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How a small town named after the East’s tallest mountains outsmarted a couple on the search for a larger community.
Photo Above: State Street is the main street of Black Mountain.
Photos Courtesy of Olivia Ward.
In the summer of 2021, I found myself planning a Southeast road trip. After more than a decade of living in Denver, my husband was ready to go back to his southern roots.
Our road trip would be a trial run of five cities over 10 days from Nashville to Charleston. The goal was to explore neighborhoods, talk with locals and eat our way through each town in an attempt to identify the perfect place to call our new home.
During my road trip research, the town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, struck me—pictures of a charming downtown happily surrounded by Blue Ridge Mountains. “If only we could squeeze in a stop between our visit to Asheville and Greenville,” I thought to myself. Instead, due to time constraints, it remained a missed connection.
Post-road trip adventure, we agreed that Asheville held the most potential for our future home. To validate our dreams, we spent Christmas in the area, believing that if we could appreciate a place at its coldest, we could appreciate it at its best. The joke was on us with unseasonably warm 70-degree days.
During our vacation, I talked my family into visiting Black Mountain for the afternoon—I couldn’t get the place out of my mind. “Sure Asheville was where we would end up,” I thought to myself, but I needed to see if this place really was the self-proclaimed “Little town that rocks.”
The minute I stepped out of the car, I was greeted with views of the sleeping trees spanning as far as I could see over the charming buildings on Broadway Street. Throughout the afternoon, the smile wouldn’t leave my face. “What a lovely place,” I thought as I rocked in an oversized rocking chair located in the town park. “This place really does rock.”
Sticking to our mission to relocate to Asheville, we tried valiantly to purchase a home. Each month, once a home caught our attention, we’d spend the next 12 hours on an emotional rollercoaster of virtually touring a home, making decisions, crunching the numbers, filling out forms and imagining what life would be like in the comfort of those pending walls.
After the fourth failed home attempt, I was crushed. “Is it supposed to be this hard?” I asked my husband. He responded, “What if we expanded our area to include Black Mountain?” And with no additional context needed, I agreed.
Four days later, a beautiful bluebird house in Black Mountain popped up with a “coming soon” announcement. Several discussions and a last-minute airfare later we made our second visit to the town.
From the minute our destined Black Mountain trip began, it felt like we were headed home. The views welcomed us, the locals treated us with kindness and our soon-to-be future home was exactly what we had been looking for the whole time.
It took four lost Asheville home bids to realize that we were bidding on a location that was never meant to be. Now officially a part of the Black Mountain community, I can’t imagine trading these Blue Ridge Mountain views with anywhere else. I’m so grateful that Black Mountain chose us.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2024 issue.
