The Swannanoa River Valley, known as Grey Eagle when the Cherokee and Catawba lived there, became a destination by the late 1800s after surveyors judged the neighboring Black Mountains the highest range in the Eastern U.S. Black Mountain grew into a gateway to the Blue Ridge Mountains as the railroad and stagecoaches brought visitors, immigrants, traders, and others seeking opportunity. The train depot built in 1909 served travelers for decades, and historic buildings between the railroad tracks and the old stagecoach road, now State Street, still reflect the town's past, including the Monte Vista Hotel, a former firehouse, and other downtown structures. Visitors first reached the valley by horseback, wagon, and stagecoach through Swannanoa Gap into the village then called Grey Eagle, recorded by the U.S. Post Office as Gray Eagle in 1870. In 1879, the Western North Carolina Railroad tunneled through the Blue Ridge into Buncombe County and named its station Black Mountain after the nearby range; the town incorporated in 1893 and adopted that name. Black Mountain also became known for Black Mountain College, an experimental school founded by Andrew Rice that operated from 1933 to 1957, was owned and run by faculty, emphasized the arts, and drew students and teachers from around the world, including Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Josef and Anni Albers, who fled Hitler's Germany in 1933. In 1949, Buckminster Fuller and his students built his first successful geodesic dome there. Today the former college campus serves as summer camp and festival grounds, while the town remains a center for shops, galleries, restaurants, festivals, hiking, and access to nearby peaks including Mount Mitchell.