“Keep Asheville Weird!” We’ve all heard it.[1] But what exactly is so weird about Asheville? How long has our region had a reputation for quirkiness? And how much of it is actually true?
On March 31, storyteller and author Liz Z. Pardue presents Keep NC Weird! The Strange & Macabre History of Our State at Pack Memorial Library, a one-hour journey through the strangest history, most eccentric characters, and darkest folklore of the Old North State. Join Pardue for a lively exploration of the bizarre, macabre, and delightfully peculiar stories that make North Carolina unforgettable.
In preparation for this event, we thought we’d explore some of the facts and fictions of Western NC’s weirdest history. In our role as archivists, we often find that folklore and documentation don’t always line up. We might be able to help patrons discover when a story started showing up in print, but it’s tough to say whether the story is founded in real history, and even if it is, tougher still to validate the juicy details that make that story stick in the popular imagination.
So let’s start by clearing the air about a few myths—or, shall we say, folklore that can’t be verified by historical evidence.
Stay tuned for our next installment, in which we’ll share some true tales that definitely do have the receipts to back them up.
Walt Disney’s Asheville Engineering Career
Anyone who lived in Asheville in the late 1990s likely recalls the persistent urban legend: Walt Disney once worked as a junior draftsman in the Jackson Building, only to be fired for doodling cartoons on architectural blueprints.
The myth found new life in 1997 during Asheville’s Bicentennial Storytelling Festival. Local businessman Red Hoyle waxed nostalgic about his childhood in 1924, claiming he used to make deliveries to a man he believed was a young Disney (though, notably, he mentioned the man wasn’t using that name at the time). Columnist Bob Terrell picked up the tale for the Citizen-Times, but the Disney Corporation was quick to issue a reality check. They sent a detailed letter to the paper confirming that Disney’s whereabouts in Kansas City and California were well-documented during that era; a mountain stint simply wasn’t possible.
”Disney rumors happen a lot, the [Disney] archives people said. ‘All we can do is tell the truth’.”[2]
As it turns out, the seeds of the legend were planted decades earlier. In December 1966, immediately following Disney’s death, the widow of Major Thomas A. Coxe, Jr. told the paper that her husband had been the one to fire the future mogul in 1924.
According to family lore, after being let go for his consistent doodling, the mystery draftsman asked for twenty minutes to pack. In that time, he allegedly sketched a parting gift for Coxe: a drawing of a trampish hobo captioned, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”[3]
While a photocopy of the drawing still existed in 1966, it bears no signature. As much as we hate to debunk a good story, the facts are clear: Walt Disney never worked in Asheville. Someone with a sharp wit and a talent for cartoons certainly did, and while he may have gone on to do great things, his true identity remains a mystery. The only thing we know for certain? It definitely wasn’t Walt.
The Vast Network of Secret Tunnels
“Do you have maps of the secret tunnel system underneath Asheville?”
That’s a question we hear with astonishing regularity. First, if we had such maps stashed away at the public library, the “secret tunnels” wouldn’t be so secret, would they? Yet without fail, every few weeks or so, we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of having to disappoint our dear patrons.
Eyewitness claims of having seen the tunnels generally mention the basement of Pack’s Tavern, Rat Alley between Wall Street and Patton Avenue, the Masonic Temple, and the restrooms formerly located on Pack Square.
In her 2017 book Legends, Secrets and Mysteries of Asheville, author Marla Hardee Milling explores this particular legend in detail, and described her own visits to allegedly formerly connected tunnels at Pack Square, Rat Alley, Jackson Underground Cafe, and Zambra.
These explorations brought her to some dark and dingy underground spaces, but no evidence to suggest that they connect to form a vast interconnected network.
Of Rat Alley, she says, “While it does run underneath Wall Street, it’s really not an underground tunnel. It is as its name reveals: an alley.”
Likewise, a visit to the underground cafe revealed a basement with a door leading out below the sidewalk—“but no tunnel.”[4]
Plenty of folks are still around who remember the underground restrooms on Pack Square, also pictured in this photo (with Jim Crow-era signs indicating their use by white women only). The entrances were later closed off. But a bathroom is not exactly a tunnel, either, is it?
“Answer Man” John Boyle also tackled the question in 2015, specifically with regard to the oft-trafficked rumor that the secret tunnel system was part of a subway transportation system originally set forth by 1920s urban planner John Nolen.
You can take a look at references to a “subway” in Nolen’s plan online or here in the reading room, but don’t be fooled by the terminology.
“The reference to a ‘subway’ in Nolen’s plan is not a train subway but an underground tunnel for automobile traffic,” historian Kevan Frazier told Boyle. “In the days before the two big Westgate bridges, it was a major pain to wind down to a much lower bridge (roughly near where the Riverlink bridge is today). Rather than wind up the mountain after crossing the bridge from West Asheville to downtown (or vice versa), he wanted to make it simpler by having the bridge go into an underground tunnel. It was never built.”
Frazier also roundly dismisses the most infamous secret tunnel claim—that of an underground connection from the Asheville Masonic Temple to City Hall. “No such physical tunnel exists,” he told Boyle. “The notion of the tunnel between the two is really more of a euphemism” expressing the fact that politically and financially powerful men were often members of Masonic societies in the 20th century.[5]
Any other tunnels you may have heard about, as far as we can tell, are documented only in the good old “heard tell” way. But hey, if you’ve got records to the contrary, let us know. We could always use more old maps, blueprints, and photos!
The Jackson Building’s Bullseye
Attendees of certain tours in town have probably heard the tale concerning the sidewalk in front of the Jackson Building downtown: that after the 1929 stock market crash so many distraught businessmen and politicians leaped to their deaths that a dark-witted urban planner eventually installed a brick “bullseye” in front of the Jackson Building as a nod to the tragedy.
The truth is far more nuanced. While there were indeed suicides associated with the crash in Asheville, none involved jumping from buildings, and only two deaths occurred in or near the Jackson Building.
In December 1930, the Central Bank—located in what is now the Legal Building (home to French Broad Chocolate Lounge) next door to the Jackson Building—failed while holding more than $4 million in city funds. It was a staggering blow to the city and to then Mayor Gallatin Roberts, who also served on the bank’s board. In the fallout, eleven bankers and six public officials, including Roberts, were charged with conspiracy. Despite a long, respectable history of public service, Roberts’ reputation was shattered
Though he fiercely maintained his innocence, he ultimately took his own life by gunshot in an office above the bank. He left a moving letter to the people of Asheville, concluding, “My soul is sensitive, and it has been wounded unto death. […] I have given my life for my city, but I am content. I did what I thought was right.”[6] Years later, he was officially exonerated of all charges.
The following April a local real estate agent by the name of F.M. Messler, who rented space on the 6th floor of the Jackson Building, shot himself in a vacant office of the building. While he had been in poor health, there is little doubt that the plunge of the stock market and local real estate values affected his state of mind.[7]
As for the “bullseye,” its origin is purely practical. In the early 1980s, the City of Asheville began revitalizing downtown, including installing new sidewalks around Pack Square. The brick circle in front of the Jackson Building was designed as a placemaking element intended to hold Asheville’s first piece of non-monument public art. Quality Forward (now Asheville GreenWorks) selected a wavy metal sculpture by Swannanoa artist Dirck Cruser, but the heavy anchoring system required for the piece threatened the pipes running beneath the sidewalk.[8]
The sculpture was relocated, and not too long thereafter, the spot was integrated into the Urban Trail.
While some petitioned for a statue mimicking the marble angel that once stood at W.O. Wolfe’s Monument Shop (and the inspiration for the title of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel), that statue was placed in front of the old Pack Memorial Library (now part of the Asheville Art Museum). The Jackson Building site became Station 27: Monument Corner, commemorating Wolfe’s former shop.
The brick circle was always about art and urban design—never a bullseye, and certainly never intended to mock the tragic passing of one of Asheville’s most dedicated mayors.
At the end of the day, while folklore can’t always be verified—and sometimes can even be debunked—the stories we tell about ourselves are still culturally essential.
Stories become a repository for a community’s shared fears, values, and collective memory. They may hint at emotional truths about how a city explains its past and finds its character.
What do you think these local legends reveal about Asheville’s identity?
Be sure not to miss Keep NC Weird! The Strange & Macabre History of Our State with award-winning storyteller Liz Z. Pardue at Pack Memorial Library the evening of Tuesday, March 31! Pardue will share tales from across the Old North State sure to give you a greater appreciation for the weird and wonderful.
Tuesday, March 31, 2026, 5:30 – 6:30pm
Lord Auditorium, Pack Memorial Library, 67 Haywood Street, Asheville
This post is part one in a three-part extension of the presentation “Fictitious ‘Facts’ of Asheville’s Past,” originally presented by Katherine Cutshall at Nerd Nite Asheville, January 2024. Additions are by BCSC staff members Carissa Pfeiffer, Kathy Hill, and Jenny Bowen.
Read the full series:
- Asheville’s Weirdest Facts and Fictions, Part I: Dubious Legends
- Asheville’s Weirdest Facts and Fictions, Part II: True Tales of Eccentric Animals
- Asheville’s Weirdest Facts and Fictions, Part III: Counterculture Curiosities
[1] Well, at least since the mid-2000s. The earliest documentation of this exact slogan in reference to Asheville that we can find in print dates to 2006, several years after Red Wassenich coined “Keep Austin Weird” on KOOP Radio. You can find more on the frequently-imitated phrase’s origin at the Austin History Center, https://txarchives.org/aushc/finding_aids/00654.xml
[2] Tony Kiss, “Was Walt Ever In Asheville?” Asheville Citizen-Times, December 7, 1997, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-19971207actw/192722400/
[3] John Havlicek, “Disney Worked as a Draftsman Here,” Asheville Citizen-Times, December 12, 1966, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-19661212actd/188240615/
[4] Marla Hardee Milling, Legends, Secrets and Mysteries of Asheville (Charleston: The History Press, 2017), 34.
[5] John Boyle, “Apple Tree Honda expands, more on tunnels,” Asheville Citizen-Times, March 23, 2015, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-asheville-downt/189011754/
[6] Gallatin Roberts, “To the People of Asheville,” as printed on the front page of the Asheville Times, February 25, 1931, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-asheville-times-gallatin-roberts-let/192999822/
[7] F.M. Messler Shoots Self to Death; Note Says Act Due to Worries Over Finances,” Asheville Times, April 4 ,1930, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-asheville-times-fm-messler-suicide/193201444/
[8] John Campbell, Jr. “Sculpture Is Too Big for Pack Square Site,” Asheville Times, September 25, 1982, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-asheville-times-19820925avltimes/192738530/
