Pisgah National Forest

The land was supposed to prove conservation worked. George Washington Vanderbilt II hired Carl Schenck, a German forester, to teach forestry at the Biltmore Forest School — the first school of forestry in the United States. The doctrine was practical: logged land could grow back, if you knew what you were doing. In 1914, Edith Vanderbilt sold 86,700 acres to the federal government. The tract was purchased under the Weeks Act, which authorized the creation of national forests in the east. Pisgah National Forest was established in 1916 — the first national forest in the eastern United States created not from public domain but from private land. The experiment was whether you could reverse a century of industrial logging. The answer, visible now across 512,758 acres spanning twelve western North Carolina counties, was yes.

Pisgah covers the mountains on three sides of Asheville — the Pisgah, Appalachian, and Grandfather ranger districts hold summits over 6,000 feet, old-growth stands in Linville Gorge, and three designated wilderness areas where the forest runs unmanaged. The Blue Ridge Parkway cuts through. So does the Appalachian Trail. Forty-six thousand acres of old growth survived the timber era. The Cradle of Forestry, where Schenck taught, is preserved as a historic site — the place American forestry learned to think past the next cutting season.

The waterfall circuit draws the weekend crowd: Sliding Rock, a 60-foot natural waterslide ending in a frigid pool; Looking Glass Falls; Catawba Falls, just under three miles round trip on a wide gravel trail crossing the Catawba River. Bent Creek holds the mountain-bike traffic. Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, sits in a state park just outside the forest boundary. The forest is popular for hiking, backpacking, fishing, rock climbing. Pisgah is divided into three ranger districts; offices are in Pisgah Forest, Mars Hill, and Nebo.