Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt was posthumously inducted into the Western North Carolina Agricultural Hall of Fame for her pioneering role leading the Biltmore Estate’s vast agricultural and forestry operations in the first part of the 20th century.
Following the 1914 death of her husband, George Vanderbilt, Edith took responsibility for managing Biltmore Estate. Rather than divide or abandon the estate, she preserved it as a working agricultural operation, helping protect thousands of acres of farmland and establishing a model that balanced farming, conservation and education.
One of her most significant decisions came soon after her husband’s death, when she offered about 87,000 acres of Biltmore’s forested mountain land to the federal government for $5 an acre. The sale closed in 1915, and the land became Pisgah National Forest in 1916 — the first national forest in the eastern United States created from purchased private land under the Weeks Act…