National Park: Carl Sandburg Home

Who the heck is Carl Sandberg and why is there a National Park dedicated to him near Asheville, North Carolina? This was the thoughts going through my mind as I drove from Charlotte to Flat Rock, NC on a Sunday in Spring, 2011. As it turns out, this may be one of the most underrated national park sites of the ones that I have been to thus far. The location of this park is spectacular, Sandberg’s wife chose the site because is offered peace and tranquility required for Sandburg’s writing, decent year round weather and enough space for the raising of her prize-winning goats.

View of the house from the front lake

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was a writer, poet and musician from the Midwest who won the Pulitzer Prize for some of his poetry and a biography of Abraham Lincoln. He was also a social activist most notably involved in Wisconsin politics. On his death, his wife Lilian wanted his life preserved at their home, named Connemara Farms. The site has walking trails, a beautiful pond and a dairy barn that houses their goat herd. Sandburg was a prodigious talent and the site (and indeed his home) is home to hundreds of thousands of archived items including books, letters, sound recordings, telegrams, maps and photographs.

I don’t know  much about his poetry or folk songs for which he is widely famous, but I do know a bit about his Abraham Lincoln biography. I am currently reading the Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, and it is astounding the amount of detail he gets into about our 16^th president’s life. I learned that this comes from listening to stories by individuals that knew Lincoln. The writing is as much historical as it narrative which I liken to Caro’s The Power Broker or Shelby Foote’s Civil War. Sandburg set strange hours for himself writing until the wee hours of the morning, and sleeping later than his wife. The schedule was so out of the ordinary that his wife, Lillian, slept in a separate room so she could schedule her time to care for the prize winning goats.

Front Office

In addition to the beautiful setting, the site itself is memorable in the sense that there are so many books and historical artifacts that are left untouched. Books are left open to the page they were left open when the site was left for preservation, the calendar is set to the month/week that he passed away, the dining room table is set as if dinner would be ready that evening and the cluttered desks and workspaces indicate a constantly working mind.

Mrs. Sandburg's Prize Winning Goats

After a short 20 minute tour of the house, you can take a walk to the barn where the prize winning goats are still a part of the farm. Supposedly, you can still buy a goat from her original herd.