The Esmerelda Artist Colony, nee The Esmerelda Inn is a composite of the many inns/boarding houses which inhabited The High Country during this time period. My fictional Esmerelda bears a slight resemblance to The Esmeralda Inn (note difference in spelling) which is still in operation in the Hickory Nut Gorge area of North Carolina, near Chimney Rock. Originally built by Colonel Tom Turner in 1891 and opened in 1892, that inn was named for the novel Esmeralda, written by Frances Hodges Burnett, as speculated by Sally Jane in Chapter 12. Around 1912, The Esmeralda Inn was discovered by the Vitaraph Troupe and other silent movie-making companies whose stars used the inn as a hideaway. In 1917, the inn was rebuilt after burning to the ground and its location named Esmeralda, North Carolina when a post office was established there and functioned until 1926; after this time the locale became known as Bat Cave. The current mailing address for The Esmeralda Inn is Lake Lure, North Carolina. The area was rediscovered in the latter part of the twentieth century when the films.
