The Biltmore Estate is a National Historic Landmark. Vanderbilt employed Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed Central Park NYC, to do the gardens and the deliberately-rustic three-mile approach, and Gifford Pinchot to design the forests.

Vanderbilt spent so much money on the estate that, when he died at the age of forty-four due to complications of surgery, his family had to sell off most of the original 125,000 acres to the federal government, who used the land to establish the Pisgah National Forest.