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In addition to maintaining the natural beauty of the surrounding land, Drovers Road Preserve incorporates the history and echoes the cultural heritage of the region in its preservation and development plans. Its name and character reflect the past as they connect it to the present.
NC Blue Ridge Mountains Real Estate History
Even before it was incorporated in 1798, Asheville was a market town serving several hundred square miles of Western North Carolina. From the north, south, and west turnpikes and highways led to the town’s farmer’s market, where cattle, hogs, geese, and other animals were sold or traded for goods or cash needed in outlying mountain communities. The Drovers Road was the southern turnpike, a wagon road rising up over the Blue Ridge at Hickory Nut Gap and down through the broad Fairview Valley into Asheville.
Many families settled the fertile valley and mountainsides, among them the McBrayers and the Ashworths. Hickory Nut Gap Farm, established by Jim McClure in 1920, continues in operation today. All that’s left of the Johnny McBrayer farmstead is a well preserved stone chimney that has been incorporated into a timber-framed picnic shelter for residents of Drovers Road Preserve. Flying Cloud Properties, the name of the partnership developing Drovers Road Preserve, is itself a reference to the region’s colorful past. In the 1830s, Bedford and Elizabeth Sherrill, having secured the mail contract between Asheville and Rutherfordton, operated a stagecoach called The Flying Cloud. Now, as then, the old Drovers Road was among the most beautiful routes for those who wished to experience the natural wonders of the Western North Carolina mountains.
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