Asheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and continues to grow. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that Asheville's population as of 2008 was 78,543. Asheville is a part of the four-county Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area, the population of which was estimated by the Census Bureau in 2008 to be 408,436.
Before the arrival of Europeans, the ...
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Asheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and continues to grow. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that Asheville's population as of 2008 was 78,543. Asheville is a part of the four-county Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area, the population of which was estimated by the Census Bureau in 2008 to be 408,436.
Before the arrival of Europeans, the land where Asheville now exists lay within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation. In 1540, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto came to the area, bringing the first European visitors in addition to European diseases which seriously depleted the native population. The area was used as an open hunting ground until the middle of the 19th century.
The history of Asheville, as a town, begins in 1784. In that year Colonel Samuel Davidson and his family settled in the Swannanoa Valley, redeeming a soldier's land grant from the state of North Carolina....
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