Richmond Hill Park Disc Golf Course

Richmond Hill Park is the largest city-owned park in Asheville at more than 180 acres, a wooded hillside north of downtown that drops toward the French Broad River. Its 18-hole disc golf course was the first in the city. The Western North Carolina Disc Golf Association traces its own origins to it: James Nichols moved to Asheville from Rochester in 1999, found no courses nearby, walked several city parks and settled on Richmond Hill, which at the time was little more than a parking lot. He and a handful of volunteers cleared it starting in 2000, with Innova fronting credit for the first nine baskets. That original course was later removed for the North Carolina Army National Guard Asheville Readiness Center, and Nichols worked through several design drafts with the city on the replacement, which the city finished building in 2006.

The course today is 18 wooded holes with a lot of elevation change — roughly 180 feet of relief across the footprint — and most holes have several pin positions that the club rotates. The city upgraded the tee pads to concrete in 2023. Hurricane Helene closed the park entirely and took more than a year of debris removal and hundreds of downed trees to undo; the disc golf course has since fully reopened with help from WNCDGA, but the park as a whole is only partially open. Hazards remain, trail conditions have changed, and the restrooms and bike skills area were still under repair through the phased reopening. Park hours are 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and there is no fee.