Grove Park, Town Mountain and Sunset Mountain

Grove Park is the North Asheville neighborhood that E.W. Grove, the patent-medicine millionaire, began platting in 1908 after buying land toward Sunset Mountain. Canadian botanist Chauncey Beadle, who had worked with Frederick Law Olmsted, laid out curving streets with stone retaining walls under oaks, maples and hickories. The National Register district covers 232 acres and 290 contributing buildings, mostly Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival and Craftsman houses from the 1910s and 1920s, including the 1923 Kimberly Avenue extension along the golf course. The Omni Grove Park Inn opened in July 1913 on Sunset Mountain's western slope, built of granite hauled over the mountain; its course was first built in 1899 and redesigned by Donald Ross in the mid-1920s. Downtown is about 2 miles away.

Above the inn the ground steepens into Sunset Mountain and Town Mountain, the ridge between Sunset and Beaucatcher. Town Mountain Road climbs about 7 miles from College Street to the Blue Ridge Parkway at Craven Gap, milepost 377.4, passing more than 400 properties: mid-century houses, contemporary new builds and larger estates. Town Mountain Preserve is a gated section of 182 acres and 74 lots between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. Roads are steep, and the upper elevations see more ice and snow than downtown.