Pisgah National Forest

In the 1890s, George W. Vanderbilt was building his enormous Biltmore Estate near Asheville and buying up huge tracts of worn-out, over-logged mountain land around it. To manage those forests he hired Gifford Pinchot, who would later run the U.S. Forest Service, and then the German-trained forester Carl Schenck. It was on this land that Schenck founded the Biltmore Forest School in 1898, the first school of forestry in the United States.

For the first time in the country, students studied the forest as a science, learning soil, water, wildlife, and how to cut trees in a way that let the woods grow back. More than four hundred students passed through before the school closed in 1913, and they fanned out across the nation to help build forestry into a real profession. That is why this ground is called the Cradle of Forestry in America, honored today at a historic site with restored school buildings, exhibits, an old logging locomotive, and gentle paved trails.

Pisgah was officially established on October 7, 1916, and it holds a special place in American history: it was the first national forest created from purchased land rather than carved out of the public domain of the West. Much of its half million acres was bought from the widow of George Vanderbilt after his death, land the family had already been managing as one of the country's first experiments in scientific forestry.

This mattered because most national forests in the East had to be assembled parcel by parcel, from private hands, under a 1911 law called the Weeks Act that let the government buy land to protect the headwaters of rivers. Pisgah led the way. What had been logged-over hillsides a century ago is now deep, healthy forest again, living proof of the idea born at the Biltmore Forest School: that a forest can be used and cared for at the same time.

For most visitors, the magic of Pisgah is its water. Transylvania County calls itself the Land of Waterfalls, and the forest around Brevard is why. Looking Glass Falls pours 60 feet over a rock face right beside Highway 276, so close you can feel its spray from the pull-off. A little farther up the road is Sliding Rock, a natural 60-foot stone waterslide where generations of families have shrieked their way down into a cold plunge pool below.

Rising above it all is Looking Glass Rock, a massive bare granite dome named for the way rainwater shines like a mirror on its face. Hikers climb its steep trail for wide mountain views, and climbers test themselves on its walls. Add the trout-rich Davidson River, hundreds of miles of hiking and mountain-biking trails, and the Blue Ridge Parkway threading the ridgetops, and you have one of the finest concentrations of mountain recreation anywhere in the East.

The gateway is Brevard, and the classic route runs up Highway 276 into the Pisgah Ranger District, past Looking Glass Falls, Sliding Rock, and the Cradle of Forestry, with countless trailheads along the way. Because this is a sprawling working forest and not a single fenced park, the trick is to pick an area or a theme for the day, waterfalls, a summit hike, a swim, the forestry history, rather than trying to cover everything.

The most popular waterfall corridor fills up fast on warm weekends, so an early start makes for a better day. Bring water, wear shoes with grip for slick rocks near the falls, and pack a layer, since the higher country is always cooler. However you spend the day, you are moving through both a beautiful mountain landscape and the birthplace of a big American idea, that the country's forests are worth understanding, using wisely, and keeping for good.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.