Buncombe County buys 342-acre Deaverview Mountain site for new park

Buncombe County closed on the purchase of the 342-acre Deaverview Mountain property on March 19, locking in the land that officials say will become a new public park and the largest park in the county system. The county said the acquisition, made with the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, will preserve the mountain as a significant natural asset while opening the way for future public access.

At a mountaintop press conference on Monday, Buncombe County and SAHC marked the deal and outlined the next steps for the site. A Deaverview Mountain information sheet says the property is protected under a conservation easement, and conservation materials describe the broader Pisgah View landscape as a place with intact forests, headwater streams, open pastures and views of Mount Pisgah.

The purchase is part of a larger Pisgah View State Park effort that has moved from concept to active management. Pisgah View now has an official North Carolina State Parks page, and the state agency identifies Tyson Phillips as the park’s first superintendent. North Carolina State Parks also held public-input outreach for the Pisgah View State Park master plan in 2024, including a third public meeting on Aug. 1, 2024, plus an online survey for that round of input.

That planning process matters because the land deal, the park designation and the eventual buildout are separate steps. The county’s purchase secures the land base. The state park designation folds the property into North Carolina’s public-lands system. The master plan is where the details are still being decided: trail alignments, parking, access points, habitat protection, viewsheds and which kinds of recreation fit the site without damaging it.

For Asheville, Candler, Enka and nearby communities, the new park will reshape the local recreation map in the Hominy Valley and beyond. Buncombe County’s broader parks planning work includes the county’s first Parks & Recreation Master Plan, its first Open Space Plan and an updated Greenways & Trails Plan last revised in 2012, showing that Pisgah View is being folded into a countywide strategy rather than handled as a one-off purchase.

The project has also taken shape in stages. In 2021, state budget support of $12.2 million helped clear the way for Pisgah View State Park. In 2023, the park closed on 230 acres for $2 million. Later, the National Park Service awarded nearly $4.5 million toward land acquisition for Deaverview Mountain. Conservation materials say the wider Pisgah View landscape includes more than 1,500 acres, more than 40 remaining structures and nearly 50,000 linear feet of cascading trout streams, a scale that explains why county and state officials have treated the site as both a conservation project and a long-term public park.