URING Colonial Days it was a common prac
tice for the churches to give a Biblical name
to the most prominent mountains in Eastern
America. In 1790 a Presbyterian Church was
erected at Swannanoa, and from the door of the
church could be seen a beautiful mountain rising
in the distance. Rev. George Newton, the pastor
of the church, named the mountain "Pisgah”
for the Biblical Pisgah mountain tract from which
Moses looked into the Promised Land
Between the rugged Tennessee Ridge and the
Balsam mountains near the southern end of the
Appalachians, lies the Pisgah National Forest.
This National Forest was named for Mount Pis
gah, the prominent peak rising almost 6,000
feet above sea level. Pisgah National Forest is
divided into four ranger districts—Mount Mit
chell, French Broad, the Grandfather, and Pisgah,
The latter district is the one in which we, at
Ecusta, are most interested. It contains over 157,-
000 acres, 20,000 of which is the watershed for
Davidson river, furnishing us with from seventeen
to twenty million gallons of water daily.
There is very little known about this region
prior to 1570 except that it was the hunting
ground for the Cherokees. It is possible that
DeSoto, in 1540, was the first white man to see