Today we hopped on the hop on/hop off trolley. It seemed like the best way to see Asheville without the driver and the navigator getting stressed. Plus we learned all sorts of interesting trivia about Asheville. A really enjoyable day.
From yesterday, George originally owned 135,000 acres - all the way past those mountains in the distance in this photo.
Fun stuff we learned....
A couple was married, they had problems and he left her. She was with her high society friends and couldn't admit he left her so she told everyone he died, had a closed casket funeral and burial. Which was fine until he turned up 10 years later, dying of cancer. She took him back, he died and she buried him again. Another couple - he was from somewhere else, she was from here. he hated Asheville, they left, when he died she had him buried here as revenge since he hated it here.
Before Asheville was a town there was a Cherokee trail through here which was later a trail to move livestock from Greenville, TN to Greenville, SC. Here's a sculpture to commemorate that.
The only civil war battle fought here was in 1865. The young guys were all fighting elsewhere when they heard a union unit was nearby so 400 of the old guys got together and called themselves the silver greys - silver hair, grey uniforms. They went out and fought for 4 hours, ran out of ammo and went back to replenish. When they returned the union army was gone. The silver greys celebrated that they had won and turned back the union army. The union army meanwhile was celebrating because they had just learned that the war had ended. So both sides claimed victory and no one was injured or killed.
Mr. Grove built the Grove Inn - the most impressive hotel here. He made his fortune selling snake oil cures. He had a concoction that was sure to make you feel good - because it had lots of alcohol. There was an outbreak of malaria and quinine is a treatment for that so Mr. Grove added quinine to his snake oil and sold more bottles of that at 50 cents a bottle than they sold coka cola at 5 cents. He made a fortune and built his hotel. It has 500 rooms, was built in 11 months, has huge fireplaces that burned 9' logs. In the photo of the hotel below left - the building to the left was used as a prison during WWII to house POWs from Germany.
Author Thomas Wolfe is from here. His mother left his father and bought a big house and turned it into a boarding house. Thomas lived with his mother, the rest of the kids stayed with dad elsewhere in town. Mom was greedy, Thomas often would awake to find a stranger in his bed because mom had rented his bed to a boarder. Asheville was excited when he published his first book (Look Homeward Angel) until they read it. It was an expose of the town. He changed the names but everyone knew who he was talking about and he pretty much trashed everyone and everything about the town.
And me and my lions:
Medical stuff....
This area has been a place where people come for resperatory problems because of the pure air. Lots of people came here to recuperate from tuberculosis because of the air. There was an outbreak of typhoid which they figured out had to do with flies, so they disinfected the city horse barns, and armed all the kids and adults with flyswatters and the typhoid went away. So this "cure" was exported to other cities.
A lot of the beautiful old homes would have been destroyed to build parking lots, but luckily there was a government program to buy these houses cheap if they would be destroyed and hundreds of beautiful homes and buildings were saved. There was a beautiful Victorian house that has been for sale for 20 years, but no one wants to buy it - it was part of a mental hospital and said to have too many ghosts - no one wants to buy it.
F. Scott Fitsgerald spent a lot of time here, so did his wife Zelda. He was a womanizer, she suffered from probably bipolar disorder but didn't know what at the time. She ended up here in a mental hospital off and on for many years. In 1948 there was a fire in the hospital. Back then they restrained and locked mental patients in their rooms and in the fire Zelda and 9 of the 10 patients died.
Other stuff:
The Appalacian mountains were formed 480,000 million years ago and were as high or higher than the Rockies but due to erosion are now in the 5,000-6,000 height.
The Biltmore village which was built at the same time as the Biltmore, where the workers lived, was also designed by Olmsted. If you look at the street plan, the bottom of your hand would be where the church is with the streets fanning out like the fingers of your hand.
We walked around downtown some - an artsy area - and then to the Grove Arcade filled with shops and restaurants.
Back to the Biltmore for a minute - they say they are the most visited privately owned historic home in the US (1.5million visitors/year). Mt. Vernon says it's second after Biltmore. Graceland says it's the second most visited home in the US (600,000 visitors) after the White House, and since the White House is mostly an office building maybe it doesn't count as a private home. So who is correct? I searched the internet and couldn't find a definite answer.
Traveln' on the Trolley
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Asheville, North Carolina, United States
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Comments

2025-02-16
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Mary
2017-04-27
I love the chickens. They look like the Wyandotte I have in the backyard.
Jeff
2017-04-27
The White House itself has few, if any, offices. It has state rooms and private quarters, kitchen, etc., The offices where the government nasties happen are in buildings off to the east and west. So, I think the WH qualifies as a residence. Private nasties happen there, upstairs.
Jeff
2017-04-27
Note that the mamma and baby pig are being trailed by a pair of wild turkeys. Those turkeys are in charge there -- they keep the pigs in line. Otherwise, pigs would dominate the city. Pigs hate turkeys, except at Thansgiving.
Romy
2017-04-27
Is the White House actually privately owned? Don't the people of the United States technically own it as opposed to one individual?