Company Profile
Skyland Camp & Retreats
Company Overview
Skyland’s mission is to change the world… one conversation… one experience… one person at a time.
We believe that what we do every day has the power to change the world. Every conversation, every experience and every moment is an opportunity to uplift another person and to inspire greatness.
Through Girl's Camp and Mini Camps (Grown-Up Camp, Family Camp, and Mother-Daughter Camp), Skyland offers campers of all ages the opportunity to explore, play, and discover something amazing: themselves! Limited to just 50 campers per session, Skyland is committed to the individual camper and the contribution that they can bring to camp life. For campers and staff, lasting friendships are formed, and memories of camp days are never forgotten.
Company History
Skyland Camp & Retreats has been owned and operated by the women of the same family since 1917. Located in the Great Smoky
Mountains of Western North Carolina, Skyland has catered to generations of campers throughout the decades.
Skyland’s Main Lodge (the hub of camp!) was originally built for, and opened as, a grand hotel in the late 1800s. Skyland’s founder, Susan Courtney “Granny” Harris, had become devoted to the hotel where she and her children vacationed each summer in the early 1900s. While vacationing here, Granny Harris learned that the failing hotel was on the auction block, and that the property was being auctioned off in parcels.
Before she could legally vote in the United States, Granny Harris marched onto the front porch, stood behind the auctioneer as he was receiving bids for each parcel, and boldly called out: “I’ll give you three thousand dollars for the whole kit and caboodle!” And with that, she was named the highest bidder, and had just acquired a hotel and its surrounding land.
From her winter home in Florida, the resourceful mother of five organized friends and neighbors to join her in the mountains the following summer, and Skyland Camp was off to a running start!
Today, more than a century later, we’re still on the same property, have acquired more land through the years, and we are still operated by the women of same family. The founder's great-granddaughter, Sherry Brown, is Skyland's executive director.