Old Edwards Inn and Spa

Where Highlands Puts Its Leading Foot Forward

Main Street in Highlands, North Carolina is a short stretch of independent shops, galleries, and restaurants sitting at roughly 4,000 feet elevation in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains. The town draws a particular kind of traveller: one who has already done Asheville and wants something quieter, or who comes specifically for the plateau's hiking and the plateau's restaurants rather than a resort campus. In that context, Old Edwards Inn and Spa occupies a singular position. It is the address on Main Street — a historic property that has grown into a multi-building compound while keeping its footprint woven into the town rather than removed from it. That distinction matters: where properties like Amangiri in Canyon Point or Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur are deliberately isolated, Old Edwards is legible to the street, and Highlands is legible from it.

The Dining Programme: Madison's and the Case for Staying In

Mountain resort dining in the American South has a tendency to split between ambitious farm-to-table menus that outperform their settings and generic comfort food that undersells them. Old Edwards threads that needle at Madison's Restaurant and Wine Garden, the property's flagship dining room, which the inspector flags as a romantic option worth prioritising over the town's other choices on at least one evening. The Wine Garden format — where the boundaries between indoor service and outdoor terrace dissolve depending on season , fits the Highlands climate well. Summers on the plateau rarely exceed the low 70s Fahrenheit, which makes outdoor dining a genuine prospect from May through October rather than the aspirational gesture it often is at lower-elevation Southern resorts.

The dining programme functions as a reason to stay on-property rather than just a hotel convenience. For visitors comparing this to properties like Auberge du Soleil in Napa or SingleThread Farm Inn in Healdsburg, where the restaurant is the primary draw, Old Edwards positions its culinary offering as one strong pillar among several rather than the defining identity. That is a different calculation, but it suits a property whose guests are typically here for a longer stay across multiple interests. See our full Highlands restaurants guide if you want to map the broader dining scene around the property.

Accommodation: Period Rooms, Spa Suites, and the Falls Cottages

The accommodation range at Old Edwards spans several building types and styles, and the choice of room significantly changes the character of a stay. Historic inn rooms carry the period-antique aesthetic that defines the property's identity, with Italian linens and complimentary champagne on arrival setting a tone that most mountain properties at this price point do not match. The newer Satulah Suites , occupying the second floor of a Mediterranean-style building adjacent to the spa , add fireplaces, heated marble bathroom floors, and generous living areas. These sit at the more formal end of the property's range and suit guests who want a suite-hotel feel within the inn's broader setting.

Inspector's preference, however, falls to the Falls Cottages: newer wood-and-stone constructions with freestanding fireplaces that read more as private retreats than hotel rooms. The material palette connects them to the mountain landscape in a way the historic inn rooms, however well-appointed, do not. Requesting a unit with a private patio or terrace is worth the additional planning; several options deliver rooftop views over Main Street and the Highlands streetscape that are difficult to find elsewhere in town. Rates begin at $500 per night across the estate, placing the property in the premium tier for the region, though below the nightly floor of comparable wilderness-isolation properties like Little Palm Island Resort and Spa.

The Spa and the Mountain Wellness Tradition

Four-star spa programming at American mountain resorts increasingly looks to the local environment for differentiation. Canyon Ranch in Tucson , see Canyon Ranch Tucson , built its identity on Southwest landscape-informed wellness. Old Edwards takes a comparable approach with treatments such as Journey to Bliss with Mountain Quartz Energy, an 80-minute session using local North Carolina quartz with attributed healing properties. Whether the guest subscribes to that framework or not, the underlying logic is sound: the Blue Ridge Mountains provide a botanical and mineral environment that generic spa programming ignores. The spa's four-star designation backs the claim that the execution matches the concept.

Guests specifically seeking a wellness-forward mountain stay will find points of comparison with Sage Lodge in Pray and Alpine Falls Ranch in Superior, both of which position their natural surroundings as active ingredients in the guest experience. Old Edwards differs in that it is a town-centre property with full-service infrastructure rather than a remote ranch format, which changes the texture of the stay considerably.

Golf, the Outdoors, and Half-Mile Farm

A Tom Jackson-designed golf course anchors the outdoor sporting offer, and the Blue Ridge setting provides the expected hiking and trail access that draws much of Highlands's seasonal visitor base. The detail that most changes the planning calculus for longer stays is Half-Mile Farm, a sister property less than a mile from Old Edwards. Described by the inspector as Southern chic in its most considered form, Half-Mile Farm operates as a smaller, more rustic counterpoint to the main inn's more formal infrastructure. Guests staying at Old Edwards with access to Half-Mile Farm's atmosphere get, in effect, two distinct property characters within a single booking relationship. For those choosing between this compound approach and a single-concept property, the comparison with Trailborn Highlands elsewhere in town is worth making. See our full Highlands hotels guide for that comparison in context, alongside our Highlands bars guide, our Highlands wineries guide, and our Highlands experiences guide.

Getting There and Planning Your Stay

Old Edwards Inn and Spa sits at 445 Main Street, Highlands, NC 28741, at GPS coordinates 35.0524, -83.1968. The most practical access is by car via US 64 or NC 28. Atlanta's international airport is approximately 225 kilometres away, making it the primary fly-in option for most guests; Asheville Regional Airport is closer for those travelling from the Northeast. Clemson, South Carolina offers the nearest Amtrak access at roughly 75 kilometres, though the mountain roads between the plateau and any train station make a rental car the functional requirement it is across most of the Southern Appalachians. Guests accustomed to the booking infrastructure of The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, Raffles Boston, or Chicago Athletic Association in Chicago should expect a considerably quieter arrival experience: Highlands has fewer than 1,000 permanent residents, and the inn is sized accordingly. Peak-season bookings, particularly for the Falls Cottages and Satulah Suites, warrant planning well ahead of the late spring through early autumn window when the plateau's mild temperatures make it the most sought-after version of itself.