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HeardTell Blog

A Christmas Mystery, Asheville 1950 to 1958

  Several years ago I stumbled upon an amazing find and immediately shelled out cash to purchase it. Here is a truncated scan of the collaged cover of a  Christmas scrapbook. Between 1950 and 1958 an anonymous crafter lovingly documented the Christmas season in Asheville. Bound with recycled shoelaces and festooned with metallic pipe cleaner curlicues; the pages are brown paper bags, holiday wrapping paper,
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ASHEVILLE’S FIRST MOTOR MILE: COXE AVENUE

Asheville’s First Motor Mile was downtown’s Coxe Avenue. A new motor mile has emerged in recent years along Brevard Road in West Asheville, but in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the peak years of the American automobile industry and the years remembered for the hype of the annual model change, Coxe Avenue was the place for checking
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Tourist Homes: Hanging Out Places

We have been posting on this blog about Tourists’ Camps and Tourists’ Courts. In case I dismissed Tourist Homes too quickly, I decided to make amends. They existed longer than I first thought, and probably did a lot to help with boarding for tourists. And besides that, they most likely provided a very good income for
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Tourist Court Expedition Taken by Library Staff

Fearing that tourist courts were fast disappearing, Library Director Ed Sheary and North Carolina Room staff Ann Wright, Zoe Rhine, and Peggy Gardner made a Tourist Court Expedition in August 2000. Our aim was to document as many tourist courts and their signage as we could in the day. Major roads coming into Asheville were surveyed for remaining motor or
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Tourists’ Camps

Who were the early tourist pioneers and where did they stay? Before there were tourists’ courts, there were automobile tourists’ camps. They were most typically, in this area, cabins or shacks. “Tourists’ Camps” found its own subject listing in the business section of the Asheville city directories in 1936, which listed three camps:”Babblin Brook” on the Weaverville
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The Emporium Department Store Fire, July 25, 1923.

The Emporium Department Store Fire The current photo exhibit in Pack Memorial Library’s North Carolina Room pictures some of the city’s most noteworthy fires. Among them is the Emporium Department Store fire of July 25, 1923. The Emporium fire was, according to a later, undated Asheville Citizen article, “one of the most spectacular if not
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