Brevard’s planned Estatoe Trail expansion depends in part on clearing a 125-foot brick smokestack from the former Transylvania Tanning Company site. Crews are scheduled to begin demolition this month, with the work expected to take two to three weeks. The stack has stood above the Rosenwald community west of downtown for more than a century, and some homes near Silversteen Park can still see it from their yards.
The schedule comes from the City of Brevard, which says, “In November, crews will begin the process of demolishing and removing the tannery smokestack,” and estimates the project will take two to three weeks. The stack is on Tannery North, a 12.8-acre, city-owned wooded parcel bounded by Cashiers Valley Road and Silversteen Drive, the Transylvania Times reported.
The city took ownership of that parcel in 2014, decades after the Transylvania Tanning Company, which Joseph Silversteen established in Brevard, wound down operations into the late 1950s. The North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office survey describes the company as built in 1916-17.
The tannery’s place in Brevard history
The Transylvania Tanning Company was part of a broader mountain industry: the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources says entrepreneurs established about a half-dozen commercial tanneries across the mountains around 1900. A North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office survey says the Brevard company, built in 1916-17, was among the institutions anchoring growth in the town’s northwest African American communities after 1910.
Engineers Flagged a Crumbling Structure
The city’s decision followed assessments of the stack’s condition. BrevardBeagle.com reported that an engineer found dislodged and crumbling material, a large crack through the wall and coal ash at the base in 2024. A 2025 engineer’s report, also described by the Beagle, confirmed the structure remained in poor physical condition. The report says city staff spent about a year and a half researching the stack’s condition and potential contamination before recommending action.
The assessments also had implications for the city’s ability to insure the property. According to BrevardBeagle.com, the North Carolina League of Municipalities told city officials it would not insure the property unless the stack’s risk was mitigated. By July, city staff had recommended demolishing the stack and removing a separate contaminated vault.
A Brownfield With a Hidden Vault
The Tannery North land carries more than just the aging stack. The property contains physical and chemical remnants of the tanning operation, according to the Transylvania Times, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has classified the ground where the rest of the tannery once stood as a protected brownfield — meaning the site is restricted from certain uses due to the lingering environmental impacts. Separately, the Beagle’s reporting describes an underground vault on the property filled with an unknown oily substance, which a required environmental management plan calls for removing alongside the stack.
The Transylvania Times reported that a March 2017 city Parks, Trails and Recreation Committee meeting included a report of lead contamination at Tannery Park, tied to an earlier discovery of barrels containing a contaminant during a land survey. In its 2020 report, the Times quoted city planning director Paul Ray saying drums associated with monitoring-well work contained sampling materials and were removed in 2017. That was separate from the oily substance described in current project reporting.
DH Griffin Wrecking Gets the Job, Price Tag Tops $288,000
The city’s public records show council adopted Resolution 2026-32, authorizing the city manager to execute a contract for vault removal and smokestack demolition at Tannery North, according to the City of Brevard. A companion measure, Ordinance 2026-25, amended the Estatoe Trail capital project ordinance to cover the work.
BrevardBeagle.com reported that DH Griffin Wrecking Company was approved this year for the vault removal and stack demolition, and would try to retain usable, uncontaminated material from the site for reuse. The combined work is expected to cost $288,750. The city budget allocates $200,000 from the unrestricted fund balance and $100,000 from the multi-use path fund, with remaining assigned funds for contingencies, according to the Beagle.
Clearing Ground for the Estatoe Trail
The demolition is a prerequisite for one of Brevard’s bigger infrastructure pushes. Tannery North is slated to house the newest segment of the Estatoe Trail sometime this year, the Transylvania Times reports, and BlueRidgeNow reports the Tannery North segment is expected to be completed later this year. Preconstruction work, including fencing the area and bringing in construction machinery, began back in December, and the trail route’s tree removal work had to pause from May 1 through July 31 to observe the region’s bat moratorium, the outlet reported.
Once finished, the Tannery North section will have a four-foot split-rail fence intended to keep walkers and cyclists on the path and away from the former industrial site, per BlueRidgeNow’s reporting. A 2021 City of Brevard trail plan identified the Tannery Park-to-Rosman Highway section as phase three of the planned Estatoe Trail extension. The Estatoe Trail construction is funded in part by a 2023 federal Carbon Reduction Program grant of $528,000, BlueRidgeNow noted — a separate funding stream from the smokestack and vault contract.
