Biltmore Estate North Carolina Buck Spring Lodge Mount Pisgah George Vanderbilt 1905 Real Photo Postcard

Mount Pisgah, a prominent peak rising to 5,749 feet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, is central to one of the nation's earliest conservation efforts. The land comprising much of the future Pisgah National Forest, including Mount Pisgah, was originally part of George W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate. Vanderbilt, with figures like Gifford Pinchot and Dr. Carl Schenck, pioneered scientific forestry in America, establishing the Biltmore Forest School in 1898 on his estate.