Brief Timeline History of Boyd Township

The old Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway was located
at the northern edge of Boyd Township.

Boyd Township covers the northeastern part of the county and, like several other Transylvania townships, over half of it lies within the Pisgah National Forest.  The northern boundary runs roughly along the Blue Ridge Parkway from mile marker 407 to 413.  The Pisgah Inn, Pink Beds and Cradle of Forestry are all in Boyd Township.  Popular trails in the area included Buck Springs, Cantrell Creek and Turkeypen Gap.  The South Mills River and its tributaries provide drainage for much of its national forest lands. 

The populated portion of the township is bisected by the Asheville Highway (Hwy. 280) and the Hendersonville Highway (Hwy 64).  As settlers began to arrive in the region following the American Revolution there was a need for roads.  In 1790 the local militia company was ordered to build a wagon road following the Estatoe Path from the Swannanoa River to the Davidson River.  This road would be known as the Boyleston Road, the Asheville Highway and Highway 280 through the years.

The southern boundary of Boyd Township runs along the French Broad River from the mouth of Glade Creek to the Henderson County line placing Highway 64 from the Blue Ridge Memory Gardens cemetery to the county line within the township.  The railroad connecting Brevard to Hendersonville also ran through this same area with stops at Davidson River (near Everett Rd.), Penrose, and Blantyre.

Highway 280 appears as a graded county road on the 1930 North Carolina
Road Survey of Transylvania County.  The hard-surfaced road to
Hendersonville was Highway 28 at that time.

When North Carolina’s highway system was in its infancy in the 1920s a road ran from Murphy to Bat Cave, passing through Transylvania County.  This was originally known as Hwy 28.  In the early 1930s the highway number was changed to 64.  Old highway maps found on the North Carolina Maps website https://web.lib.unc.edu/nc-maps/ show the evolution of the highway system over a period of years.  A 1924 state highway system map shows the portion passing through Transylvania County from Boyd Township to Rosman as hard-surfaced, west of Rosman is just a graded road.  Highway 280 through Boyd Township does not appear on these maps until 1930 and is not hard surfaced until the mid-1930s.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments, or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-1820.