About Brevard

BREVARD, N.C. (WSPA )- Brevard is a unique town that is tucked into the Appalachian Mountains with a history that influences it to this day.

Long before it was incorporated in 1868, the Cherokee roamed the mountains before eventually expanding the border to allow white settlers in the late 1700s.

“You had your Scottish, your Irish, your German,” Curator of the Transylvania County Heritage Museum Rebecca Suddeth said. “That was feeling the British Empire and settled in the outer reaches of that area.”

Like most towns, Brevard started to boom when the railroad arrived in 1895 which moved tourism and industry forward.

As the industries slowly died off and Brevard continued to reinvent itself, one thing that remained true to the area since the Cherokees are the natural resources that surround it.

“The Cherokee were here for the resources, the settlers in the 1850s came for the resources,” Suddeth said. “And today we have people that come here for the resources.”

Executive Director of the Transylvania County Tourism and Development Authority Clark Lovelace knew that better than anyone.

“You can go rock climbing, or you can go mountain biking,” Lovelace said. “Or maybe you want to take a peek at a few beautiful waterfalls.”

The mountains that surround Brevard influenced the culture for generations in things like food and music.

Suddeth said, “A lot of things now that we think of as a mountain thing or Appalachian thing, if you break them down to its basic elements, they go back to different continents.”

Like Brevard, their famous white squirrels have their own history too.

Two white squirrels were gifted to a woman named Barbera Mull that eventually escaped their backyard.

“She was afraid they’d be eaten by predators,” Suddeth explained.

The exact opposite happened because they eventually populated with the grey squirrels and now Brevard has a nice colony of them that has stretched into Transylvania County.

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