Spruce Pine

Community Overview

Spruce Pine is Mitchell County’s largest town and an important center for daily life in the surrounding rural area. Its businesses, services, schools, neighborhoods, and public spaces serve residents from across the region. The town’s identity is closely tied to its mountain setting and outdoor recreation, including walking, fishing, river access, and community parks, alongside a well-established arts and craft community.

Hurricane Helene caused extensive damage across Spruce Pine, affecting infrastructure, businesses, public facilities, and community spaces. The scale of the recovery has required the town to address many priorities at once while making careful use of local capacity, partnerships, and available recovery resources.

Spruce Pine entered recovery with an established foundation of community planning. Completed in 2023, the Town’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan incorporated substantial public input and identified expanded recreation as an important community priority, including trails, river access, indoor recreation, and more opportunities for children and families. Those findings provide relevant context as Spruce Pine considers how its parks and public facilities can better serve residents through recovery and over time.

ADC in Spruce Pine

At the invitation of the Town of Spruce Pine, the Appalachian Design Center is providing focused design and planning capacity for Brad Ragan Park. This support gives the park dedicated attention while Town leaders continue advancing infrastructure, downtown, and other urgent recovery priorities.

Brad Ragan Park is one of the Town’s public recreation assets, with a public pool, tennis courts, and access to the Mineral City Mile walking trail. Located within a residential area near a school, the park has the potential to serve an even stronger role in community life.

The partnership brings together community engagement, program planning, site evaluation, and professional design and planning expertise to shape a community-informed direction for the park. By adding capacity to the Town’s larger recovery effort, ADC’s support can help connect necessary repairs with opportunities to make Brad Ragan Park a stronger, more useful community asset for the years ahead.

Community Host

Town of Spruce Pine, NC

ADC Community Lead

Pat Kappes, Project Manager.