Qualla: Brevard, North Carolina

Brevard, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philippe Dekyvere, CC BY-SA 4.0. The squirrels are white. Not albino - the eyes are dark, not pink - but the white variant of the eastern gray squirrel, scampering through downtown trees and along the gutters of historic Main Street in a small Blue Ridge town where the rainfall rivals the Pacific Northwest. Theories about how they arrived vary. One says an overturned carnival truck released the founding pair. Another says somebody's escaped pets bred with the native population. Brevard, North Carolina, has settled on celebrating them either way - the annual White Squirrel Festival each May features a mascot named Pisgah Pete and includes city ordinances that legally protect the squirrels from being trapped or harmed.

Read more: Brevard, North Carolina on Qualla

Image: Philippe Dekyvere | CC BY-SA 4.0

Brevard, North Carolina: Named for a Revolutionary Doctor

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -ted from Raleigh, NC, USA, CC BY 2.0. The North Carolina General Assembly created Transylvania County on February 15, 1861, from parts of Jackson and Henderson counties, and required a county seat conveniently accessible to its citizens. The town that became Brevard was named for Colonel Ephraim Brevard, M.D., a Revo...

Read more: Brevard, North Carolina on Qualla

Image: -ted from Raleigh, NC, USA | CC BY 2.0

Brevard, North Carolina: The Wettest Town East of the Cascades

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Forest Service - Southern Region, CC BY-SA 2.0. Brevard sits in an Appalachian temperate rainforest, with a climate that borders between humid subtropical and oceanic. Rain falls year-round, lifted by orographic effect off the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Balsam Mountains immediately west of town. It is one of the wettes...

Read more: Brevard, North Carolina on Qualla

Image: US Forest Service - Southern Region | CC BY-SA 2.0

Brevard, North Carolina: The Brevard Music Center

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Washuotaku, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every summer, the population swells when the Brevard Music Center brings hundreds of advanced music students together with professional faculty for seven weeks of intensive training and public performances. Founded in 1936, the institute has launched the careers of musicians who ...

Read more: Brevard, North Carolina on Qualla

Image: Washuotaku | CC BY-SA 4.0

Brevard, North Carolina: The Bliss Photographer

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Warren LeMay from Cincinnati, OH, United States, CC0. Charles O'Rear, born in 1941, moved to Brevard in 2017 after a long career as a photographer for National Geographic. In January 1996, driving through the hills near the Napa-Sonoma county line in California, he pulled over and snapped a photo of green hills under a blue sky scat...

Read more: Brevard, North Carolina on Qualla

Image: Warren LeMay from Cincinnati, OH, United States | CC0