NEWS

Valley Rewind

Black Mountain News
This photograph from the Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center's extensive collection is taken from postcard sent to Mrs. Gertrude Eldred in Loveland, Colorado on Jan. 30, 1917. As early as 1903, Kodak began producing film that would allow their customers to print a postcard from any photograph they took. The message on the back of the photograph postcard reads, "Dear Aunt Gertrude, This is a picture that Fred took of 'The Cragmont' where we are staying for a few months. Love from Frances and Fred A." In 1905, the Harrison Mountain Air Sanatorium was incorporated by Dr. Isaac J. Archer of Black Mountain and Charles Piper and Wallace Harrison of Chicago in order to "build, construct and operate a sanatorium, to care for and treat the sick..., (and) to build and operate a hotel...." just north of the intersection of Cragmont and North Fork Road, in the present location of Cragmont Assembly. In 1916, the company officially changed its name to The Cragmont Sanatorium, though it had used the name since at least 1908, and operated as such with Archer as director and head doctor. The company dissolved in 1945, and the land was sold to the assembly. The building pictured here was demolished and a new building erected on the same site in 1979 for use by the assembly's conference center.