Pisgah View State Park inches closer to opening in Buncombe County

Pisgah View State Park is still not open to the public, even as Buncombe County’s newest park project moves deeper into planning with a named superintendent, a 20-year master plan and more than 1,600 acres mapped across mountain terrain southwest of Asheville.

NC State Parks places the future park about 18 miles southwest of downtown Asheville in Candler and describes it as a universally accessible park. The state says the initial land needed for the park was acquired between 2019 and 2021, after the North Carolina General Assembly authorized the addition of Pisgah View State Park in 2019 through Senate Bill 535, later Session Law 2019-138.

The land carries more than a century of local history. The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy says the Cogburn family owned the property since the late 1700s, opened Pisgah View Ranch in 1941 and kept it as a destination for generations. In 2023, state officials said the final 170 acres had been acquired from the family, completing an initial 1,568-acre footprint for the park.

That footprint is only the start of the larger vision. State park officials say the master plan covers more than 1,600 acres in Buncombe and Haywood counties and is intended to guide development for the next 20 years. The site sits in the Spring Mountain range and the Southern Appalachian escarpment, an area NC State Parks describes as ecologically significant, with the park’s three sections linking into more than 100,000 acres of protected lands, including the Blue Ridge Parkway and Pisgah National Forest.

For now, though, the practical message for neighbors, hikers and tourism businesses is restraint, not celebration as if the gates were already open. NC State Parks said the lands would remain closed while the park is planned, facilities are built and staff are hired. The agency named Tyson Phillips as the first superintendent and, at that point, estimated the park would open in 2025.

Public input has also been part of the buildout. NC State Parks held a public information meeting for the master plan on Aug. 1, 2024, at the Upper Hominy Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department in Candler, inviting people to review and weigh in on recreational amenities during a 20- to 30-minute planning process. Pisgah View is the 35th state park in North Carolina and the 10th in the mountain region, but for Buncombe County it remains a park in the making, not yet a finished destination.