After leaving Asheville, Steven and I drove along the dotted, i.e. particularly scenic, Hwy 74, heading to the town of Chimney Rock that lay in a gorge at the foot of its namesake formation. The road was indeed gorgeous as long as one didn't suffer from car sickness as it had many, many twists and turns!
St. Louis doctor Lucius Morse discovered the rugged beauty of Hickory Nut Gorge on his first visit in 1900. After spotting Chimney Rock, he desired to make the area accessible to the world but also preserving its natural beauty.
He and his two brothers purchased a tract of land that included Chimney Rock and the surrounding cliffs for $5,000. Over the ensuing years, Morse and his family built bridges over the Rocky Broad River, paved a three-mile road into the park, and created a network of stairs to many lookouts, including to the top of the chimney.
The family's commitment to preserving this ecological wonder prompted them to sell their property to the state of North Carolina in 2007. It was now the focal point of the greater Chimney Rock State Park.
We parked by the stream and bridge adjacent to Chimney Rock to take in the stellar views. We'd planned to enter the park but changed our minds upon hearing the very expensive entrance rates.
We learned that the western part of North Carolina was a huge apple-growing area as we passed orchard after orchard and lots of roadside stands.
A little further on was the very picturesque Mill House Lodge in the small community of Flat Rock. What a fun place that looked like to stay, don't you think?!
The town of Flat Rock had been named for the nearby natural formation and had been a landmark for the Indigenous peoples and early settlers.
Our goal later that afternoon was the town of Hendersonville but we stopped first in Flat Rock at Connemara Farms, the home where President Lincoln's biographer, Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg lived from 1945-1967.
Sandburg was 67 and world-famous when he and his wife settled on this hilltop in 1945. As the maverick son of Swedish immigrants, Sandburg wanted to be known above all as an American. He found his "literary voice" working in the small Midwestern towns and farms and on the streets of Chicago and Milwaukee. By 1920, Sandburg had been acknowledged as 'Poet of the People.' Sandburg's voice "became America's voice around the world."
Born in 1878 in the prairie town of Galesburg, Illinois, Sandburg left school after the 8th grade, worked odd jobs, and served in Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War. From 1904-1908, he began to concentrate on writing poems and prose, giving lectures about Walt Whitman, becoming an organizer for Wisconsin's Social-Democratic Party, and campaigning for presidential candidate Eugene Debs.
More than one-third of Sandburg's many literary works had been published during the 22 years he lived at Connemara before he died in 1967 at the age of 89. Much of the focus of his literary career had been on the life of Abraham Lincoln, including a six-volume biography. He traveled extensively to read his poems and talk about the former president.
Sandburg so liked music he liked to end his public lectures and poetry readings by playing his guitar and singing folk songs.
Front Lake was naturally located at 'the front' of the Sandburg property so we had to walk around it to proceed to the house itself.
Walking up the steep hill to Sandburg's house, we reached his Tenant House that had been built around 1910 that was a residence for farm assistants and family guests.
The Swedish House likely was named in honor of his parent's homeland.
The Farm Manager's House was constructed around 1915 to serve as a residence for a farm caretaker and his family. The Sandburgs hired a farm manager in 1946 to tend their property by feeding, milking, and breeding goats, plowing fields, and building maintenance. The Carl Sandburg Writer-in-Residence uses the home each spring.
Visitors to the farm had little idea that a world-famous writer lived on the property as they had come to learn about raising goats, as they were Lilian Sandburg's passion. Internationally known for breeding world-record milk producers, she managed a herd of over 200 goats from 1945-1966. Carl Sandburg made sure that Lilian Sandburg's expertise in goat genetics shared the limelight with his writing in the many articles published about the couple.
Though Connemara was now part of the National Park Service, Lilian's passion for goats continued with 20 dairy goat kids born in the spring of 2020.
Mrs. Sandburg used Goat Sheds when goats were ill and needed to be isolated from the main herd.
The Sandburgs tended a large vegetable garden providing much of their own food for the year through canning, drying, and preservation. Park volunteers still plant a variety of vegetables here each year.
We didn't realize initially that there would be such a hike up to the Sandburg home. Thank goodness, it was such a pleasant day and not awfully humid.
Another consequence in North Carolina of Covid-19 last fall was that Connemara had to be closed because there wasn't enough room for people to stay six feet apart inside. How disappointing we couldn't explore the nooks and crannies of the home Carl and Lilian Sandburg shared in their later years. But, we had learned a lot about the Sandburgs and their love for each other and the area.
Returning to Flat Rock, we wandered around the Flat Rock Playhouse Mainstage exterior before taking full advantage of the convenient picnic table on site. Begun in 1952 with a few weeks of summer performances, the 'State Theater of North Carolina' has since been celebrated for its professional caliber plays, musicals, and youth productions.
We had to be careful walking around because there was some of the 'flat rock' the town had been named for.
I was glad we had stopped in Flat Rock for the chance to wander around the Sandburg property, the playhouse grounds, and also the Episcopal Church of St. John in the Wilderness that was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The church had been the private chapel on the grounds of an estate for the Baring family who had emigrated from England.
The family gave up their rights to the church and turned the deed over to the Bishop of North Carolina. It was interesting to read that ten years before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slaves and White families worshipped together in the church's pews. It would have been neat to have found the plaque in the cemetery that indicated ground was available to bury slaves and later freedmen as well as members of White families.
In the late afternoon, we reached Hendersonville, a town in western North Carolina that had once been a hunting ground for the Cherokee people.
It was fun wandering down Main St., popping in and out of the craft stores, and seeing the collection of painted bears that would soon be auctioned off by Historic Downtown Hendersonville to benefit various organizations in the area.
I would have loved to have known what the auction's winners had decided to 'do' with their bears. Did they place the bears outside their homes, I wondered? I think this mama and baby bear was my favorite one.
You can see we saw quite a bit of Hendersonville for me to capture photos of all these bears!
The side of the Citizens National Bank building featured a clock from 1927 made by the McClintock Company for banks and other financial institutions from 1917-1949. It was made of bronze and had copper hoods on the top and bottom with Art Deco dial faces. It was a good reminder to look up from time to time!
Next post: North Carolina's Arboretum with its thousands of Legos, and not-to-be-missed Bonsai and Quilt Gardens!
Posted either terribly late or ungodly early on June 29th/30th, 2021, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a place near and dear to our hearts. Steven and I trekked out here from Denver for many years with our four children in tow, first in tents, and then in a travel trailer before making our way further East so the children could spend time with their grandparents in Cleveland and Ottawa. How much fun it is to walk down this part of memory lane for the first time in about 25 years!
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