It is a place meant for the fortunate few. An area blessed with abundant beauty. Breathtaking falls. Gorgeous homesites. And while the migration to Highlands and Cashiers, N.C. goes on, so too, the cost of living here goes up. As one smart bumper sticker points out, “Paradise Ain’t Cheap.”

When visitors come to the cool mountain destinations of Cashiers and Highlands, N.C., there’s one question they always ask first. That question: “Where are the waterfalls?”

The falls are major attractions in these beautiful hills, where few places in the nation offer better outdoor activities or living areas. But, tacked to the bulletin board in William McKee’s real estate offices in Cashiers is a bumper sticker that warns all.

It reads simply: “Paradise Ain’t Cheap.”

For the most part, that sums up living in Cashiers, where it is not uncommon to see a billionaire driving down the road in a beat-up Jeep. Where wealth abounds. And where those fortunate enough to afford living here find it the ideal escape.

The Highlands/Cashiers area is in the heart of North Carolina waterfall country; Whitewater Falls is touted as the most spectacular cascade east of the Rockies.

IN THE BEGINNING
If ever an area was meant to be, this was it.

In fact, its development was a premeditated move.

“There were two guys from Kansas, named Kelsey and Hutchinson,” relates Bill Bassham, executive director of the Highlands Chamber of Commerce, “who in 1875 drew a line from New York to New Orleans and another from Chicago to Savannah. They thought that the place where the lines intersected could become a great trade route of the future, so they bought all the land they could, and when they arrived to inspect it, they found that their lines crossed at 4,000- foot altitudes. So, as a trade route, the effort was wasted, but soon people came for health needs, respiratory ailments and such.

“You could laugh about that story but we’re less than a 150 miles from Atlanta. Being only two-and-a-half hours from Highlands, it’s become our largest market. With $100,000 to $125,000 the highest price for land here, our market boomed.”

A RARIFIED RETREAT
People come to the Highlands/Cashiers Plateau to get away from the daily grind. They build gorgeous homes, a few of which cost asmuch as three or four million dollars. Some live here year round, others summers only. But this is more than a getaway. It’s a way of life people love. Cashiers and its sister town on the plateau, Highlands, form one of the finest outdoor leisure areas in the country.

For that reason and one other — that Highlands is totally surrounded by national forests and has only about 300 building lots left – people are now buying up old summer homes, tearing them down, and replacing them with new beauties.

There’s more unoccupied space and a good bit of available land in Cashiers, though large tracts are taken and only smaller parcels remain. However, Cashiers, too, is thinning out as wealthy people from the South’s major population areas arrive to get away from city mobs and city traffic.

Looking Glass Falls, near Brevard, takes its name from Looking Glass rock; the falls features a 60-foot tumble of Looking Glass Creek.

A PERFECT LOCATION
The site of these two places could not be better.

“At 4,118 feet elevation, Highlands lies in the only tropical rain forest in North America,” says Bassham. “These national forests offer recreation to both home-towners and visitors alike.”

Together, Highlands and Cashiers form the first resort area north of the Deep South, where summers are hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk. Blessed, by contrast, with moderate days and cool evenings, both Highlands and Cashiers are within one day’s drive of almost any Southern metropolis and offer the one key element that attracts potential second-home buyers from the region’s major cities: the thermometer.

“My daughter still marvels that the first time our family came to Highlands, the temperature in downtown Walhalla, S. C., many hundreds of feet lower in elevation, was 91 degrees,” Bassham says. “On Main Street in Highlands, the thermometer registered 73, a drop of 18 degrees in 31 miles.”

THE NATURAL LIFE
Everything in outdoor adventure is available here: camping, hiking, mountain biking, sightseeing, river paddling, waterfalls, fly and lake fishing, rock climbing, ice climbing and, of course, golf. Within 20 minutes of the center of Cashiers are 45 miles of golf course fairways in 11 gated golf communities, some of which have more than one course.

Highlands offers plenty of golf, too, with five well-used courses on the plateau. But there are all other outdoor activities, too, as well as gem mining. These areas, where sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and amethysts are occasionally found, are open to the public. Bassham took his grandchildren gem-mining recently and ended up with a three-and-a-half carat sapphire “that was the size of a walnut.”

The waterwheel cottage is emblematic of the great getaway spots in the Caashiers area.		Highgate is amont Highlands' preier residential communities.

A MANY-SPLENDORED PLACE
Though the Highlands/Cashiers plateau was once known as a golf mecca, in recent years, younger, wealthy, family-oriented people have moved in and found scores of other things to do. In fact, McKee and some of his friends write weekly, in-season columns in the Cashiers Crossroads Chronicle extolling outdoor fun other than golf.

“It’s notable that within a short drive of Highlands or Cashiers, there are eight river systems,” he points out, “and all, including the Cattooga, Tuckasegee, Horse Pasture, Whitewater, French Broad, Nantahala, Little Tennessee, and Thompson rivers, are keyed to outdoor sports.” Chief among the choices are fishing, boating, and river sports.

One company that caters to this swelling demand for outdoor entertainment is Adventure Depot.

Operated by Mary Ann Vines and located between Highlands and Cashiers, it provides the things people need for sports: bikes, regular and pontoon lake boats, even guide services. Her equipment is used extensively on Lake Glenville, a power source for the Nantahala Power and Light Company and an excellent water-sport site north of Highlands. “Within an hour’s drive of Cashiers,” McKee notes, “there are more than 800,000 acres of accessible public mountain lands, all geared to outdoor activities. “There are hundreds of waterfalls, thousands of miles of hiking trails, some of the finest whitewater in the country, nationally known rock and ice climbing, plus outstanding fly and lake fishing.”

The Lodge at Old Edwards Inn, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, offers award-winning cuisine in a first-class resort and spa.

SO SIMILAR/SO DIVERSE
There are noticeable differences in the two places.

“One difference,” Bassham notes, “is that Cashiers is not an incorporated town. As a result, it doesn’t have some of the amenities you’ll find in a town. There are no sidewalks, and to shop there means driving from place to place, whereas in Highlands, one can park on the street and shop the stores nearby. I don’t think that’s bad, but it’s a difference.

“The second difference is that Highlands, because of national forests, is protected from unbridled growth. Right now, we are about where we want to be.”

In Cashiers, McKee also sees distinctions between the two.

“People who enjoy a main street with more activity and the availability of a larger base for shopping and hotels,” he says, “tend to like Highlands better than Cashiers, which disperses its commercial village. So the big difference is whether you want your town center-collected or dispersed.

“Day traffic — shoppers, campers, tourists passing through — don’t tend to stop as much in Cashiers because there is no easy way to find their way around. Highlands is proud of its wonderful, well-planned town, which has a great history. On the other hand, Cashiers is very delighted that Highlands thought of it. We’re glad to send a lot of traffic to Highlands; we’re perfectly happy the way we are down here.”

So, boiled down to one fact, the difference is Highlands is a town, Cashiers a village.

A MATTER OF CHOICE
“Cashiers has no government,” McKee says,” but a number of civic boards, and there is a long-going discussion over whether we need more municipal government. We are equally divided on the subject. The older crowd says remaining unincorporated keeps it a little gruff on the exterior, which holds the nature of Cashiers as we want it. It’s like a cake with no icing on it.”

Yet, despite the differences, the two places share much.

“There’s the hospital,” says Bassham, “and things like chamber music. Many from Cashiers also like to come up here for live theater, which they don’t have.”

While the main attraction in both sites is nature’s beauty and the lure of outdoor

The region's array of unique private homes include many residences that achieve pleasing integration into their spectacular mountain settings.

fun, Highlands also offers cultural arts to people from both communities.

There are three different theater groups. The Highlands Playhouse is the town’s professional theater, featuring summer stock, while Highlands Community Players is made up of local talents who do productions the remainder of the season. Finally, there’s the Instant Theater, which features Collin Wilcox Paxton, most wellknown for playing Atticus Finch’s daughter, Scout, in “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

This summer, the playhouse will present “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and “To Kill A Mockingbird,” among others.

A HOT-WEATHER EXPLOSION
Population figures show the boom in summer traffic at both Highlands and Cashiers. It also notes an accompanying expansion of facilities to accommodate the newcomers.

High Hampton Inn and Country Club in Chasiers features golf, tennis, a private lake, hiking trails and more.

But, since census information does not take in secondhome owners, demographics are tough to figure. According to Bassham, the population of Highlands includes about 3,200 year-round residents, but in summer the number swells to between 18,000 and 19,000. Cashiers’ figures show an even higher summertime influx.

“Cashiers has around a thousand people who are registered voters and live here in the winter,” McKee says, “but that figure goes up 10-to-15-fold in summer. It’s a double pyramid type season. It begins in mid-May, peaks in the spring and summer and drops off, then peaks again in the leaf season. In July and August, there are probably in the neighborhood of 20,000 here. But that’s purely a guess.”

There is also a large influx of people for Thanksgiving, and the week after Christmas, running through New Year’s.

SOLID-GOLD PROPERTY
Both real estate markets are super-healthy.

“In Cashiers,” McKee says, “there’s plenty of demand, a limited supply, and a wonderful product.

“It’s probably one of the best, most solid markets in the country. At no time has there ever been a decline in real estate values here. The market has plateaued some, but it’s either been flat or up, never dipped.”

The cost of building in Cashiers is high.

“There is a big price range,” McKee notes, “in which a wealthy man who wants to build in a nice community might pay a half-million dollars for a lot and $1 million more to build a home. The typical buyer would probably spend in the $1.5 or $1.6 million-range, but for others, nice $100,000 cabins can be found in the woods.”

The McKee family goes back several generations in the area: his grandmother, Gertrude, was the first female state senator in North Carolina and his grandfather, E. Lyndon McKee, bought the High Hampton Inn in 1922, purchasing the hotel and 2,500 acres of beautiful mountain land for $25,000. Since that time, the popularity of the Cashiers area has risen steadily and prices have increased in proportion.

The Highlands Inn, on Main Street in Highlands, is a hirstoric 31-room hostelry offering gracious Southern mountain hospitality.

A GOURMET'S DELIGHT
Good restaurants abound on the plateau.

Within its town limits, Highlands has six restaurants that have earned Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence compared to only 81 such awards in the entire state. There are many other places that serve fine food and the only fast-food operation in both places is Subway. No McDonald’s. No Burger King. No Hardee’s. Actually, each locality has an ordinance that prohibits any operation that includes a drive-up window.

It’s part of a special mindset that keeps the area’s flavor natural and unique, while the location continues to expand.

As Sue Bumgarner, executive director of the Cashiers Chamber of Commerce, notes, the entire plateau has grown and improved unbelievably well and unbelievably fast.

“It has become one of the greatest places in the nation to live,” she says.

That seems to sum it up.