If during a previous stay at a Bed &
Breakfast the view from your window as you tried to relax resulted in
the not-so-relaxing sights of neighborhood houses and the sounds
of cars driving past late at night, you're in for a pleasantly serene surprise
at the Inn on Mill Creek.
We're not your typical B&B. Just off I-40, a
two-mile drive
that winds
its
way
into the
Pisgah
National Forest brings you to our Inn.
Here we're completely surrounded by the calmingly beautiful scenery of the
forest,
with our 170-tree
fruit orchard, the babble of Mill Creek, our small
lake, our very own dam
and the gentle waterfall
that cascades
down its face.
We strive for a relaxed, casual atmosphere.
At the Inn itself, you'll find:
We're also close to several well-known (though less
secluded) destinations,
like Black
Mountain, Asheville and the Biltmore Estate, and Chimney Rock Park. Great
dining and shopping are nearby, within just a 10 minute
drive.
Discover the many things you can do,
besides relaxing, with the Inn on Mill Creek as your starting
place -- we can
help you plan
your experience.
 The
Inn's beginning
Twenty-five years ago, a couple built their
dream retirement home next to a small creek and lake on a unique
parcel of land embedded in the Pisgah National Forest. The property exists
only because of
the Southern Railway Company (more about that later). In the
late 1990s, the
home was bought by the Carillon family and the Inn on
Mill Creek came into existence.
Dave and Brigette Walters
purchased the Inn on Mill Creek in February of 2007, and now serve as your
innkeepers.
Welcome to the
woods
Two laurel-covered mountainsides, Bernard Mountain
and Horse Ridge, flank our seven acres to the east and
west, respectively. On the Horse Ridge side of the property is our orchard
with over 170 apple, peach, apricot and cherry trees, which
supply us with fresh fruit for your breakfast.
Adjacent to the south end of the grounds you'll
find two forest fire-access trails into the Pisgah
National Forest...perfect for hiking and easy mountain biking up
to Point Lookout or Jarrett's Tunnel. Serious mountain-biker favorite Kitsuma
is nearby.
On our grounds themselves guests have plenty of room to
stroll leisurely among our gardens, orchards, blueberry bushes and grape
vines. Or you can explore the our creekside cliffs, and the
birch and wild blackberry packed delta/bog where the two
mountain streams that feed our lake come together at the
moss-carpeted "cathedral of trees" on the south end of
our property.
Additionally, you can lounge on one of three decks made
especially for soaking up the forest or
relaxing by the lake. Cook out on the main house's back deck,
relax in the rockers by the lake on the Lake House's deck, or
sit at the patio table on the wedding deck. For even more
lake-fun, take a spin on the paddle boat. Guests who bring their own fishing
poles are invited to fish for our stocked trout (catch and release).
What you'll find inside the
Inn
In the Main House are four guest rooms, each
with private bath and its own individual style. For the enjoyment of
all our guests, the Main House
contains a two-story great room with floor-to-ceiling windows
and a rustic cedar beam ceiling, plus a soap-stone wood stove
fireplace with a cozy riverbed stone hearth. Overlooking the great room is
the library loft lit by an historic cathedral chandelier.
A path
through the garden from the Main House connects to a wheelchair
accessible deck around our Lake House. The Lake House contains
three spacious suites, each with its own bath and private door to
the deck overlooking the lake, plus a shared guest kitchen. Two
of the Lake House suites have a loft with an additional bed.
See the Inn on Mill Creek's accommodations
The Lake House guest kitchen contains a dining
table for six and an island bar with seating for four, a
refrigerator, stove, oven, sink, toaster, coffee machine, and a washer/dryer.
Lake House guests are welcome to use the guest kitchen amenities
to fix a snack, lunch or an evening meal without having to leave
our forest retreat.
Next to the Lake House is the deck often used for weddings
at the Inn on Mill Creek.
A full breakfast with great views of the forest,
lake, dam and waterfall are served each morning from
8:30am-9:30am in the Main House dining solarium. (The views last
all day, of course!) We invite you to take a
peek in the kitchen to see what we're serving.
Read a few of of our guest comments on
BedandBreakfast.com.
We intend to scan our in-room guest-book
comments when we can find the time. They're awesome and often
funny. We've even got poems, odes, short stories and
art/drawings in them. (Our new scanner/fax/printer/copier
doesn't make the greatest scans though -- might have to get a
new scanner for this job.)
A little bit of
history
The Long Branch of Mill Creek runs along the
eastern edge of the Inn, where you'll find a historic dam built
by the Southern Railway Company in the late 1800s. The dam created our lake and
waterfall, and powers the 80' spray of the Andrews
Geyser located more than two miles away near the town
of Old Fort.
In the late 1800s, the area's railroad, owned by
Southern Railways, went no
further west than Old Fort. Passengers and cargo going further than Old
Fort had to be hauled by horse to Asheville and points west.
Col. A.B. Andrews, an engineer and then a vice president for
Southern Railways, successfully lobbied the state legislature to
authorize money and, more importantly, prison labor to
help push the railroad to the Swannanoa Gap, now known as
Ridgecrest. The treacherous terrain required 12 miles of track
be built to traverse the three miles of distance, including
seven tunnels*.
During the construction, more than 120 lives
were lost to cave-ins, a cholera outbreak, and the use of a new explosive -
nitroglycerin. In 1879, a resort hotel, the Round Knob
Hotel, was
built in Old Fort to draw tourists... rail passengers to help
finance the construction of the line on to Asheville. The owners
of Southern Railway decided they should create something to
commemorate those who died while building the difficult run to
Swannanoa, but they also wanted something that would help attract
tourists as well. Thus the idea of the geyser, whose towering spray ultimately rose directly adjacent to the hotel, was
born.
The railroad bought a seven-acre plot up the
Mill Creek valley to dam the creek, to create a lake, and to run
a 6" pipe down the valley to a 1/2" nozzle to create
the geyser. The Round Knob Hotel and the geyser were an attraction
that drew people to the hotel for about 20 years. In 1903
however, the hotel burned to the ground due to a stray ember
from one of the trains. It was a total loss.
The 'Fathers of Old
Fort' didn't want to lose
the hotel and the geyser, so in 1911 a friend of Col. Andrews, a
wealthy New Yorker, rescued the geyser. He bought the land
around it, moved it across the creek, redesigned it and named it
in honor of Col. Andrews. And that is where the geyser
still stands and sprays today, powered by the dam and the lake
on that secluded 7 acres of land, totally surrounded by the
protected lands of the Pisgah National Forest, and even
controlled by a valve, that are all now part of The Inn on Mill
Creek.
* Today the rail runs past the north edge of the
Inn's property, across a trestle, and then up
and over the east ridge. The trains rarely blow their
whistles (of course, the very day we told a guest
"never", we heard a whistle for the first time literally within minutes), but you can hear their rumble and the
'singing
rails' as they round the bends. Some of the tunnels are
easily reachable on the nearby trails.
An old postcard showing Andrews Geyser in Old Fort, NC, after
the 1912 restoration. The geyser's location and
catch-basin are the same today.
(Image from the
Pack Memorial Library Collection. The structure is the Round
Knob Hotel, which burned to the ground in 1903.)
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