Infinite Road
← Back to Example Drives

AshevilleCherokee

Tap a numbered dot and listen.

Narrated by The Chronicler 83 km · about 67 min · 14 stories

Into the Smokies past Thomas Wolfe's boarding house, the Biltmore's gilded ambition, and the mill town of Canton, which smelled like a paycheck. It ends in Cherokee country, where Walker Calhoun kept the songs and dances alive through everything.

The stories

In order along the route. Tap a dot on the map, or play them here.

  1. 1
    Asheville, North Carolina

    The Old Kentucky Home

  2. 2
    Asheville, North Carolina

    Biltmore Estate's Gilded Ambition

  3. 3
    Candler, North Carolina

    The Birth of Pisgah Forest

  4. 4
    Candler, North Carolina

    Canton Community Celebrations

  5. 5
    Canton, North Carolina

    Champion Mill and Canton's Labor

  6. 6
    Canton, North Carolina

    Canton's Colonial Theater

  7. 7
    Clyde, North Carolina

    Southern Railway's Mountain Conquest Deep Dive · Part 1 of 3

  8. 8
    Waynesville, North Carolina

    Southern Railway's Mountain Conquest Deep Dive · Part 2 of 3

  9. 9
    Waynesville, North Carolina

    Southern Railway's Mountain Conquest Deep Dive · Part 3 of 3

  10. 10
    Maggie Valley, North Carolina

    The Rise and Fall of Ghost Town

  11. 11
    Maggie Valley, North Carolina

    The Soco Gap Survey

  12. 12
    Cherokee, North Carolina

    Cherokee Resilience in North Carolina

  13. 13
    Cherokee, North Carolina

    Preserving the Cherokee Story

  14. 14
    Cherokee, North Carolina

    Walker Calhoun's Cherokee Traditions

Drives nearby

Where the stories come from

Infinite Road draws from a library of primary sources — public-domain county histories, the WPA American Guide Series, National Register of Historic Places records, local records, and encyclopedic sources — then writes and narrates each story in its own words.