Twenty-four miles south of Asheville in Flat Rock, NC, there once lived a Midwestern poet that wrote for the common man. His name was Carl Sandburg. He was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet & biographer, most famous for his Chicago Poems, American Songbag and massive biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Connemara is a large estate of 245-acres consisting of a 22 room white mansion on a hill, backed by mountains and fronted by green pastures with various lakes, barns and outbuildings. It was sold to the government after his death and is maintained as a National Historic Site by the U.S. Park Service. The hill approaching the house is steep and the climb ascends 100 feet over a third of a mile, but transportation is provided if the walk is too much. When you get to the house, there is a visitors center in the basement. Here you can peruse the bookstore and buy tickets for the tour, which is the only way to explore the house.
The home was built by Christopher Memminger in 1838, who was the secretary of the treasury for the Confederacy. The home was next owned by the textile tycoon Ellison Smyth who named it Connemara in honor of his Irish heritage. The Sandburgs bought the estate from Smyth's descendants.
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