ASHEVILLE 127 
tlon of the mountains for their settlement, which 
lay on the natural line of travel between the fertile 
plains of the new West and the lowlands of the 
South, and which took an important step towards 
fame and fortune when, in 1880, a turnpike road, 
the famous Buncombe Pike, was chartered to pass 
from Paint Rock on the Tennessee line across the 
mountains to Greenville, South Carolina, by way of 
Saluda Gap, Paint Rock lying on the French Broad 
River a few miles below Hot Springs, the terminus 
of that first road whose course has already been 
indicated. It is one thing to charter a road in the 
mountain wilderness, another to build it, and not 
until more than a quarter of a century later was this 
great thoroughfare between the South and the West 
opened. 
Meantime, Asheville had not been standing still, 
as is shown by the fact that in 18 14 there was built 
within her borders — a frame house. A great event 
this, you can imagine, in a country where the saw- 
mill had not begun its triumphant career. This first 
frame house was built by James Patton, whose 
name is on the honor list of the settlers of this part 
of the country, and after whom the principal street 
of Asheville, Patton Avenue, was named. He had 
come up into the mountains from the lowlands in 
1792, at the age of thirty-six, and taken a large tract 
of land on the Swannanoa River. By birth an 
Irishman and by trade a weaver, he came to the New 
World, like so many others, to make a place for him- 
self, and by the untrammeled use of his natural 
