NC Dept. of Natural & Cultural Resources Secretary Pamela Cashwell

By Moe White –

On January 22, 2025, Pamela Cashwell, the newly named Secretary of the state’s Department of Natural & Cultural Resources, came to western North Carolina—along with the ten other women and men appointed to Governor Josh Stein’s cabinet.

The department heads came not only to see the hurricane’s devastation, but also to help repair the damage through a day of hands-on labor. Of the 18 DNCR sites in WNC, many were damaged by Helene, some severely, including state parks at Chimney Rock, Mt. Mitchell, and South Mountain in Burke County near Morganton.

Wide Variety of Sites

Secretary Cashwell also used the opportunity to familiarize herself with the numerous state-owned or state-managed properties, parks, historic monuments, and artistic centers that dot the region.

The department oversees both cultural and historic organizations and the state parks system. While many consider that oversight to be an odd pairing, Cashwell explains that many of the sites fit into several categories. For example, the Thomas Wolfe House and Visitors Center, where Secretary Cashwell met with The Urban News, is both a historic site, the house having been built in 1883, and a cultural heritage center, reflecting Wolfe’s importance to 20th-century American literature.

And Pisgah View State Park, straddling Haywood and Buncombe counties, will be North Carolina’s first state park located in part in Buncombe County. The property was sold to the state by the Cogburn family, which had owned the land since 1790, first operating it as traditional mountain farmland. It then became Pisgah View Ranch, which opened to the public in 1941. The family partnered with area conservation organizations as well as Buncombe and Haywood County commissioners and state legislators, to ensure funding for the property to become a new park—which will incorporate both historic and recreational features.

Similarly, until the destruction caused by the hurricane, Asheville’s River Arts District housed a large community of working artists, who, by their presence, saved, maintained, and restored scores of buildings that were part of the historic Depot Street area. The railway station on Depot Street welcomed millions of tourists between 1900 and its closing in 1968; and the city’s tanneries, bleacheries, mills, and warehouses lined the French Broad River for nearly a century.

History, Art, and Restoration

Very often, in fact, an arts community will reclaim parts of a city that are falling into repair. Old, unused buildings are affordable to low-income artists, and by renovating them for use as studios and stores (and even residences), those moving in can also restore the history of the area. Soho in New York City was one of the first examples in the 1970s, as artists and writers moved into the city’s old cast-iron, garment-district factory buildings from the 1880s. (The author lived in an 1895 Soho loft building from 1980 to 1995.)

In Marshall, the old Madison County high school was built on Blannahassett Island in the French Broad River between 1924 and 1926. After it closed, the town and county helped renovate it as studios for local artists. The building was devastated by the French Broad River’s flooding during the hurricane, but its interior plaster was still intact, as was the old auditorium—though its wood floor was turned totally on its side. As her restoration assignment, Cashwell’s job was to clean the tongue and groove flooring so it can be reused.

Putting it Together

In familiarizing herself with NC’s cultural and historic sites and its state parks system, Cashwell brings a broad overview to her work. Rather than trying to fit various sites into single categories, Cashwell hopes “to break down some of those silos. We talk about them separately, but here are so many opportunities to put them together. They’re intertwined: arts is culture, our state parks are art, and we can weave those together.”

Her responsibilities include overseeing 35 state parks, dozens of state trails, the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC Museum of Art in Raleigh and Winston-Salem, the NC Zoo in Asheboro, and numerous other sites. Among them is the Vance Birthplace in Reems Creek, which not only remains intact as the birthplace and home of the former governor, but whose exhibits include well-researched information about the enslaved people his family owned: their living quarters, jobs, culture, and lives. North Carolina’s history includes everything from tourism, to agriculture and international trade, to the culture and economy of moonshine, to outdoor adventure activities—hiking, camping, hunting, fishing—that have been pursued by generations of residents and visitors.

The Department of Natural and Cultural Resources must tie together all those aspects of life in North Carolina. One way it does so is through the NC Land and Water Fund, designed to provide grant money for conservation, protection, and restoration of the state’s resources, working with stakeholders, elected officials, and nonprofit organizations to ensure that the cultural history of NC is not lost. And, in the aftermath of the hurricane’s destructive force, many of the department’s historic sites were in danger of being damaged beyond repair, or even completely lost.

The Secretary’s Background

Cashwell is a native of Fayetteville who has spent thirty years as a public servant for the state and federal governments. After earning her undergraduate degree in Economics and her law degree at UNC Chapel Hill, she clerked in Raleigh for Judge James Wynn, who sat on the NC Court of Appeals and then on the NC Supreme Court. (Wynn now serves on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, VA.)

Following her clerkship, Cashwell worked from 1994 to 2003 in Washington, first under the Clinton Administration in the Department of Agriculture and then in the Department of Justice. She returned to the state to join the NC Institute for Constitutional Law, and then moved to the NC State Ethics Commission.

Gov. Cooper appointed her in 2017 as Chief Deputy Secretary of the Department of Public Safety, and then in 2021 named her to run the Dept. of Administration, what she describes as “the business arm of state government.” There Cashwell oversaw state government procurement, its motor fleet and parking, mail services, and construction, as well as the Advocacy Office for Historically Underutilized Businesses, Indian Affairs, and the Council for women and youth involvement.

Her own family heritage includes the Coharie and Lumbee tribes of North Carolina, making her the first woman of Native American background to head a cabinet department in North Carolina.