Transylvania County, North Carolina

Transylvania County, North Carolina
Transylvania County Courthouse
Seal
Location in the U.S. state of North Carolina
North Carolina's location in the U.S.
Founded	1861
Named for	The Transylvania Company
Seat	Brevard
Largest city	Brevard
Area
• Total	381 sq mi (987 km2)
• Land	379 sq mi (982 km2)
• Water	2.0 sq mi (5 km2), 0.5%
Population
• (2010)	33,090
• Density	87/sq mi (34/km²)
Congressional district	11th
Time zone	Eastern: UTC-5/-4
Website	www.transylvaniacounty.org

Transylvania County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2010 census, the population was 33,090. Its county seat is Brevard.

Transylvania County comprises the Brevard, NC Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Asheville-Brevard, NC CSA combined statistical area.

Founded in 1861, the county's name is derived from the colonial Transylvania Company and has Latin origins: trans ("across") and silva ("woods").

Prior to the early twentieth century, an overwhelming majority of Transylvania County’s residents subsisted through agriculture, often growing basic staples such as potatoes and cabbage.

Beginning in the early twentieth century with Joseph Silverstein’s tannery, a manufacturing economy began to emerge in the county relying on timber and related products harvested from the Pisgah National Forest. In the 1930s, Harry Straus opened a paper mill in the Pisgah Forest area, and by the mid-20th century Straus' Ecusta Paper manufacturing site provided jobs to over 3,000 local residents. During the peak industrial years of the 1950s, DuPont located one of its factories in the county, employing nearly 1,000 more residents.

In the following decades, Brevard College and its namesake town each grew at an unprecedented rate, and Brevard Music Center and its summer Brevard Music Festival began to attract musicians and enthusiasts from around the country to Transylvania County.

Since the later part of the twentieth century, Transylvania County has experienced a change in its economic base as many of the manufacturing operations that once operated there, including Ecusta and DuPont, either went defunct or left the United States for more favorable business conditions abroad. Since that time, the county has worked to reshape its economy around the growing Appalachian summer and winter tourism industry.