Hunting Country

Hunting Country is the oldest horse neighborhood around Tryon and still the one people mean when they talk about Tryon horse country. Conserving Carolina describes it as a rural, horse-centered community that has been shaped by horses since the 1800s. Our State reports that River Road is deliberately left unpaved because it is kinder to hooves.

The trails are the reason to be here. The Foothills Equestrian Trails Association, FETA, was formed in 1993 by a group of Hunting Country landowners to preserve the historic trail system, and today its network runs to more than 125 miles of horse-only trails across private land. Many of those trails date back to the fox-hunting days of the 1920s. Membership is limited to people who live, own property or board a horse in Polk County or the Campobello and Landrum area.

The Foothills Equestrian Nature Center, FENCE, sits on Hunting Country Road. It was founded in 1984 on 117 acres donated by the Mahler family and has grown to about 384 acres straddling Interstate 26, with a covered arena and six miles of riding and foot trails. The Block House Steeplechase ran at FENCE for 30 years before it moved to Green Creek in 2017.

This is also Carter Brown country. Brown founded the Tryon Riding and Hunt Club in 1925 and is called the father of the Block House race. Some of the houses he built still stand, and The Hayloft at 777 South River Road, built by Brown in 1946, is one of them. Owners still go to some lengths to protect this landscape: in 2023 the owners of Pony Track Farm on Hunting Country Road donated a conservation easement on nearly 66 acres, and the FETA trails cross that farm along a historic pony track.

Available here now: The Hayloft, $2,695,000.