33. Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, North Carolina

               Welcome back to our blog.  In our latest post we are heading to the southern Appalachians of western North Carolina, to visit the home of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg.

Entrance Sign

BACKGROUND:

               When Carl Sandburg moved with his wife and two daughters to North Carolina in 1945, he was already a renowned writer, having had a varied career as a poet, journalist, historian and even folksinger, and his mammoth biography of Abraham Lincoln had already netted him the Pulitzer Prize.  He and his wife Lilian, nicknamed “Paula,” would live together at their North Carolina estate, dubbed Connemara, for the next twenty-two years, continuing to pursue their own endeavors.  Carl would go on to win a second Pulitzer Prize for his poetry in 1951 as well as a Grammy Award in 1959.  Lilian Sandburg meanwhile became a champion dairy goat breeder, winning awards across the country.  After Carl passed away in 1967, Lilian lobbied Congress to preserve her husband’s legacy as one of the nation’s greatest literary figures by establishing their home as a unit of the National Park Service.  The effort succeeded the following year and Lilian sold the house to the Federal government prior to passing away in 1977.

The Sandburg Home

THE HISTORIC SITE:

               The Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site is located in the village of Flat Rock in western North Carolina.  The site consists of the Connemara estate, maintaining the historic structures owned by the Sandburgs during the time they lived there.  The centerpiece of the site is the home itself, originally built in the 1830s.  Having been given straight from the Sandburg family to the National Park Service, the home is in almost exactly the same state is was in 1967 and filled with original items and artifacts from the Sandburg family.  Behind the house are the numerous farm buildings used by Lilian Sandburg for her dairy goat business.  The National Park Service maintains a small herd of dairy goats at the site, all of which are descended from Mrs. Sandburg’s original goats.  The estate has fairly large grounds which are crisscrossed by trails.

Visitors mingle with the dairy goats at the site's goat barn.

TRAVEL TIPS:

               Carl Sandburg National Historic Site is located roughly a half-hour drive south from Asheville, North Carolina.  The site is open to the public from 9am to 5pm, with regularly scheduled tours of the home for a small admission fee.  At the time of this writing, the Carl Sandburg Home, while still open for tours, was undergoing renovation and restoration processes, and all furnishings and historic items within the house had been moved into storage, which will explain the lack of interior photos for this entry.  Renovations are due to be completed by the autumn with operations returning to normal.  The site also has a self-guided cell phone tour of the grounds and visitors can stop to interact with the dairy goats at the goat barn behind the main house.  The visitor center is located in the basement of the Sandburg home, with the entrance under the front porch staircase.  The grounds, but not the house, are handicapped accessible.  Passport stamps can be found in the visitor center.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS:

The view from the front porch of the main house looking towards the Appalachian Mountains.

The home as seen from the front lake near the main entrance.