A Lakeside Legacy: How Lake Junaluska's Oldest Building Still Anchors a Mountain Community

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  July 3, 2026

The First Building on the Grounds

Before there were inns, before there were homes along the shoreline, before the lighted Cross went up on the hillside, there was Stuart Auditorium. It opened on June 25, 1913, as the first and only completed structure on the Assembly grounds at Lake Junaluska. Everything else came later.

That opening day was not a quiet ribbon cutting. The building hosted the Second General Missionary Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and roughly 4,000 people came to Haywood County for it. Picture that. A brand new community, barely more than a lake and a single large pavilion, drawing a crowd that size to the mountains in the summer of 1913.

The auditorium did not look then like it looks now. It began as an open-sided pavilion. The ground was covered in sawdust. People sat on wooden benches, open to the mountain air, with the new lake stretching out beyond them. It was simple and it was built for a purpose, which was to gather large numbers of people in one place to worship, to learn, and to be together.

More than a century later, that purpose has not changed. The building has, many times over, but what it is for has stayed the same. That is the thread that runs through the whole story of this place, and it is why the oldest building at Lake Junaluska is still the one everyone gathers in.

A Vision Born in 1908

The idea started five years before the doors opened. In 1908, two Methodist leaders, Bishop James Atkins and Rev. George R. Stuart, set out to build something the South did not yet have. They had seen the religious assembly grounds of the Northeast, the Chautauqua-style retreats where people came for weeks of lectures, music, and worship, and they wanted a Southern equivalent set in the mountains.

They found their location in Haywood County. Their organization, the Southern Assembly, Inc., began purchasing land in April 1908 and eventually assembled 1,200 acres. It was an ambitious footprint for a project that existed mostly on paper and in the conviction of its founders.

The name came from history. They called it Junaluska, after the Cherokee leader, tying the new community to the land it sat on. It was a deliberate choice, and it has held for more than a hundred years.

What is remarkable, looking back, is how fast the vision became real. This was not a slow, decades-long buildout. The founders committed to the land, committed to the lake, and committed to a gathering place, and within a handful of years the essential pieces were all standing. That kind of speed took money, faith, and a lot of nerve. Atkins and Stuart had all three.

Damming Richland Creek

You cannot have a lakeside legacy without a lake, and the lake at Junaluska did not exist until people made it. It was formed by damming Richland Creek, with the dam built between 1911 and 1913. The result was an artificial lake of about 200 acres, reaching 35 to 40 feet deep at the dam.

That was serious engineering for the era, done by hand and by mule in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The timing lined up almost exactly with the auditorium. As the pavilion went up, the water rose behind the new dam, and by the time that first conference gathered in June 1913, the lake was there to greet them.

By the end of that same year the community had a shape to it. The large auditorium was finished. The dam was complete. Thirteen private homes had been built. In a single year, an idea from 1908 had turned into a working lakeside settlement with a gathering hall, a body of water, and families living on the shore.

Getting there was part of the appeal, and part of the challenge. A train depot opened in 1915, and at the community's peak, four daily trips ferried guests over from Waynesville. Passenger service ran until 1948 and freight until 1966. The depot still stands today, preserved as a historic landmark, a reminder of the years when the railroad brought thousands of people to the water's edge.

From Open Pavilion to Enclosed Hall

For its first decades, Stuart Auditorium stayed close to its original form, an open-sided pavilion where the mountain weather was part of the experience. That worked for summer conferences. It worked less well for a community that wanted to use the space more of the year and for more kinds of gatherings.

The building's biggest transformation came during the post-World War II building boom. That is when the auditorium was enclosed and additional facilities were added. The open sides gave way to walls. The sawdust floor and the plain benches eventually gave way to something more permanent.

This is the part of the story worth sitting with, because it is the pattern that defines the whole place. The building was not frozen in time and it was not torn down. It was modernized while keeping its identity. Each generation updated it for its own needs without erasing what it had been.

Today the auditorium reflects that layered history. It has a lakeside setting with tall, sweeping windows that pull the water and the mountains into the room. It seats up to 2,000 people in permanent theater-style seating. It is a comfortable, capable modern venue that happens to be the oldest building on the grounds.

The renaming fits the same pattern. The auditorium carried the name of co-founder George R. Stuart from early on, and after his death in 1926, it was formally renamed in his memory. The man who helped imagine the place is remembered every time someone says the building's name.

A Living Tradition, Not a Museum

The easiest thing to get wrong about an old building is to treat it like it stopped being useful the day it became historic. Stuart Auditorium never got that memo. It is still an active event venue, and it is still doing the exact job it was built to do in 1913.

Worship services fill it. Conferences fill it. Speakers of real stature have stood on its stage, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who spoke there in an earlier era. The mix of the sacred and the civic has been part of the building's character from the start, and it continues.

Then there is the music. Sold-out concerts are a regular part of the calendar now, and one of the clearest signs of the building's living tradition is Balsam Range, the internationally acclaimed bluegrass group with deep Western North Carolina roots. When a band that has played the biggest stages in the genre comes home to a 1913 auditorium and packs it out, that tells you the room still matters.

The auditorium also anchors the rhythm of the community's year. It is central to the annual programming and to Lake Junaluska Day, the kind of gathering that brings residents and visitors together the way that first 1913 conference did. The scale is different. The purpose is not.

There is something fitting about all of it. A building that started as an open pavilion for 4,000 people to gather is still, a century later, the place this community goes to be together. Most historic structures survive by being preserved. This one survives by being used.

The Buildings That Grew Up Around It

Stuart Auditorium may be the oldest, but it did not stay lonely for long. The years right after 1913 brought a wave of construction, and much of it still shapes the look of Lake Junaluska today.

The Auditorium Hotel came first, built in 1914 across from the auditorium, though it burned in 1920. The Junaluska Inn, a roughly 130-room hotel, opened in June 1917 and burned to the ground on July 17, 1918, barely a year later. Fire was a hard fact of life for early wooden buildings, and the community lost some of its most ambitious structures to it.

What rose in their place still stands. The Terrace Hotel, originally called the College Inn, was completed and renamed after the Junaluska Inn fire and still operates today as The Terrace on North Lakeshore Drive. Lambuth Inn, named for Bishop Walter Russell Lambuth and originally called the Centenary Mission Inn, was completed in 1921 and 1922, expanded in 1956 and 1964, and now sits on the National Register of Historic Places. Shackford Hall, built in 1923 to train Sunday School leaders, is also on the National Register.

The residential story runs alongside the public one. C.E. Weatherby is credited with the first house completed in 1913, the oldest residence on the grounds, distinct from the oldest building overall. Historic homes from the founding era, built between 1913 and 1917, still line Atkins Loop, and several are still standing. And the lighted Cross, erected in 1922 and replaced in 1994, has become the community's landmark on the hillside above the water.

Tradition Into a New Era

The community that grew up around Stuart Auditorium is not standing still, and that is the real point of a legacy. It has to be carried, not just admired.

Ownership tells part of the story. The Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church has owned the property since 1948. Lake Junaluska Assembly, Inc., an agency of that jurisdiction and tax-exempt since 1959, owns the conference and retreat center, the lake, the dam, and the recreation facilities. Its Board of Directors functions as the community's de facto government, which is a reminder that this lakeside neighborhood is governed in a way most Haywood County communities are not.

The clearest sign of the new era is investment. In 2021, the Assembly purchased the former World Methodist Council headquarters, along with an adjacent building, for $1.25 million. That is the kind of move an organization makes when it is planning for the decades ahead, not just maintaining what it has. Major donors, including Mike and Anne Warren, have supported the ongoing work of keeping the grounds vital.

It fits a pattern that goes all the way back to the pavilion with the sawdust floor. Every generation at Lake Junaluska has updated the place for its own time while protecting what came before. The auditorium got enclosed. The inns got rebuilt after fires. The Cross got replaced. Now the community is buying and repurposing buildings for whatever comes next.

That balance, between honoring the past and building for the future, is exactly what draws so many people to put down roots in these mountains in the first place. If you have ever driven past that lighted Cross at dusk and wondered what it would be like to call a place like this home, the communities around Waynesville and Lake Junaluska are worth a closer look. Franklin, where I work, sits an easy drive south and shares that same mountain character, and I am always glad to talk about what living here really looks like.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the oldest building at Lake Junaluska?

Stuart Auditorium is the oldest original building at Lake Junaluska. It opened on June 25, 1913, as the first and only completed structure on the Assembly grounds when the community began. It started as an open-sided pavilion with a sawdust-covered floor and wooden bench seating, hosting the Second General Missionary Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which drew roughly 4,000 attendees. The building was named for co-founder Rev. George R. Stuart and formally renamed in his memory after his death in 1926. It was later enclosed during the post-World War II building boom and still operates today as an active venue seating up to 2,000 people.

Who founded Lake Junaluska and why?

Lake Junaluska was founded by two Methodist leaders, Bishop James Atkins and Rev. George R. Stuart, who shared a vision in 1908 for a Southern version of the religious assembly grounds popular in the Northeast at the time. Their organization, the Southern Assembly, Inc., purchased 1,200 acres in Haywood County beginning in April 1908. The community was built around a new lake created by damming Richland Creek, and it was named for Junaluska, a Cherokee leader. By the end of 1913 the grounds included the finished auditorium, the completed dam, and thirteen private homes, marking the start of a lakeside community that continues to this day.

Can you attend events at Stuart Auditorium today?

Yes. Stuart Auditorium remains an active event venue at Lake Junaluska and hosts worship services, conferences, notable speakers, and sold-out concerts throughout the year. The bluegrass group Balsam Range, an internationally acclaimed band with deep Western North Carolina roots, has played to full houses there. The auditorium is central to annual programming, including Lake Junaluska Day. Its lakeside setting features tall, sweeping windows and permanent theater-style seating for up to 2,000 people. Over the years it has welcomed figures as prominent as Eleanor Roosevelt. Event schedules are published through the Lake Junaluska Assembly, and many gatherings are open to the public.

Where is Lake Junaluska located?

Lake Junaluska sits in Haywood County in Western North Carolina, just outside Waynesville and a short drive from Asheville. The lake itself is an artificial one, formed by damming Richland Creek between 1911 and 1913. It covers roughly 200 acres and reaches 35 to 40 feet deep near the dam. The surrounding conference and retreat center has been owned since 1948 by the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church, and it is managed by Lake Junaluska Assembly, Inc. The community includes historic inns, homes, walking paths around the water, and the landmark lighted Cross, making it both a residential neighborhood and a destination.