Affiliated with the Episcopal Church since 1928, Kanuga Conferences is situated on 1,400 mountain acres near Hendersonville, North Carolina, with scenic Kanuga Lake at its center. We welcome more than 25,000 guests annually to the year-round conference center, Camp Kanuga, Camp Bob and the Mountain Trail Outdoor School.

Kanuga is a two part story. First is the 1909 Kanuga Lake Club designed to attract the rich of the South to summer in the western mountains of North Carolina. The second is the successful effort begun in 1928 to establish an Episcopal conference center for camping and leadership training for the churches of North and South Carolina.

Charlotte banker, real estate developer, and newspaper publisher George Stephens wanted a place where families could come and escape the hot summers of Charlotte, Columbia, and the Low Country and here in the cool mountains, be with the families they were with back home. Stephens commissioned the nationally famous John Nolen to plan such a place and he chose the noted Asheville architect Richard Sharp Smith to design the major buildings. He bought 950 acres and placed a substantial dam across Mud Creek creating a lake three times the size of the lake we know today. Overlooking this lake he built a large inn with dining rooms. A lakeside pavilion for the social activities and water sports and 39 cottages – ranging in size from two to six bedrooms – completed one of the South’s greatest summer resorts.