It’s official. Buncombe County will get its first state park, where residents will get a front-row seat for viewing Mount Pisgah and watching wildlife, hiking ridge lines, and maybe even take in a horseback ride.

On July 19, Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law SB 535, authorizing the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to create Pisgah View State Park, which will be roughly 1,600 acres, sitting mostly in Candler, with a small parcel in Haywood County.

Earlier in the month the governor also signed into law two bills creating the Northern Peaks State Trail in Watauga and Ashe counties, the Wilderness Gateway State Trail in the South Mountains range in McDowell, Rutherford, Burke and Catawba counties, and the Overmountain Victory State Trail reaching across Avery, Mitchell, McDowell, Burke, Rutherford, Polk, Caldwell, Wilkes and Surry counties.

“These new parks and trails will conserve important wildlife habitats and support North Carolina’s flourishing outdoor recreation industry,” Cooper said in a statement.

The new state park land, owned by the Cogburn Family since the late 1700s, and run privately since the 1940s as the Pisgah View Ranch with rental cabins, horseback riding, swimming pool, tennis court and other amenities, will become the closest state park to Asheville, about a 30-minute drive from downtown.

It will be the 40th park added to the N.C. State Park System in the past 100 years and the sixth in Western North Carolina. The park system was established in 1916 with the creation of Mount Mitchell State Park in Yancey County.

The other WNC state parks are Chimney Rock, Gorges, Grandfather Mountain and Lake James, all at least a 45-minute drive from Asheville.

The bill was introduced in April by three Republican senators – Sen. Chuck Edwards, R-, Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell and Jim Davis, R-Macon. It was passed unanimously by the Senate in June and the House in early July, where it was championed by Rep. Brian Turner, D-Buncombe, and Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson.

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The estimated sale price of $18.2 million will come from a variety of sources, Edwards said, and will take about five years to complete.

“As is the case with many large land acquisitions of this type, like DuPont State Recreational Forest, and Headwaters State Forest, funds are drawn upon from a number of sources. State taxpayers are only one,” Edwards said.

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“I expect we’ll draw down federal funding (from the Land and Water Conservation Fund) and I expect a great deal of private contributors and corporate contributors. When you consider the collaborative effort along with the economic benefit long-term, I believe this will be a very solid investment for the state,” he said.

State Property Office appraisals obtained through a public records request by the Citizen Times show one appraisal in March on 1,565 acres of land estimated its value at nearly $17.2 million, including timber valuation.

Another appraisal performed in November 2018 on 1,321 acres, estimated its value at $13.8 million, including timber valuation.

Max Cogburn said the family also commissioned an appraisal that valued the land at $26 million, but that appraisal was not made available to the Citizen Times.

For lands to be considered for becoming a North Carolina state park, they must have “extraordinary natural resources representative of North Carolina’s rare or pristine ecosystems, have potential for recreation including facilities and access necessary to support it, and have sufficient opportunities for land acquisition,” said Katie Hall, spokeswoman for N.C. State Parks.

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According to a local land conservation nonprofit, the land meets such criteria. The Asheville-based Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy had been interested in the land for nearly two decades due to its unique conservation value, including headwater streams, ridge lines and wildlife corridors, said SAHC vice president Jay Leutze.

The land trust had been in contact with the four Cogburn siblings and their children for years discussing its possible conservation.

The SAHC has raised $1 million so far to assist with the purchase.

The land ranges in elevation from 2,500 feet above sea level along South Hominy Creek to more than 4,600 feet at the Buncombe-Haywood line, said Hanni Muerdter, SAHC conservation director.

She said the property is critical in the ecological integrity of the region since it serves as a wildlife corridor for large animals like black bear and deer who like to use ridge lines.

The ranch property is within 1.5 miles of Pisgah National Forest and directly abuts the greater 120,000-plus acres of protected landscape of conservation easements, Pisgah National Forest, Blue Ridge Parkway, and state game lands spanning the Pisgah Ridge and Great Balsam Mountains, Muerdter said.

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“It’s an utterly unique opportunity to buy this much land at one time. That makes it really hard to value it because there are no comparable sales of similar size property with this amount of history and all the improvements on the property,” Leutze said. “You’re looking at something that is frankly, incomparable.”

One similar property is The Cliffs at High Carolina, a Fairview project that would have had about 1,000 luxury homes and a golf course designed by Tiger Woods. Its 800 acres were sold in April by David Straus of Straus Family LLC for about $15.3 million, or $19,125 per acre.

Edwards said it will take about five years for the deal to be finalized and for details to be worked out, such as whether the current amenities will be open to the public and whether there will be an entrance fee.