director of the Black Mountain/Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce.

“It really is an ecological wonderland from here to Mount Mitchell,” McMurray says, adding that a hike in the nearby woods reveals why botanists like Andre Michaux and John Fraser were so intrigued with the region.

McMurray says that Black Mountain is beginning to tout its trails as one of the key attractions of the town. Some of the best hikes in Western North Carolina have their beginnings within a few minutes of the town center.

Wendell Begley’s dream is that the race will shift increasingly more emphasis to the nearby trails. Three years ago, when the Black Mountain/Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce held its “Visions Conference,” Begley’s Economic Development Committee was asked what visitors to Black Mountain twenty years from now might see. In Begley’s mind, Mount Mitchell State Park had acquired the corridor of the old toll road. A visitor’s center marked the entrance of the trail leading to Mitchell.

Of course, that’s all just a dream in Wendell Begley’s head, but one that is inspired by a true passion for the past.

Sidebar: Black Mountain Beginnings

The 18-mile-long Swannanoa Valley once served as the hunting grounds for the Cherokee and Catawba indians. Both tribes had agreed by treaty that neither would settle in the valley, as it was the natural habitat for elk, deer, buffalo and, of course, bear.

From early reports she has read, Swannanoa Valley Museum’s Curator Harriet Styles says the valley seems to have closely resembled present-day Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “It was open valley,” Styles says. “I imagine it looked very inviting for settlers.”

In 1874, one settler did venture over from Old Fort. Samuel Davidson came with his wife, baby and servant girl. But Sam was ambushed and killed; his wife, baby and the servant girl escaped back to Old Fort. Soon after, Sam’s brother came over the mountain with several other families, and they were able to maintain a stronghold, establishing the valley’s first community at the confluence of Bee Tree Creek and the Swannanoa River.

When the railroad reached the region 1879 the name of the town was changed to Black Mountain Station from Grey Eagle, the name the Cherokee had given it, presumably because of an outcropping of rock that resembled an eagle. (Mount Mitchell was known then as Black Mountain–its stands of spruce and fir made it appear darker than other mountains in the region.)

In the early 1900s, Black Mountain became a health center. It was thought that the pure mountain air was an effective treatment for tuberculosis. Aware of the perceived health benefits of the region, E.W. Grove, who built the Grove Park Inn, planned a community near Black Mountain to be called Grovemont, which would have been the first planned community in the nation had Grove not died before seeing his plan fulfilled.

“Our valley is unique because of the people who were attracted here, many who came initially for health reasons,” Styles says. “But there were also the Biltmore artisans, such as Rafael Guastavino, who built a Spanish castle nearby. The conference centers have also attracted high-class, intelligent people.”

Posted on December 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

Behind the Scenes at Biltmore Estate

An inside look at Biltmore during its busiest”“and slowest”“months.

Here’s how your holiday decorations might compare with those of Biltmore House. Number of Christmas trees at your house: one. Biltmore House: 38. Tallest tree at your house: 8 feet. Biltmore House: 40 feet. Wreaths at your house: two. Biltmore House: 300. Garland at your house: 12 feet. Biltmore House: 4 miles.

“Perhaps we are a bit over the top,” says Rick King, Biltmore Estate’s vice president of house and gardens. But if Biltmore does appear to overdo it, it’s because Christmas at the Estate is big business. Beginning November 6, when the 40-foot Fraser Fir was raised in the Banquet Hall, until January 2, Biltmore will rake in more than 20 percent of its $50 million in annual revenues.

Just what does it take to pull it all off? A lot. First, there’s the immensity of the Estate itself (four of its 8,000 acres are under the roof–that’s right, square footage doesn’t apply here–the inside of the house takes up four acres.) But size alone isn’t what makes the task of decorating America’s largest private residence daunting. There’s also the fact that Biltmore is first and foremost a historic property, where every project must be carried out with an eye toward preservation.

“In every aspect of our business, our number-one priority is to preserve the property,” says Kathleen Mosher, Biltmore Estate’s public relations supervisor. “We’re never going to do anything that violates that principle.”

Accordingly, precautions are taken to protect the house, built by George Vanderbilt and opened in 1895, from not only the hordes of guests but also the dozens of decorators and staff. To begin with “only selected members of staff are allowed to touch any of the objects in the house,” Mosher says. And even they are required to wear cotton gloves before touching some items. And because they’re dealing with antiques, the decorating staff must work around the furniture, rather than moving it, and wear plastic booties to protect the fragile Oriental rugs. Housekeepers must lay screens over the rugs before vacuuming. “We have a lot of rules and regulations,” Mosher says, “to prevent any damage to the house.”

Only 364 Shopping Days Left

To get a glimpse at how Biltmore pulls off its massive holiday event, you have to turn the calendar back one year. That’s when the floral staff starts preparing for the next Christmas season. “We begin with the little actual documentation we have of Christmas celebrations at Biltmore a century ago,” says the Estate’s floral designer, Cathy Barnhardt, who has been supervising Christmas decorating at Biltmore for more than two decades. “This includes a few newspaper articles and receipts showing purchases charged to the ‘Christmas Tree’ by Mrs. Vanderbilt.”

Though photographs of the Estate’s early years are plentiful, there are no photographs marking early Christmas festivities. So Barnhardt and her floral crew turn to magazines, such as Ladies Home Journal and The House Beautiful, for articles that will educate them in Victorian decorating. To prepare for this year’s theme, reflecting a child’s holiday dreams, Barnhardt and her crew drew on turn-of-the-century literature on childhood.

“We’re not attempting to do a 100 percent, authentic Vanderbilt Christmas,” King says. “First of all, we have only limited documentation about Christmas at Biltmore. What we try to do is use things that would have been found in the time frame that the Vanderbilts were here.”

For decorating, Barnhardt uses a variety of materials, from live wreaths made by the Estate’s landscaping staff to hand-blown German glass ornaments. There are no original Vanderbilt ornaments. Most were made of glass, and few of those survived the century. And while Christmas trees in the Vanderbilt era probably would have had candles, visitors to Biltmore House’s evening programs will not see lighted candles on any of the trees.

Two Trees

What visitors will see is a huge Christmas tree”“a 40-foot Fraser Fir set in the Banquet Hall. The search to find the perfect tree”“actually two”“never ends. “Because we need a certain height and size,” Mosher says, “we’re identifying trees a year in advance. There’s someone constantly looking for us.” Both trees come from the Newland region of North Carolina.

So you may be asking, Why two trees? Because the firs dry quickly, the first tree has to be replaced at the end of November. It is a mammoth task, on both occasions. Raising the Banquet Hall tree takes about 16 hours, ending at around 4 a.m., King says. It requires the teamwork of 30 men, who carry in the tree with limbs tied and prop it up on one end. Workmen use ropes and pulleys to bring the tree upright.

To remove the tree four weeks later, work begins at 3 p.m. The house is closed for the evening program on the night the trees are switched. Workmen use an electric chainsaw to cut the standing Banquet Hall tree into manageable pieces. The logs and limbs are hauled to an organic dump on the property. The new tree is raised and decorated without any interruption for guests arriving the next morning.

A Marketing Miracle

Winter wasn’t always accompanied by the flurry of activity and lavish decorations at Biltmore. “We used to close,” King says. “The gates were locked to guests from December 15 until February 1. The employees took a two week vacation, then on January 1, we would come back and do what we euphemistically called spring cleaning.”

Then, in 1975 the company decided to stay open through the winter as an experiment to help defray preservation costs. “It was truly a financial decision,” King says. “The employees were on the payroll, we had to heat the house, we had to light it, so we figured we may as well stay open. We figured any money coming in was better than none at all.”

Marketing Christmas was an afterthought, King adds. “It was sort of slapdash thrown together, but it went over well,” he says. “The next year we thought we ought to put more thought in it, and more money.” So management did, spending about $50,000 in 1976 and marketing the event as Christmas at Biltmore.

That first Christmas a few thousand people turned out. Then, in the early 1980s the American Bus Association named Christmas at Biltmore as one of its top 100 events nationwide. “When that happened, it was like somebody flipped a switch,” King says. “It [Christmas at Biltmore] started growing quite dramatically.”

Operationally, things changed rather dramatically, too. In the days before it became the hugely successful event that Christmas at Biltmore has become, floral designer Cathy Barnhardt recruited her mother and friends to assemble ornaments, bows and other decorations to recreate the glittering style of the Gilded Age Christmas. She now manages a staff of eight to ten in the busiest period and recruits from other departments. Barnhardt even conducts a decorating class to train them.

Today, a couple hundred thousand turn out to gaze at the more than $1 million in decorations. Which brings to mind a couple of comparisons we neglected to mention at the beginning of our story. Visitors during the holiday season to Biltmore House: more than 200,000. Your house: varies. Charge to gaze at the decorations at Biltmore: $34.95 ($37.95 Friday and Saturday nights). Your house: a warm smile and good cheer. Happy holidays to you all.

Sidebar: Seasonal Solitude

While December at Biltmore House is bustling with visitors, January, February and March are the Estate’s quiet months. In December of 1998, for example, Biltmore counted 122,000 paying guests. By contrast, January of this year saw a little less than one-seventh of December’s visitations–18,000 guests. “On most days [during the slow months],” says Rick King, Biltmore Estate’s vice president of house and gardens, “the employees outnumber the guests.”

The winter months are a favorite among employees. Special Projects Coordinator Gina Elrod says she enjoys hiking Biltmore’s trails and gardens during the winter. “The landscape was designed to provide year-round interest,” she adds.

“I recommend January and February to a lot of people,” King says. “If you’re a flower person, those months may not be the best time of year. But if you can appreciate a barren landscape with lots of contrasting light and dark elements, the winter months are a good time to visit. It’s almost a lonely type of loveliness. I find it much more emotionally dramatic than when the plants are in bloom.”

And because they’re not as busy, Biltmore employees have more time to converse with guests. It’s a good time to get staff members to share their favorite stories about the house. While employees are not exactly twiddling their thumbs, they are often “thrilled to have someone to talk to,” King says.

Moreover, you have the run of the house in winter. (As an annual passholder living in Asheville, I visit the house often when few others are around. I enjoy the opportunity to explore the rooms without bumping shoulders with other curious guests.) An added bonus for winter visitors: You can often find a parking space in front of the entrance to the house. There’s never a line–for a steamy cup of hot chocolate or anything else.

Even during the busy months, there are ways to experience solitude similar to winter’s. If you arrive at the Estate after 3 p.m. and before 5 p.m., you’ll gain not only free entrance the next day but sufficient time to explore the house in relative solitude”“the front door closes at 6. By late afternoon, most of the guests have finished their tours and are on their way home ““Ralph Grizzle

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This article is the first in a series of four that will look behind the scenes at Biltmore Estate. Coming in March, we take a look at the gardens of Biltmore and the Estate’s ongoing fulfillment of Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision. In July, we look at how Biltmore has remained true to George Vanderbilt’s goal of Biltmore being a self-sustaining estate. Our September issue will provide readers with a behind-the-camera view of movie-making at Biltmore.