Montreat

Montreat occupies a cove in the far east of Buncombe County, about 2 miles up NC 9 from Black Mountain, with mountains on three sides and Graybeard Mountain, at about 5,400 feet, closing the top. The name shortens Mountain Retreat Association, the group formed in 1897 by minister John Collins to build an interdenominational retreat; control passed to the Presbyterian Church in 1907, and the association governed the cove until the town incorporated in 1967. Today the Montreat Conference Center, one of three national centers of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), hosts year-round conferences, and Montreat College, founded in 1916, fills the stone buildings around Lake Susan, whose concrete dam was completed in 1924.

The town itself is small, 901 residents at the 2020 census on about 2.7 square miles, at an elevation of 2,720 feet. The surrounding 4,000-acre holding is largely protected, with 2,460 acres under a conservation easement since 2004, and roughly 30 miles of trails lead up Graybeard and the neighboring ridges. Houses sit on wooded hillsides along Flat Creek and its tributaries, which feed Lake Susan. Billy and Ruth Graham lived here for decades.