The Swannanoa Gap is a pass in the eastern United States through the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Asheville plateau.

According to James Mooney, a prominent ethnographer of the Bureau of American Ethnology, the pass was used by the Cherokee to reach the land of the Sara.

The gap was passed through by general Griffith Rutherford in September 1776 while on his "'scorched-earth' warfare" campaign against the Cherokee, who allied with the British in the American Revolutionary War.

[4] In 1865, during the American Civil War, 500 confederate men and four pieces of heavy artillery were ordered to blockade the Swannanoa Gap from the encroaching Union cavalry led by brigadier general Alvan Cullem Gillem.

[4] The majority of the labor used by the railroad was from African American prisoners and many tragic accidents occurred during its construction on the steep terrain.