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Located in Buncombe County, Asheville is North Carolina's center of the Blue Ridge region, and the largest city in western North Carolina. Asheville has been rated twice by relocatamerica.com as one of the Top 100 Places To Live.

European settlers first called the region Eden City for its mild climate and mountain setting. Two hundred years later it was renamed Asheville. Asheville was Founded in 1784 in the Swannanoa Valley and the land the city was built on was part of the Cherokee Nation.

Asheville has been rated by many Organizations as one of the 50 Most Alive Places To Be, one of the Top 25 Arts Destinations in the United States, the Happiest City For Women, one of the Best Places to Reinvent Your Life, New Age America, and the Most Vegetarian-Family Small City in America.

The Battery Park Hotel, built in 1924, was named from the fact Confederate Forces, during the Cival War, used the site for Batteries of artillery, and is found on Asheville's tallest hill providing magnificent views of the surrounding area. The hotel was the first in the South with an electric elevator.

The Jackson Building was the first skyscraper built in western North Carolina. The four gargoyles on top of the building are fully functional. The building is 140 feet tall.

Belle Chere is the largest music and street festival in the southeastern United States, and has been held annually in Asheville since the late 1970s, attracting some 350,000 people. Country, Blues, Folk, Mountain, Rock, and Jazz music are all represented by local and Nationally well known Performers.

Shindig on the Green concerts occur on Saturday nights at City/County Plaza featuring Bluegrass Bands. The Warren Haynes Christmas Jam raises money each year for Habitat For Humanity. Downtown After Five holds monthly concert series displaying local Artists.

Asheville's most famous landmark is the 1895-built chateau known as the Biltmore and the grand estates it is located on. The Biltmore is the largest privately-owned home in America. The Biltmore Winery, located on the grounds of the property, with a million tourists annually, is America's most visited winery. The Winery offers wine tastings and daily culinary demonstrations. The Red Wine and Chocolate Seminars conducted two times each day are favorites of many visitors to the winery.

The Biltmore Estates and Gardens offers tours of the 250-room French Renaissance-style National Historic Landmark built by George Vanderbilt. Pack Place provides a tour of Asheville's wellknown Museum Without Walls and the 30 bronze sculptures that lead the way along this 1.7 mile downtown loop.

The Downtown District is filled with Artistic Deco buildings. Studios, shops, and galleries full of All-American handicrafts turned the city into a noted arts center. Markets, vendors, restaurants, boutiques, and art galleries can be found in the Grove Arcade and Wall Street Complex built in 1929.

The North Carolina Arboretum, south of Asheville, is a 434-acre garden full of rhododendrons and azaleas, with 10 miles of hiking trails, and the Segway Glide Through Nature Tour. Visitors find free admission to enjoy this scenic Asheville-area site.

The Blueridge Parkway, is a 469-mile long National Scenic Byway, and the longest, narrowist National Park in the world, providing spectacular scenery, waterfalls, meadows, and gorgeous mountain and valley vistas. The highest mountain peaks in the eastern United States provide a top adventure destination for hiking, mountain biking, and mountain climbing, The Blueridge Parkway is part of the famous Appalachian Trail. The Folk Art Center is the Parkway's most favorite tourist attraction.

The 10-acre Botannical Gardens are open daily with free admission and were established in 1961 with plants native to the southern Appalachian Mountains including 700 varieties of exotic trees, vines, shrubs, herbs, grasses, wildflowers, sedges, ferns, aquatic plants, lichens, and mosses.

Whitewater rafting and whitewater kayaking are found plentifully in Asheville, a major hub for these recreational sports in the eastern United States. Several Disc Golf Courses can also be found in the Asheville area.

Asheville is a growing city with a lot to offer.