Pack Square Park

George W. Pack donated the land in 1901. The earlier courthouse was demolished and rebuilt a few yards east; the vacated parcel became Pack Square Park in 1903. That transaction — a private gift converting civic infrastructure into public ground — set the terms for everything that followed.

Local tradition holds that a Confederate hospital operated here during the Civil War, though the fighting stayed away from Asheville until the final weeks of the conflict.

The park was redesigned in 2009 under the guidance of Pack Square Conservancy, a non-profit organization. The redesign gave the space its current form: the Roger McGuire Green in front of City Hall, the Reuter Terrace mid-park, and a Veterans' Memorial installed on the northern side that same year. A covered stage occupies the eastern edge.

That stage is the reason to go. Shindig on the Green, the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, and the Goombay Festival all happen here — old-time music and West African and Caribbean traditions sharing the same square in a mountain city that has always been a crossroads. The site itself was a crossroads before Asheville existed; Pack Square Park is where the city keeps returning to that fact.