PSABC invites everyone to travel back to Oakley’s past with the story of Sayles Village & Bleachery and the surrounding neighborhood development. The saga starts in the 1920s when Frank Sayles built a textile bleachery and a company town for the people who worked there. The corridor east of downtown Asheville was the logical next step in City growth. It was a bustling, promising period –- researched and now shared by Dale Wayne Slusser.

A 20-year resident of Oakley, Dale Slusser has long studied the Bleachery era and how Sayles Village offered workers both a livelihood and neighborhood. Besides the factory, there were homes and churches, schools and stores, sidewalks and parks, all part of this working community. Slusser has developed a map of storied sites, which he’ll distribute after the talk. Attendees can then take a self-driving tour with special entry to one of the first churches built in Oakley, a remnant of the neighborhood’s mercantile past and a private residence in the arts & crafts mode.

Dale Slusser is likely familiar to many PSABC members. A board member active in Asheville preservation, he’s also co-chair of the Endangered Properties Committee, Architectural Designer with Helps Ministries, and a published author currently writing a book about forgotten homes along the Swannanoa. Dale’s take on our area’s first urban village should prove topical.

“Sayles Village and Bleachery is now a Walmart shopping complex. Things change … or do they?” says Kieta Osteen-Cochrane, Education Committee Chair. “We’ll find out, and Oakley will never look quite the same.”

This history talk is scheduled Saturday, July 23rd, from 1-3 pm at the Oakley Community Center, 749 Fairview Road (park and enter from the lower parking lot on Liberty Street beside the Center). While there is no fee, a suggested $10 donation helps support local preservation. Generous sponsors include B. B. Barnes Garden Center and Landscape Supply and the Oakley Community Center.