Wedding DJ at Rockbrook Camp in Brevard, NC

The Space

Rockbrook sits on 219 private acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains, four miles south of Brevard on US Highway 276, land that was a working farm before Nancy Barnum Clarke Carrier and her husband Henry opened it as a camp on July 6, 1921. Nancy was the great-granddaughter of P.T. Barnum and went on to found the southern section of the American Camping Association in 1923, serving as its first president. That first summer ran on five cabins, a lodge, a small swimming pool, and one tennis court, powered from day one by a waterwheel that generated electricity for the cabin lights.

The property still carries that early history in its buildings: Curosty and Goodwill, the two oldest structures on the grounds, are disassembled homesteads originally near Williamson Creek that were relocated to camp in the early 1920s. Nancy Carrier’s father, Henry P. Clarke, had managed the land as a working farm before the camp opened, breeding chickens and shorthorn cattle, and the farm itself supplied all the food for camp in its first year.

Capacity & Layout

The property is built around rustic wooden cabins with bunk beds, typically housing eight campers and two counselors each, along with nearby stone lodges used for group and age-level gatherings. A dining hall serves family-style meals, and campers historically ate there three times a day, walking over from their cabins, a rhythm that shapes how the grounds are laid out between sleeping quarters and communal space.

A spring-fed mountain lake sits on the property for swimming and paddling, and the riding center adds two barns, a large covered arena, an outdoor jump course, and a beginner ring. In the 1920s the riding program ran trail rides to the river and toward Caesar’s Head, with horses even taken over the mountain to Greenville for the winter, a detail that gives a sense of just how far the property’s working trails once extended.

Amenities

Rockbrook maintains a 1:4 staff-to-camper ratio and is accredited by the American Camp Association against more than 300 industry standards, a level of operational structure unusual for a rustic mountain property. On-site health care includes a registered nurse staffing the camp’s health hut at all times, with a physician’s assistant on call, so the grounds are set up to handle a group of any size safely.

Nancy Carrier’s influence extended well beyond the camp itself: she helped found the Brevard Music Center and served as its first president, and she was a suffragette and community leader who helped establish Lyday Memorial Hospital, the first public hospital in Transylvania County. She led Rockbrook until her death in 1977, which means the property carries more than a century of continuous history under a single founding family’s influence.

Location & Getting There

The camp sits four miles south of Brevard on US Highway 276, deep enough into the Blue Ridge Mountains that Asheville Regional Airport, roughly an hour away by car, is the nearest air option for guests flying in. The setting is genuinely remote, 219 private acres of mountain land rather than a property adjoining a town center, which suits a group looking for a mountain retreat over a conventional venue.

Between the stone lodges, the wooden cabins, and the open lake and mountain grounds, the property offers a mix of enclosed and open-air spaces, and a DJ working here needs to plan sound coverage differently depending on whether the gathering is inside one of the lodges or out on the open lawn near the lake.