According to Cole’s “History of Washington and Kent Counties,” the name Fisherville came from Schuyler Fisher, who manufactured “jeans and check flannel” in a Rhode Island mill until giving up the business to head west. Even in 1889, Fisherville was remote; “there is at present no business done at the place,” Cole wrote.
You may think of horse-and-buggy days as you traverse Pardon Joslin Road, the bumpy dirt road that leads to the refuge. Be sure to approach off Widow Sweets Road; the other end of Pardon Joslin is unsuitable for traffic, a point your GPS might ignore.
At 1,011 acres, the refuge is criss-crossed by five trail systems (blue, orange, red, white and yellow). The orange trail has a gentle elevation gain through oak and pine forest. The woods are quite open (and many downed trees suggest it has been intentionally thinned), so you need to pay attention to the blazes to stay on trail.
The blue trail, the shorter of the two, takes the hiker all the way around the pond and back toward the parking lot. Wooden bridges cover marshy areas, but be careful – they are not stable and can bounce up as one hiker steps off and another steps on.
In a field off the blue trail, an historical cemetery is planted on a sort of mound surrounded by stone walls and dotted with yucca plants. Most of the deaths date from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s and the gravestones feature carvings and sayings typical of the period.
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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