George Masa Screening

In March 2023, we collaborated with UNCA Greenfest and the Carolina Mountain Club to screen The Mystery of George Masa, produced by Bonesteel Films. This documentary is available for rent and purchase on Vimeo.

George Masa, born Masahara Izuka in the early 1880s, immigrated from Osaka, Japan. He arrived in Asheville during the city’s Gilded Age.

In 1915, Masa was hired by manager Fred Seely to work in the Grove Park Inn’s laundry rooms. But he quickly made his way to the valet desk where he mingled with many of the wealthy guests. Seely, aware that photographs of the guests and surrounding mountains would be great promotion for the inn, lent Masa his camera and sent him off with the guests.

Masa appears in photographs of some of the most famous visitors and families in Asheville, including the Vanderbilts! His artistic eye and skill as a photographer eventually led him to working with Herbert Pelton in downtown Asheville, at The Photo Craft, but in 1919 he left Pelton and established his own business, Plateau Studios. Masa’s artistic work and sharp photos drew a range of clients; local news outlets relied on his services as well as many aristocrats in the area who wanted photographs of their families. Masa also photographed the local mountains and sold postcards and colored prints.

Masa worked and explored tirelessly for years, photographing and documenting thousands of acres of trails and peaks, often alone but sometimes with friend and author Horace Kephart or members of various outdoor clubs based in Asheville. Masa’s sharp skills as a photographer and his devotion to the beauty and wildness of the mountains in Western North Carolina and Tennessee would make him an integral part of the movement to establish The Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachian Trail in the 1930s. His donated photographs appeared in the national efforts to protect the forests in this area.

After his sudden death to tuberculosis on June 21, 1933 – an assumed result of bodily strain from years of strenuous hiking – his friends from the Carolina Mountain Club pooled their money to have him buried in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery, where he lies underneath a large white pine.

Masa’s friends also attempted to protect his photographs after his death, but eventually the negatives sold to a man named Elliot Lyman Fisher, another Asheville photographer. Lyman at first reprinted Masa’s images acknowledging their source but not long after Masa’s death, sold them under his own name. Similarly, the year before his death, Masa co-produced the first comprehensive guide to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park with George McCoy, a newspaper editor in Asheville. The book featured Masa’s favorite trails and many of his photographs, but was printed two years later with Masa’s name missing.

Masa’s love of the local mountains inspired many with whom he came in contact in his lifetime, and devoted friends sought to honor him by naming a mountain after him. On April 25, 1961, close to Mt. Kephart and Charlie’s Bunion, a peak officially took the name Masa’s Knob on the Appalachian Trail.

Still an inspiration to many today, on April 8th, 2022, the Mayor of Asheville and director Paul Bonesteel of The Mystery of George Masa documentary spoke in front of a small audience before unveiling a historical marker in downtown Asheville. Located one block past the Asheville Museum of Science and across the street from Masa’s old studio, the marker denotes George Masa’s contributions to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachian Trail.