High Hampton Inn Historic District

Cashiers, Jackson County, North Carolina Listed Ref. 91001468 Historic district
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High Hampton Inn Historic District, North Carolina
Photo: RichardKenni, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why it's listed

High Hampton Inn is a mountain resort on about 30 acres near Cashiers, in Jackson County, North Carolina. Its main building, a gable-roofed inn sided in chestnut bark, was completed in 1933 to designs by Erle Stillwell after a fire destroyed the earlier inn in 1932. Around it sit cottages, a smokehouse, a stable and a recreational landscape that includes two lakes, a golf course laid out in 1924, clay tennis courts and walking trails. The property's resort use began with the Hampton family and continued under the Halsteds, but the surviving buildings and grounds best reflect the years from 1922 to 1941, when lumber industrialist Ernest Lyndon McKee and his wife, Gertrude Dills McKee, developed the inn. The district was listed for its role in early twentieth-century recreation and for its rustic architecture, which features bark shingles, board-and-batten siding, twig stickwork and stone chimneys. Sixteen resources contribute to the district and four do not.

Machine-generated summary. This summary was generated by a language model from the official nomination document and has not been reviewed line by line by an editor. It may contain errors. Check the source document before relying on any detail. Source: nomination document (PDF) · catalog entry. Generated October 2026 (model claude-sonnet-5-5, prompt v1.0-2026-10-29).

Period of significance1922-1941
StylesOther: rustic resort
Areas of significanceEntertainment/Recreation, Architecture
Acreage30
Boundary sourceNPS cultural-resource GIS polygon
Full listing pageHigh Hampton Inn Historic District (property record)

What listing means for this property

This is a historic district. Buildings within its boundary are either contributing (they add to the district's significance) or non-contributing. Owners of contributing income-producing buildings can claim the 20% federal rehabilitation tax credit; homeowners should look at state credits. National Register districts impose no design review by themselves; a local historic district ordinance, if one exists, does (the difference explained).

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change; confirm with your State Historic Preservation Office or a qualified adviser.